Page 7 of The Princess and the P.I.

“No, I do,” Fiona said slowly. But maybe she didn’t need his backstory—she could see how the world bent slightly in his direction. A man who won through sheer inevitability was a good lawyer to have on your side.

He shrugged like it didn’t matter. “You can try to place me at the family reunion later. You saw a man die this afternoon. That must have been hard.”

Fiona looked away, her throat tightening. It had been hard—harder than she could articulate, though not for the reasons Bennett probably assumed. But she felt like she’d precipitated a man’s death somehow. Accidental or not. It was mind-bending.

“ Are you my lawyer?” she asked a little hopefully.

The man smiled, and cherubic dimples punctured his cheeks. It made the worn leather jacket and tattoos seem like cosplay. Judas? No. Surely, he was the safe love interest on the CW show of her dreams.

He shook his head as if disagreeing with her assessment. “No, but you need one. Fast. I’m a private investigator. Maurice—”

“Bennett,” Fiona finished with a snap. “You found Tameka. You tried to take down the church.”

Maurice blinked, a flicker of surprise breaking through his otherwise calm demeanor. “I…Yes,” he admitted, scratching the back of his neck. The gesture made him look all of sixteen.

“You went up against my father,” Fiona said, almost reverent. Kofi was an impossible man to cross. “That case—it made the rounds in every amateur sleuth forum in the country.”

He frowned. “Don’t they all?”

“No,” Fiona said firmly. “Tameka was different. For us too. In the church. When you walked into that press briefing and said you had no leads it broke us.”

Broke me , she almost said.

His face closed, and he looked almost angry. It couldn’t be the first time he had heard this.

“Did you know him?” she ventured. “Robert Thorpe?” Honestly, she didn’t want to know. What if he was his grandfather or something?

He shrugged. “In the way we all knew him, I guess.”

He said “we” in this communal way that made Fiona wonder what collective he had grouped her into.

Black Americans? People from DC? She was neither.

Fiona knew all the scripts by heart, though, the practiced pantomimes that rolled off the tongue.

Won’t He do it? God is good, all the time —call-and-response like clockwork.

African Americans had perfected the art of assessing their safety with you into tiny micro-interactions—subtle nods in a crowded room.

“Any reason why you decided to steal a fifty-million-dollar vest in front of God and everyone?” Maurice asked, sliding the stack of papers toward her. No trace of sympathy left in him.

“I had…reasons,” Fiona said, steadier than she expected. If there was one thing about the Tameka case that came to her now, it was the embargo on talking to this man. She almost clamped her mouth shut and called the guards to be thrown back into her cell. He was obsessed with this case.

“Not good enough,” Maurice snapped. His eyes narrowed, pinning her in place. “You’re facing life in prison, Fiona. ‘I had my reasons’ isn’t going to fucking cut it. You start talking, give up the real masterminds, and maybe you’ll walk out of this with a slap on the wrist.”

Real masterminds? Fiona’s lips tightened. What was he even talking about?

When she didn’t answer, he shook the stack of bail paperwork in her direction. “You’ve got three months. That’s all the time you’ve got to figure out what side you’re on.”

Her eyes darted to the papers, and she sputtered when she saw his signature scrawled across them.

“Wait…” she said slowly, her voice catching. “ You bailed me out? Why? You don’t even know me.”

“Not yet.” Maurice folded his arms, his expression unreadable. “But I want to,” he said in a tone that dripped down to her belly.

“I don’t know anything about the Tameka case or the new church.”

His brows lifted in what? Surprise? Amusement? “You’re quick. And let me be the judge of what you don’t know,” Maurice said, folding the papers. He didn’t elaborate, didn’t explain further.

Something about his calmness, his unnerving insistence, made every alarm bell in her body ring.

She wasn’t this person, wasn’t the kind of woman who stood across from a private investigator, making deals like this.

Fear rolled over her, sharp and cold, but then she remembered her prayer, whispered in the holding cell:

If you deliver me, I will not shrink.

Fiona knew she should have flat out denied him—spent her time in jail and waited out her pretrial. Instead, she straightened her shoulders.

“Teach me,” she said suddenly, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could think better of them.

Maurice tilted his head. “What?”

She grabbed his upper arm impulsively. “Teach me. Help me get my license like you. And we can work together. To find out what really happened to Robert Thorpe. I swear I didn’t kill him. And I’ll give you details about my church.”

Maurice’s eyes dropped to his arm, nearly swallowed by her breast.

“Er, sorry.” She released him abruptly, her face heating.

Maurice took two measured steps away from her, smoothing his jacket like it had been ruffled by the contact.

“Why on earth would I partner with you?” His voice was dry, his tone skeptical.

“I’m Princess_PI,” she said, lifting her chin, daring him to recognize the name. “Reddit detective?”

Maurice blinked, unimpressed.

She took another half step forward and clarified, “I was the first to find out that the winner from season seven of Spinster Island had a secret husband?”

Instead of an impressed nod, the stupidest, silliest, high-pitched snort escaped his body.

“Princess.” He sighed. What was so funny, she didn’t know. It had been the biggest scandal to rock the franchise. Her subreddit was featured on a news segment about the new age of crime fighting.

Let him laugh. She knew boys like him—blerds who tried to quiz her on One Piece in the anime forums once they found out she was a woman. This wasn’t a joke to her. This was her way out. The opportunity was hidden under layers of danger and doubt, but it was still there.

Yes, her freedom was on the line. But wasn’t it anyway? Jail or a life as an acolyte’s wife in her father’s church. Fiona failed to see the difference.

She could see her path clearly now. She’d finally found a way out from under the suffocating thumb of Kofi Addai’s Apostolic Bountiful Blessing Exalting Yahweh Tabernacle.

And she wasn’t going back.

Maurice’s laughter faded. “You’re serious,” he said, studying her.

Fiona didn’t know if she was climbing out of a hole or digging herself deeper, but she sure as heck wasn’t shrinking.

“Dead serious,” Fiona replied, meeting his eyes. In retrospect, it was a poor choice of words.