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Reed’s voice played in my head, Prinze ahead of me. We met up with Jaxen Ambrose on the way upstairs. He lingered in a hallway, at a post waiting for us.
“Hey, this way,” Ambrose said, our location a stairwell of one of the nicest hotels in the city. It was a perfect setting for a man of arrogance, and we’d all been floored to find out Prinze’s dad had been staying here. He’d made his threats against my daughter, caused chaos in my family’s lives and stolen so much time…
Yet, here he was, the king of his castle. He’d taken over the entire top floor, but no one seemed to be around now but our men. Prinze and I passed them all, Ambrose with us.
“Jax, what’s wrong?” Prinze asked Ambrose, but the question stopped in front of the door of a room. The room wasn’t empty, several people inside. The first was Knight Reed, the dude built like a semi and basically shielding the scene behind him.
Though, not enough.
He couldn’t cover the woman behind him, nor the man who lay on the floor below her. The man was covered in blood, a hand to his chest, his eyes open as if he’d been trying to get in one last sight of the world.
But I wasn’t focused on him, and Prinze wasn’t either. He rushed into the room, and he immediately went to the woman. She was his wife.
And for some reason was covered in blood.
December Prinze had her hands cuffing her arms, her eyes haunted and scanning the body at her feet. She just stared at it, unblinking. I didn’t know if it was Reed or Ambrose, but someone had her sitting in a hotel chair, the rest of the room filled with military people. The men and women in black holding walkie-talkies were clearing out the scene, wiping things down and bagging things. One of those items was a gun, and I panned away just in time to see Prinze grab his wife.
“Em,” he said, her head shooting up. December, my best friend of many years, basically launched herself at her husband.
“Royal, oh my God,” she gasped, shaking in his arms. She gripped his shirt, blood all over her hands. “It wasn’t me…”
She breathed out the words, soft, light, and I swallowed.
Prinze himself appeared horrified, a trembling woman in his arms.
His father at his feet.
Callum Prinze was dead, a jewel-topped cane beside him. It’d been flung across the floor like he’d answered the door, then been surprised from the front.
I came over too, and my own horror at the scene I was sure was just as evident as Royal Prinze’s. What was December doing in here?
“Em?” Prinze questioned, blinking back and forth between his wife and his dead father. He squeezed her. “Em, what?”
He couldn’t seem to get out the words in the moment, and I had none.
“We found her,” Reed explained, Ambrose entering the room too. Reed scanned the room. “Found him here with her.”
“He was already dead, brother,” Ambrose said, staring at Prinze. At this point, Prinze had his hand behind his wife’s head. He cradled her, holding her tight. Ambrose frowned. “She said he was already shot when she got here.”
But why was she here?
“Em?” Prinze pulled December back. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I…” She blinked down, her eyes widening at the dead man on the floor. “I came in, and he was already on the floor. He was bleeding out. There was so much blood.”
“But why were you here?” he asked her, and her eyes averted.
They fell on me.
I came over, my hand on her shoulder. She took it, squeezing before looking at her husband.
“He had to pay for our children,” she said, shocking both Prinze and me. Reed and Ambrose looked away, as if she’d already told them.
Maybe she had.
“He had to pay for all of us,” she stated, her head lowered. She wet her lips. “But when I saw him there, I couldn’t just leave him. Why couldn’t I leave him?”
She seemed to ask herself the question, her cringe evident.
