Page 71 of The Princess and the P.I.

Maurice stirred in his seat. The chair was cheap, designed to keep people uncomfortable. It was working.

Detective Ryan’s offer rang in his ears.

I want Tameka.

For years, Tameka’s case had been his. His guilt. His failure. The thing that sat in his gut like a swallowed stone. And here Ryan was, dangling the one thing Maurice couldn’t do alone—protect Fiona from the church.

Maurice had spent so much of his life white-knuckling control, like it had ever really belonged to him in the first place. A magician’s big finale—there was nothing underneath the hat all along.

He grimaced like he was loosening a rib and handed it over.

“Take it,” he said. His voice was steady. His stomach was not.

Ryan blinked. “What?” He had expected a fortnight of mulling. Maurice didn’t have that kind of time.

“The case. It’s yours. I’ll turn over all my files.” Maurice leaned forward, leveling him with a stare sharp enough to cut. “But if anything—if Fiona so much as breaks a fucking fingernail—I will burn your house down with you inside of it. Do you understand?”

Ryan’s slow grin stretched across his face like a man who had just won a bet he hadn’t even placed. “Shit. My man is down bad. ”

Maurice said nothing.

Maurice stood, his back straight, his jaw tight, and followed him.

The precinct smelled the same—burnt coffee, stale sweat, and cheap floor cleaner that never quite did the job. The same cracked linoleum, the same dim overhead lighting that cast everything in the sickly glow of a low-budget hostage video. Nothing had changed, but today, everything had.

They walked in together, side by side, and it was like someone had pressed pause in that room.

Officers did double takes. They didn’t know how to deal with seeing them walk in together without barbs flying like shrapnel.

The ones who had shit on Maurice before suddenly found something deeply interesting about the scuffed floors.

A few shifted in their seats. A couple of them stood, like they weren’t sure if they should brace for impact.

Karma was moving through the room, slow and methodical, stretching its fingers into every corner.

Someone—probably O’Hara, because of course it was O’Hara—cleared his throat. “Well, well. Getting the band back together, huh?”

Maurice cut him a look so sharp and withering it could have curled the leaves on a plastic plant. O’Hara coughed and promptly decided to become very interested in his paperwork.

Maurice kept walking, not looking back. He gave the appropriate new details, handing over everything—the case, the files, the chase that had defined him for years. He signed the papers, his name carving across the page like an ending. Like a funeral.

He had thought this moment would break him. Instead, it felt like he could finally breathe.

But just as the ink dried, a commotion broke out near the sliding front doors. Raised voices. The shuffle of hurried footsteps. Maurice looked up, expecting some routine precinct nonsense—a perp making a break for it.

Instead, his stomach dropped. He blinked. Once. Twice.

His first thought was that maybe he had finally snapped. That his brain, exhausted from years of stress and very questionable life choices, had finally taken a hard left into full-blown hallucination.

—

Fiona’s entrance into the precinct was nothing short of cinematic.

She was poured into a sleek, all-black velvet catsuit that had to have been sewn onto her body.

She wore mirrored sunglasses and had curled her hair so that it fell over her shoulder like a black mist. Her lips were so red and her teeth so white that her mouth looked like a rock ’n’ roll album cover.

Fuuuuuck , Maurice thought, the word stretching out in his mind like an exhale.

That outfit was a tool, sure—functional for the kind of movement she liked to do—that she was damned good at. She also had to know that her body was undeniably striking in it, as officers and detainees alike craned their necks to eat her up.

She strode through the precinct like she had just bought it that morning with pennies. When their eyes met, a Rihanna song burst into his mind. “Everybody’s watching her, but she looking at you.”

“F-Fiona,” he mouthed, but the word wasn’t even audible.

“Detective Ryan. So good I’ve caught you. I was wondering if you could help me,” she began. She was showy, loud. She wanted every single person in the precinct to hear her. She whipped off her sunglasses and put the tip in her mouth.

Detective Ryan only smirked. “Are you desperate to be arrested after slithering out of your charges? Because I would love to put cuffs on you.”

“Yeah, it’s no fun when they can leave on their own, is it?” she said. And when he heard muffled laughter from the cops, Ryan silenced them with a look.

Ryan’s eyes flicked to the folder, but he didn’t reach for it. “And what exactly am I looking at here?”

“Evidence,” Fiona said evenly. “Evidence that will take down multiple private security firms and expose criminal activity at iVest that’ll make all your other cases look like small-time shoplifting.”

Ryan leaned back in his chair, trying his damnedest to look unimpressed, but his tone had shifted. “I’m not interested in wild accusations,” he said.

“Not wild, Detective. Verified,” Fiona said. “My father prepared it. It’s meticulous. Financials, contracts, emails, everything. This is the kind of case that puts your name in the papers for all the right reasons.”

Maurice did everything to keep from smiling. She didn’t know it, but she had him. This was her little way. He had seen her do it with Sara. She made interrogation feel like a gift—like you were unburdening yourself. You would be being hauled away in cuffs and say, Thank god I got that off my chest.

Ryan’s fingers tapped the desk, a little drumbeat of indecision. His eyes darted between Fiona and the folder. “And you’re just giving me this?” he asked. “Why?”

“Because I don’t know what you’re trying to get out of Maurice, but this is bigger,” Fiona said bluntly.

She tapped the folder. “You’ve got a career maker.

A story they’ll talk about for years. So, Detective Ryan, you win either way.

” Fiona shrugged. Maurice’s knees bounced with excitement.

That’s my strategic shrug! “So, you want a small win or a big one?”

“You think I need you to hand me a case?” Detective Ryan was still eyeing the folder.

“Look,” Fiona continued, softening her tone just enough to let him think he was still in control.

The way she played with power needed to be studied.

He suddenly understood Kofi’s strange little warning, something like if she’s hungry she’ll make you cook for the kids.

Fiona wields power in a roundabout way. This sleight of hand that made people think they were in control when they weren’t.

“I’m not asking you to do me a favor. I’m giving you an opportunity.

You want to keep working Maurice? Fine. But this folder is going to someone else—someone who’s not afraid to make a name for themselves. ”

She turned sharply on her heel, her Sailor Pluto boots clicking against the tile floor.

Detective Ryan was out and around the booth before Maurice counted to three.

He flipped the folder open, eyes scanning the contents, and Maurice saw the transformation happen in real time. The superior smirk slid off his face.

After a minute he looked up at her. “Did you read all of this?” He looked surprised.

“Most of it. My dad added some of his own documentation. But it will check out.”

Ryan laughed. It was the soft, self-satisfied chuckle of someone who’d just realized the study guide was the test—the almost giddy disbelief. Why did it fill Maurice with dread? There was more in that paperwork than Fiona realized.

Damn this woman.

Fiona was bright and beautiful and…his.

His heart throbbed and burned under his clothes. He was going to set his shirt on fire.

Detective Ryan stood and walked toward him, looking like he stole something.

“Forty-eight hours,” Detective Ryan said.

“What?” Maurice asked.

“Surveillance, details, manpower. Forty-eight hours, that’s all I can give you.”

“That’s all we need,” Fiona said, bubbling up. “Meet us at Maurice’s place.”

“Alpha Dogs will be there,” he said, snatching a look at Maurice. “But yo, Little Red Riding Hood?”

Fiona pointed to herself with a touch of confusion, and Detective Ryan continued. “You’re wrong about one thing. I’m not trading a small story for a big one. This is the cherry on top of the fucking wedding cake your boy just handed me.”

“What do you mean?” Fiona looked alarmed.

“The Tameka case. That bust is mine too. iVest and a mega cult.” He clapped his hands. “Christmas dinner.”

Fiona turned to Maurice, her eyes wide, and for a moment, he wanted to take it all back.

“Maurice, you didn’t,” she said, barely above a whisper.

“I did,” Maurice said. He felt no shame. He’d done it. Handed it over like loose change. For her. “I needed you safe more than I needed to close the case.”

He supposed on the outside it looked noble. But it didn’t feel noble at all. It felt like desperation to protect Fiona but in a tailored suit.

“You should never talk to the cops without a lawyer,” she said. He half smiled. “You didn’t have to do that,” Fiona said, shaky now. “We have footage. Clear as day. It looks like David pushing Sara.”

Maurice shrugged. What else was there to do? “I made a decision with the information I had.”

Fiona searched his face, her eyes softening. “Are you—are you okay with that?”

He reached out, his hand brushing her cheek. “I needed to let Tameka go,” he said.

The way she looked at him in that moment kicked his heart into high gear. A thousand things crowded Maurice’s throat, each more embarrassing than the last.

Thank you.

I love you.

Please stay with me. Let’s run away and solve mysteries in Paris or Tokyo or whatever city you’ve been dreaming about .

But in the end, all he managed was a quiet, “We don’t have a lot of time.”