Page 55 of The Princess and the P.I.

David flicked a hand dismissively, his faux concern showing cracks. “Eating at some splashy restaurant,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about it if it upsets you.” His eyes, though, stayed fixed on her, hungry for a reaction.

Layer two.

“It sounds nice,” Fiona said, shrugging. “Which restaurant is it?”

She sensed him bristling, noticed the little shift in his jaw.

“McCormick and Schmick’s,” he said, the name tumbling out quickly.

Layer three.

“Oh, I love that place! They do tableside Alfredo in one of those massive cheese wheels. Always so classy. What are they eating?”

David gave a strained chuckle, then glanced at his phone again with forced nonchalance. “Oh, he’s really spoiling her,” he said in a carefully modulated voice. “Lobster mac and cheese. Blue crab.”

He flashed her the phone. The words winked at her like a little secret.

Fiona pressed her lips together against a grin. Fiona sat back with a soft huh . The thing is, it wasn’t a bad lie. Anyone would be safe suggesting two people were having a crab feast in Maryland.

But it was wrong. All wrong.

Maurice carried an emergency inhaler and EpiPen everywhere. She could still hear him, as he flipped silky eggs: Anything from the sea will kill me.

She clanked her fork against the plate. “Sounds…perfect. Thank you for painting such a vivid picture for me.”

The realization hit her like warm water. This felt like Maurice. The question now was why.

David’s laugh was a little triumphant, swirling his glass of sparkling water like it was fine champagne. “Well, you do deserve to know. Family is everything, after all.” He laid a hand over his chest, but the gesture was rehearsed.

Fiona plastered on a calm expression, setting her fork down with care. “You’re right. I’m ready to move on past that chapter in my life. Tell me more about this lawyer you’re offering,” she said.

David tilted his head, his grin creeping back as if he smelled blood. “We can talk about it, you know,” he said, his words oozing false sympathy. “If you’re hurting.”

She considered leaning into it, letting him think he’d hurt her.

It seemed to be what he wanted. What he liked.

Hurting women. A single tear, even a fake one, could open the floodgates to more information.

But the thought of giving him even that much satisfaction made her stomach turn. Not even fake tears for David.

She smiled instead. “I appreciate you, David. This makes me more ready than ever to move on.”

He looked hopeful. “Good! Good. I’m going to get you the church’s best,” David said smoothly. “All the resources, all the power. We’ll clear these ridiculous charges. No wife of mine will be besmirched.”

“And in exchange…we get married.”

“Naturally.” He smiled, wide and gleaming, but it never touched his dead-fish eyes. “Your dad was a hard no. Do you know how long I had asked for your hand? Going on six years, and your dad was a wall.” He chuckled. “No man wants to let go of their baby.”

Another instance of which she was 100 percent sure Kofi Addai had not changed his mind. So, what did her father want her to do?

“Of course,” he continued easily, “you’d also have to disavow Maurice. Publicly. His sinful ways, his corrupt investigations. We’ve been in touch with that podcast—you know the one. They want the real story on Tameka.”

His voice dipped lower.

“All you’d have to do is…share what you know. If you ever saw drugs at his house. His habit of sleeping around. Just tell the truth. Not hard since he’s off with your sister doing God knows what.”

Silence.

She saw his whole play laid out in front of her.

Anger her by implying Maurice was off with her sister, turn the screws, and get her to smear Maurice and exonerate the church.

David would get the church promotion, looking like the heir apparent married to the daughter of the man who had brought the church to glory.

David leaned back, satisfied. He could already see her folding. They always thought she would.

But Fiona sat perfectly still, spine straight, fingers clenched around the cold edge of her wineglass. She felt her collarbone buzz, and she coughed to cover the sound.

No.

She didn’t check the battery level! Her bug was dying.

Her pulse thundered—but her words, when they came, were ice.

“Is that all?”

“Something else that hasn’t been sitting right with me,” David said, dabbing his mouth with a linen napkin, studiously casual. “The way the church treated your brother.”

Fiona’s head snapped up.

“He died around this time, didn’t he?” His voice was silk-wrapped steel.

“Three years ago, next week.” Her mouth was dry.

David clicked his tongue. “They buried him in a pine box like a stray dog. Disgraceful.”

He tapped the table. “He was my brother, too, in the faith. That’s why I stood with Kofi, not for Tameka, but for how they discarded Kwesi.”

He pulled out his wallet and flashed a photo—a younger Kwesi, maybe nine, grinning with a mouth full of missing teeth, arms slung around David like everything was still possible. The edges of the photo were worn, like it had been touched too often.

“I swear, I just removed this from my home screen,” David said, voice thick with sorrow or performance—Fiona couldn’t tell.

“I’m truly excited for our life together,” he added softly, reaching across the rocking table to cover her hand with his broad, heavy one. “I won’t let anyone speak against your brother. In fact…”

He patted her knuckles.

“He always wanted to open a center for kids, right? I was thinking of renaming the computer room at the compound. The Kwesi Addai STEM Center.”

Fiona’s vision blurred with hot, stinging tears.

This was what she had done it for. This was the one cruelty she couldn’t live with.

That he had been buried as a nobody. He could get a reburial.

A headstone. His name carved in stone. His personhood restored.

Her sweet brother Kwesi had been here and had been loved.

“He would have loved that,” she whispered.

Her stomach was swimming with sickening nausea. She regretted the lumpy pasta. All she had to do was talk to the podcasters. She wouldn’t tell them anything too bad.

But she was getting even sicker with the thought of it. So much betrayal, so much double-triple-crossing. Shouldn’t getting what you want feel cleaner than this?

It was dessert by the time David noticed her distraction again. “I’m sorry I haven’t asked you about what you would like to do as my wife. What would you do with your time, Fiona?”

Straightening up, Fiona swirled her pudding with deliberate nonchalance. “I like solving cold cases,” she said. “And digging into behind-the-scenes reality TV gossip.”

Her fingers drifted to the small cross pinned to her lapel, pressing it until she heard the faint click of the recording device activating. It would have to stay on until it died.

David’s eyes followed the movement, his gaze narrowing with suspicion. Fiona forced a soft, absent-minded smile and smoothed the bodice of her dress, forcing his eyes hungrily down her body.

Rule number three from the Maurice Bennett Up-Close Magic School for Wayward Youths: always misdirect the mark.

“A cold case?” He laughed. “It sounds like a type of sandwich. The best thing about being married to me is that I won’t ever let you get cold.”

Fiona stared down into her pudding.

When she looked up, she was surprised to see a flash of disbelief in his eyes before he tamped it down.

“Look, if you’re concerned about your reputation, living as you were with a worldly man, you should know that I’m not old-fashioned.”

“Oh”—Fiona looked at him from under her lashes—“how did you know about that? You all must really have resources everywhere.”

“Yes.” He was nodding, getting excited to show off his power. “We were watching out for you because you were a child of the flock.”

“And the notes?”

Fornicator

Jezebel

Harlot

“Also me.” He said this with an inexplicable touch of pride.

“Yes, I think at first blush the words can hit hard. But I knew you came from a God-fearing man and confronting you with God’s word would turn you around.

And look at God! Here you are, the woman I prayed for every night for five years…

My God, my God.” He shook his head in reverie.

When his eyes met hers again, they were wet and burned with possession, not love.

“And in white, looking like a vision.”

Fiona fought the urge to recoil from him. He loved her so much he slipped Fornicator under her door. He loved her so much he terrified her.

“I’d like to go,” she said.

His face fell slowly, and then he laughed in surprise.

“I’m sorry, I’m feeling a little sick—the waves.”

His mouth twitched with barely disguised disappointment.

“Do you know how much it costs to rent out this place?” he laughed, trying to sound lighthearted. “At least let’s take a turn around the harbor. They start the fireworks at nine.”

That was an hour from now.

“I would like to go now.” She stopped herself from saying please.

He leaned in over the table, accidentally sticking his thick elbow in his pudding.

The ruin of his pristine suit seemed to snap something inside him. With a sudden, violent crack, his fist slammed into the table, sending spoons and forks skittering to the floor.

Fiona flinched, hating herself for the tiny, involuntary show of fear.

She got up and made a beeline to the railing, feeling the cool air blow her curled hair loose.

She lost the sticky remnants of her dinner in one hard retch over the rail.

David stood up from the table, all smiles and composure, handing her a cool towel for her face.

His elbow still had a piece of napkin on it.

The lobster mac and cheese detail wouldn’t leave her mind, turning over noisily like coins in a dryer.

No matter how she thought about it, the lie felt like a sign.

Either Maurice fed her that answer deliberately, planting a breadcrumb to warn her, or Esi had been tasked with something she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do, but was pretending she had.

Both possibilities pointed to one undeniable conclusion: David was pulling strings, and Esi was tangled in them. He had something on Esi—something heavy enough to make her bend but not quite break.

She forced herself to meet David’s gaze and took a guess.

“What do you have on my sister?” she asked.

David stilled and he tilted his head, calculating.

“I have no idea what you mean,” he said, but his eyes flicked—just for a second—toward the dark water beyond the yacht’s polished railings.

Fiona pressed forward. “I think you do.” She swallowed down a second wave of nausea. “I know my sister, and she wouldn’t do this”—Fiona swallowed the lie—“wouldn’t do this with a man that I love.” The words seemed to come from her belly and not her mouth. That I love.

A man that I love.

His mouth twitched. “Your sister had a practice to keep and a professional reputation. You don’t know what she’d do to maintain it.”

“So, you do have something on her.”

“I didn’t say anything of the sort. I think it’s cute that you’re concerned about your sister even though she’s not even officially a part of the church anymore. It speaks to your good heart. But remember, church business belongs to the males. I would gladly discuss this with an equal partner.”

“Understood,” Fiona said. The church didn’t believe in teaching women the Bible; instead they simply gave them quotes and platitudes from prophets that focused on one thing—obedience. She would need a different angle.

Fiona didn’t like the way his empty eyes kept looking around, like he was checking for witnesses.

He stepped forward, looming over Fiona, and she felt the cold night air spin around them. She turned her head away, heart pounding.

“Listen, Fiona, you don’t have to play the virgin. I told you I’m not old-fashioned. I like the idea of a woman knowing what a man wants.” She realized what he meant to do a split second before he lifted his arms.

David reached for her. Fiona had just enough time to twist her body and use his forward motion against him. She lowered herself, pretending to be transfixed with something on his shoe.

Online jujitsu, please don’t be a scam.

The yacht’s deck shifted beneath them, accelerating his momentum forward.

Thank you, God.

Fiona seized the moment, because faith without works is dead.

She stepped into David’s space, pressing close so he couldn’t fully recover his balance. Their bodies collided with bruising force, her hip slamming against the cold metal rail. A single wrong step, and she would be the one sailing over the edge—but she’d already committed.

Turn and load.

She dipped her hips lower, hooking her foot around his calf. The boat lurched again and for one breathless second, he was heavier than she’d anticipated, his belly crushing into her shoulder. But he had too much forward momentum to stop himself.

She’d effectively turned herself into a human lever.

A split second passed in slow motion—David’s eyes widening, the deck lights gleaming on his twisted expression as he toppled over. He bellowed something furious, but the roar of water swallowed his voice.

He hit the water with a monstrous splash.

Fiona staggered back, panting, her pulse drumming in her ears. The Potomac foamed angrily. For a moment, there was only the wind. She backed away from the rail, her knees buckling.

The water remained still.

He didn’t surface.

He wasn’t surfacing.

She waited a beat. With shaking hands, she got her phone out and typed one word in the text bar:

Princess.

Then she let out a bloodcurdling scream.