Page 122 of Tall, Royal and Grumpy

She made a choked sound, the sheen in her eyes spilling down her cheeks. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t send the emails. I promise—I promise. Please, you have to believe me. She paid me to do it. To put the camera in your room and collect the recordings and send them to her, but—”

“She?” I echoed, ice crystalising the blood in my veins as that feeling in my gut set firm.

A familiar face. Familiar actions. A hatred I knew all too well.

One that had taken me nearly a full year of counselling to realise I hadn’t earned. But it latched onto my back like vile, blood-sucking leeches, trying to drain the life out of me.

It wasn’t the first time I had found one still stuck on me. Put there by a person who wanted to see me for ever miserable. Using every method to hurt me for reasons I still didn’t fully comprehend.

“Give me a name, Sylvie,” I said in her silence.

Sylvie’s lashes dipped over her eyes before she uttered a name.

I felt hot and cold as a tired hush and a murderous buzz crept over my skin at the same time.

“Your employment has been terminated, effective immediately.”

“Your Highness. Please—”

“You will be placed on a blacklist of employment, and you will never work for any royal household anywhere again.” I felt nothing over the tears that streamed down her face. “Rocco and Gary will escort you back to your room. You will tell them everything that happened from the beginning, after which you will pack your bags and leave with Gary tonight.”

* * *

It was nearly half past ten when Gary returned to my office informing me he had escorted Sylvie home. In that time, Rocco had given me the phone and laptop he’d confiscated from her, and the NDA and contract she’d signed agreeing to every term I had given her. Once he filled me in on what she told him, we considered what to do next and by the end of it, I was exhausted.

I wanted to fall asleep and wake up to find out it had all been one big nightmare. But the impossibility of doing so was almost ironic. I was drained but I wasn’t sleepy. My mind was whirling with thoughts and worries at a speed it had never quite reached before.

How could it not be when the one person who could silence my mind in the safe, warm bubble of her embrace wasn’t with me? When she was the reason for every anxious thought?

I needed to see her. To make sure she was okay. To tell her I was close to fixing this mess and ask her to brush away some of the agony with her touch.

I was a mess, standing outside her bedroom. My contact lenses were dry and scratchy, my head throbbed, my furious hands had destroyed my hair, and my heart was a battered shipwreck.

I filled my lungs on a shaky breath and stepped up close to the closed door. “Esmeralda,” I called into the wood. “Babble. Can I come in?”

Whether the faint noise inside was real or my wishful mind hallucinating, I didn’t know, but other than that I received no answer. And that scared me. It made me desperate to see her.

“Babble, I’m coming in,” I said, lifting a hand to the door handle.

I pushed it down. The door moved a millimetre. Then nothing.

It was locked. She’d locked the door. No…

My forehead fell against the cold wood. “Esmeralda,” I croaked. “Esmeralda, please. Open the door. I know you’re in there, I know you’re awake, so let me in. I’m begging you, Babble. Please.”

Nothing. And my face twisted as a damp heat crept over my eyes.

Hope soared up my spine when I felt as much as I heard the lock click open. I shuffled back, anticipating the moment my Babble stepped out.

She didn’t. It was Shehryar. His massive frame slipping with the agility of a fox out the door, shutting it quickly but quietly behind him.

“Where is Esmeralda?”

He let out a slow breath, his expression softening. “The princess is inside. She’s resting.”

Resting, not sleeping. Which meant she was awake. She knew I was there but didn’t answer me.

“Move out of my way, Shehryar.”

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