Page 119 of Tall, Royal and Grumpy

I dropped my forehead heavily against hers. “Plead all you want, Esmeralda. I won’t let you face this on your own. I will fix this for you…because I can’t see the woman I love hurt.”

A broken cry lifted from her as she clung to me. “You can’t, you can’t, you can’t.” She wasn’t talking about the videos. That I knew with certainty.

“I can. I do.” I tilted her chin up. “I love you, Esmeralda.”

She shook her head weakly. “No, please.”

A burning pressure built behind my eyes. “Don’t you love me?” She let out a choked sound, trying to turn her face away but I didn’t let her. “Don’t you, Babble?”

“I do,” she cried. “Of course, I do. I love you. I love you so much—”

That was all I needed to hear to stop myself falling into a pit of misery. To solidify my resolve to hunt down whoever had done this to her. To know that I would change the world for this woman.

Releasing a breath, I captured her lips, kissing her long and slow and deep. Giving her all my love, all my heart. Every single promise I repeated to myself. For the rest of my life.

“I will fix this, Esmeralda,” I whispered against her forehead, cradling her in my arms. “I promise you. I will fix this.”

She didn’t quite wrap her arms around me, but she held onto my jumper on either side of my waist, her cheek resting against my shoulder. Once she settled, she pulled away, and I silently wiped away the wetness on her cheeks and pressed half a dozen kisses to her hair.

As I helped her down from the countertop, there came a knock at the door.

“Esmeralda. Prince Kai.” Shehryar sounded restless. “Please open the door, I cannot wait out here any longer.”

Heading over, I opened it. Shehryar charged straight to Esmeralda and engulfed her in his arms without sparing me glance. If she felt small against me, she looked like a tiny kitten in the arms of a tiger against him. But she sunk into him, burying her face into his chest.

I felt a little pang of hurt that she didn’t let me hold her the way she was letting him hold her, but I repressed it under a mountain of anger and determination.

I caught Shehryar’s attention over Esmeralda’s head when I shifted. I held his stare. He lifted his chin in a single nod of understanding. And I left with the comfort of knowing he’d stay with her.

The moment I rounded the corner I had chased Esmeralda down, I pulled my phone out of my trouser pocket and speed-dialled my head of security, Rocco.

“Yes, Your Highness?” he answered before the second ring.

“I need every inch of my bedroom searched immediately,” I hissed, keeping my voice low.

“Your bedroom?”

“Someone bugged my room and took a…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it; just thinking about it made me nauseous.

I heard the softest breath of a curse on the other side of the line. “We’re on it immediately.”

“Focus especially on the side closest to the door, it was taken from that angle.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Whatever you find, I want it brought to me immediately. And I want to know who has been going in and out of my room for the last ten days. Speak to Mini about the cleaning schedule, any maintenance, whatever, I want to know. Find out who stayed back in the palace while we were away for events. And check the CCTV footage of my bedroom corridor and the ones around it. I will come down to the security room once I’ve spoken to my parents.”

“I’ll send Gary down to speak to Mini now, and I’ll take Laal and Earl with me to search your room.”

“Good. I want this kept between as few people as possible until we find out who did it.”

Ending my call with Rocco after he promised to do just that, I took the stairs in the main entrance up two at a time to the first floor.

“Kai,” I heard my brother call when I was on the third step going up to the second floor.

Fay came towards me from the corridor to the left, dressed in an old T-shirt and loose trousers both splattered with dried paint. A squiggly headband held his hair back from his face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, wiping his paint-smeared hands on a filthy flannel.

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