Page 121 of The Thing About My Prince

Mum shrugs as she retakes her seat next to Dad. “Sometimes there’s collateral damage.”

My head and chest flood with heat. Is she for real? “How dare you describe the woman I love as collateral fucking damage?!”

“Oh, why do you have to swear?” she says. “Our ancestors must be rolling in their graves. Sit down for a minuteand listen to Giles’s news. And he is not an arsehole, by the way.”

That’s not a debate I’m prepared to have, even though the evidence is entirely on my side.

But I do need to sit because, if I don’t, I really have no idea what I might do.

The only thing I’m totally clear about is that my decision to leave the country and extricate myself from this dysfunctional way of life was one hundred percent correct and has now been one hundred percent vindicated.

“The overseas job that Miss Lane was going to get after writing your…memoir…” Giles drags out the last word, covering it with a slick coating of sarcasm.

“Yes.” I slump forward with a heavy sigh, elbows on my knees. “The war correspondent post in Eastern Europe.”

“Yes.” Giles taps his clipboard with his pen. “It’s been given to someone else.”

“What?” Now I have no choice but to look at him because my eyes have instinctively shot to his pompous expression. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,sir”—now he sounds like he’s explaining astrophysics to a three-year-old who’s not comprehending—“Miss Lane will not be getting that job. Because it’s gone to someone else.”

“You can’t be right. She made an agreement that if she wri—” Fuck. I stop myself just in time before I sayif she writes my book, she gets her dream job. Thank Christ, because accidentally blurting it out is not how I want to break the news of my tell-all memoir to my parents.

“She writes what, sir?” Giles asks with a smug glint in his eye.

“The agreement was that she completes an assignment they set her and then she gets the job she always wanted.” That’s better.

“I assure you, sir, that Miss Lane is currently very much facing unemployment.”

Now I’m back on my feet. And striding across the room away from all of them toward a tall cabinet lined with Doulton figurines from the 1800s that I’ve always hated.

“I assume this was all your doing.” I spin around and draw a large circle with my finger that encompasses the three of them. “That for some reason you are punishing her for her association with me.”

None of them meet my gaze.

“Your friend losing her job is nothing to do with us,” my mother says.

“Then how do you even know about it?”

“I’m very well connected, sir,” Giles mumbles.

I push my hands into my hair and close my eyes for a second, trying to process what I’m learning. “What the actual fuck? Did they take it away from her because of your god-awful spring break photos?”

“I just told you.” My mother lets out an exasperated sigh. “It was nothing to do with any of this business.”

“The owner of the magazine wanted his son to get more reporting experience,” Giles says. “So it’s been given to him instead. As Her Royal Highness says, nothing to do with us. A simple coincidence.”

The owner’s son.

My heart plummets to my feet and continues dropping through the floor, through the armory below, and into the hot pits of hell beyond.

If that doesn’t prove to Lexi all her points about kids of wealthy, influential people being handed things on a plate that they don’t deserve, nothing will.

Something like that could very easily cause her to decide that she’s making exactly the mistake she thought she was in being with me.

“Will you please sit,” my father says. “You get overexcited when you pace.”

“I am not overexcited. I am absolutely furious and utterly appalled. And if you do not understand now why I moved to America”—I scoff and throw my palms toward the ceiling—“there’s no hope for you to ever understand any part of me.”