Page 60 of The Princess and the P.I.

Fiona wanted this to stop.

Did Maurice think she could be here questioning her own father? Demanding the truth from him? This was the most American thing about him. The way he misunderstood family.

The thing about detectives is that they ask because they want to know.

But Fiona—she didn’t want to know. She wanted the soft lie, the old lies they’d lived under for so long.

She wished she could stuff the words back into her father’s mouth and go back to not understanding him.

That version of him had been easier to hate.

Because this man in front of her—this broken, unraveling man—she feared she understood all too well.

Esi paced by the marble fireplace. In the center of it all, Kofi faced Maurice with a glare fierce enough to crack stone.

“How dare you imply I would leave my own daughter to carry blame for this crime? You think I can just conjure money from the sky, eh?” His accent, thicker when he was angry, was rich and quick.

“I’m not like you, making dollars appear in your bank account by blinking.

So, I went to the church—thought they could help.

The Bible says, ‘consider the lilies,’?” Kofi said.

This made perfect sense to her dad, but both Esi and Maurice rolled their eyes at the reference.

“But Brother David,” Kofi continued, voice raw with anger, “that man wanted a bigger piece of me than I was willing to give.” He glanced at Fiona and she understood the heart of it. Esi caught her gaze. She had been right, but she took no joy in it.

“When I told him that the Lord had told me no on his request, he showed me pictures—pictures of Esi, doing awful things to those girls. Threatening to ruin her life, everything she has built.”

Esi swallowed hard. Her arms were folded so tight across her chest it was a wonder she could still breathe.

Kofi rubbed Esi’s arms, both of their gazes drifting to the high windows, where evening stars twinkled above. “So, I agreed to…to prey on Fiona’s heart, to twist her arm, but all along, I was passing details to Sara, telling her every wicked thing that Mark was doing.”

A sudden memory ignited in Fiona’s mind: Sara telling Mark she has a friend helping them get revenge.

Mark refusing. Sara, at the play party, telling Fiona about the “insurance” that would ensure Fiona would never go to the authorities.

“You were her source,” she murmured. “The church bombshells in her tell-all.”

“Yes,” Kofi said, nodding as if the memory cost him dearly. “Her book wasn’t about the church alone, eh—no, she was coming after the big names: Mark, Robert, men who used the church to cover up crimes. She knew about my boy—she knew the truth of what happened.

“I thought we still had time. God have mercy on me.” Kofi walked away from both of his daughters.

“A lifetime ago, I chose the congregation over my son, and it burned a hole in my heart.” He turned to Fiona.

“As much as you hated that company, Fiona, I did one thousand times more.” The hate in his words cut through the room like a buzz saw.

“You lost your brother, and I know that pains the heart. But I lost my son.” The rage in his voice made him quake.

Spit collected at the corners of his mouth, and he pounded a fist against his thick chest. “That’s a grief I hope you never know.

My life—” He sucked in a ragged breath. “My life is already over.”

She had never seen him unravel so fast, never imagined her father could be this broken. She was begging the world to slow down.

“So, Sara put you up to this?” she asked, forcing the words through her tightening throat. She wanted to throw him a life raft to drag him up from the undertow. Every part of her felt ready to snap.

Her father looked up at her. “Sara found out about my plan already in place,” he said, barely above a whisper now.

“They say a fish rots from the head down. That company…it took my son from us. Chewed him up in its relentless gears and spit him out, broken, penniless…He died in the street, thinking no one loved—” The last words fractured, breaking on a sob that seemed to tear from a wet crack in his chest.

Fiona’s mind rebelled against this new thing taking shape. The company stole from Kwesi, yes, but his death—his murder—had been bad luck, bad timing…hadn’t it? She needed her father to say it. “Dad, that carjacker—”

“Was a fake.” The words buzzed in her chest. “I saw a human-interest story two years ago, about some small town in Utah. First murder in their two-hundred-year history.” He laughed, a hollow sound.

Fiona opened her mouth to speak, but Maurice shook his head.

“I think, ‘Wow. How can a two-hundred-year-old town not have any murders?’ That was the angle, you see—nostalgia—small-town purity. But by the grace of God, I saw something else! That man had worked for iVest. Even once is a lot of times for a small tech company to have their employee murdered by a carjacking. But twice? Twice is a pattern. Sure enough, the same plates that ran that teen who carjacked Kwesi off the road happened to be in Utah. Fiona, my child. He had to die for Robert to steal his idea.”

His words crashed inside of Fiona’s head.

Kwesi was murdered.

The truth was molten and scalding, unbearable.

Tears carved cold tracks down her face. She saw Maurice reach out from the corner of her eye, but she stumbled toward her father, wrapping her arms around him, holding on because it was the only thing she could do.

“My daughter, I only wanted them to feel what we felt,” he whispered into her hair.

“A small bit of the pain we carry—just enough to set the scales right. But this grief—ah—doesn’t bargain.

It devours. And I—” His words trembled, and he shook his head in defeat.

“I made it worse. God, forgive me, I even dragged that Brother David into our matter, can you imagine? A proper jackal. And I made everything worse.”

Fiona’s mind whirled: everything was swirling into a single, suffocating truth. Kwesi was murdered. Murdered.

The word pulsed in her head until it made no sense.

Just a collection of sounds. She squeezed her father’s trembling form even tighter.

If she let him go, she would be alone with the truth.

Esi sat beside him, sliding her arms around them both in a gesture that startled Fiona.

Esi usually kept a physical distance from them both.

“David was able to blackmail you because of my wickedness,” Esi murmured, voice raw. She swallowed hard. “I don’t even know where that rage came from…or why I felt entitled to it.”

Maurice’s tone was unexpectedly gentle, free of the judgment Fiona braced herself for. “You were brainwashed,” he said to Esi, matter-of-fact but not unkind. “It’s what cults do—they make the unthinkable seem normal. Then they weaponize it against you.”

Everyone shifted in their seats. Fiona didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to know the shape of what had been asked of her sister.

Look at how close she had come to compromising herself at dinner with David.

How could she judge? Esi’s jaw clenched so hard that Fiona could almost hear her teeth grind.

“He told me to get Maurice off the church, or he’d ruin us,” Esi said as she looked over their father’s head.

Sister to sister. “He gave me the tox report. I guess Dad preying on Fiona’s heart wasn’t going fast enough. ”

Fiona grasped Esi’s hand, and her sister’s grip was strong, though trembling. She wasn’t fool enough to think David went through all this trouble because she was Helen of Troy.

“Why me?” she asked earnestly.

“With men like David it’s about bending the world to their will. He likely had some clammy wet dream that he decided was ‘divine revelation.’ Let me guess,” Maurice said, “he told you, ‘God wants me to marry you,’ right?”

Fiona nodded as though wishing it weren’t true. “Said he’d prayed on it.”

Maurice cleared his throat. “Even though she was under pressure to do so, Esi couldn’t betray you,” he said quietly, gaze flicking to Fiona as if to ask, Are you okay?

Fiona let out a shaky breath, mind reeling at the hypocrisy of a “holy” man like David threatening them from behind his pulpit. “I recorded him,” she said, reminding herself she still had that card to play. “Whatever else happens, I got something.”

“It’s not over,” Maurice warned, his voice low. “There’s…a lot we still don’t know.”

Kofi laid a trembling hand over hers. “Child, mourn Sara,” he said, voice hoarse with guilt.

“She got trapped…used…wanted out. Now I’ve lost her too.

” His words came quieter, like he was forgetting English.

Twi was the language they cried in anyway.

“I’m so sorry,” he finished, his grief too big to contain.

Fiona’s tears flowed freely. In the periphery of her vision, Esi’s shoulders began to shake. Maurice hovered close, hands raised, wanting to help but uncertain how.

“I lost my son. I almost lost you, Fiona, and I may lose my freedom over this. I made my peace with God,” Kofi said, chest hitching. “Maybe that’s all that’s left.”

Maurice spoke softly. “I had a nephew once…lost him. That grief can eat you alive, Mr.Addai. But you’re not alone.” He turned to Fiona. “None of us are, if we don’t want to be.”

Fiona glanced at him, an ache unfolding in her chest. A single, desperate thought swallowed her whole: she wanted him back in her suite, the door clicked shut, no lights, no phones—no death or danger in the shadows.

Just the hush of lavender pillow spray and the steady press of his arm across her heart, holding her with all the strength he had, making her feel more safe and more alive than she ever had before.