Page 16 of Protect Your Queen

What a change this all was from where we had come from – when my siblings and I had all shared a room in a run-down house in Makati Village. The worst house in the neighborhood. We were hungry, but we were closer.

Brian put the water down on the coffee table and looked down at me with sympathy in his old eyes.

“Miss, I should tell you…”

I waved him off. “That’ll be all, Brian. Thank you.”

He closed his mouth. I could see it in my peripheral vision. He stood for a moment, before he walked away, and I was left alone in the grand house.

Alone. That was the consequence of what I had done. They say that the Miss Idol crown rested on a thousand broken dreams. I had broken those dreams. I had shattered them when I broke the rules. When I cheated my way to the top.

Something that isn’t earned can’t be kept. That’s why I had no voice, no soul, nothing…

The weight of that nothingness crushed me every day until I was a pile of rubble.

I used to be so strong, and so certain. Now, I couldn’t even choose something off a brunch menu without begging someone to tell me I was doing the right thing. Where had I gone wrong? Where had I lost myself?

It was a dumb question. I knewwhenandhow. And it was all my fault.

I put my face back in my hands and concentrated on breathing. If I just let myself hear the ocean waves, the white noise might drown out the deafening silence that threatened to blacken my mind. I don’t know how many minutes passed in this restless meditation. It could have been a minute. It could have been an hour.

“Jes!” The front door opened without a knock. I jumped, almost slapping the can of water on the table, and narrowly saving it from tipping over.

This wastechnicallymy house. But it had five suites, one for each sibling. There were five copies of the key, and five people drifted in and out at their leisure. It was the same for Jareth’s Swiss Chalet, Jomari’s London Flat, Jorik’s East Village brownstone, and Jasmine’s Upstate New York mansion.

Five residences, five roommates.

“You’ll stay in Jomari’s room,” Jareth said, as I realized there were a second set of footsteps echoing on the marble and tile floor. Was that the tall man? The one with brown hair? What was his name? It was such a strange name because it sounded made up. Like Lance Steel, or Johnny Everyman.

“Yes, sir.” That voice was definitely Mr. Johnny Everyman. The same low rumbling voice that I had felt across my skin as he carried me to my car. It was all too Whitney Houston for me.

“Who’s with you?” I called, turning my head to face the foyer where my brother stood, with one hand in his trouser pocket.

He turned his head slightly in my direction but didn’t make a move towards me.

“The head of your security team.” Jareth stared at his watch, not bothering to look at me as he spoke. “He’ll be with you 24/7 until we figure out what’s going on…”

“I already have security.”

“You don’t havepersonalsecurity. You had security at the studio and…”

“Brian is my security.” That was enough. And I wasn’t completely helpless. If only he knew how I had defended myself in the past…

“He’s your driver.”

“He’s both.”

“It’s not the same.” Jareth was usingthattone. The one that said his word was law. The one that made me want to poke at him until he lost that cool demeanor.

“Yes it is. I don’t need to be surrounded by more people.”

The only thing worse than silence was to be surrounded by people who couldn’t see you. Not really. They see the space I occupied, but I was invisible to them.

“You don’t like being alone in your own house.”

“It’s not the same.” I threw his words back at him. “I don’t want to be in a fishbowl either.”

“You won’t be in a fishbowl.”

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