Page 44 of Bound

For now.

Jayd drew breath for a fresh rant, but the intense reporter saved them all with her aggressive lean at Carris. “Pourquoi?” she demanded. “But why? To be blunt, monsieur, you have not sung us any new tune. We have all seen the footage. We all know exactly what happened, moment by moment, and precisely who was involved. What you have promised yet not delivered is why.”

“Irianna is right,” another journalist interjected. “There are too many blank spaces in this narrative. Why that dingy little pub, all the way in Montmartre, when Monsieur Brickham had a room at the Ritz? Why did the man drag her there—and why did you wait several hours to follow them there, if you were so eager to get Princess Jayd away from the lunatic? There is footage of them a half hour before that, getting cozy on the Place Blanche. Where were you and your men then?”

“Lunatic?”

Jayd squirmed away from Shiraz, looking ready to hurl her own fist into the screen. Brick bit the inside of his cheek to hide a proud as fuck grin. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had stuck up for him with such vehemence. It was weirdly cool. It was scarily arousing.

“Fembla—”

“Do not right now, ’Raz,” she spat. “Do not expect me to be calm about seeing an honorable man—a natural protector and hero, just like all three of you—being painted as a freak predator. Those are major outlet journalists! They should be ashamed. Have they not done their homework about some of this? Have they not realized that—”

“Pixie.” He dove in, knowing the arched brows he’d get from the king and both princes for his deliberate slip. The payoff, getting Jayd’s attention for longer than three seconds, was worth it. Hopefully. “I think they probably did do that footwork but ran into a few chunks of…redacted material.”

He didn’t know how else to phrase it, especially because Shiraz came through with a confirming glance. When he was joined by a meaningful side-eye from Evrest, the truth locked solidly into place.

They might be touting him as a whack job and a murderer, but at least he wasn’t that “monster” from Seattle battling chronic panic disorder on top of running a hardcore kink club. He owed them, big fucking time, for getting all that crap suppressed. Whatever it took, he’d gladly repay the favor—especially because they’d wrapped the third mystery into the package too. The most important secret to them as well as him.

“You are all familiar with the expression timing is everything, n’est-ce pas?” Carris leveled at the throng up in Paris. “Well, we had a deliberate reason for waiting out Brickham as we did.”

A violent snort spewed from Jayd. “Because you are the degan kimfuks who set the trap for us?”

Samsyn whipped over a glare. “Fembla!”

She glowered back. “What?”

“Watch your fucking language!”

“Silence.”

It was the first word King Evrest had uttered since they arrived, but it was already in a language Brick supported. Clear leadership was like a magic spell in a pit of chaos, especially if one’s unofficial enemy was on TV making statements that sounded all too official.

“Maximillian Brickham took Jayd Cimarron to Montmartre because he was getting ready to confront her with a devastating truth,” Trystan declared. “A specific truth about her past.”

“Shit.” Brick was joined by Samsyn and Shiraz in the gritted growl. Requiemme got busy with a rasping plea to her Creator, but Evrest and Jayd were silent.

Too damn silent.

But there was no time to dissect all that. Like them, Brick was morbidly riveted on the screen. Carris was a ringmaster in the hot light of stardom, not about to jump off his trick elephant of momentum.

“A truth,” he added then, “that will change not only her, but the fabric of our nation.”

Fate gave them a split second of relief, as Irianna the Intense released a scathing chuckle. “You are speaking about a twenty-four-year-old princess, monsieur, not her elder brother.”

“Ahhh.” Carris was ready with his own scoff. “A princess. But do you really mean…a princess?”

“And here it comes,” Shiraz snarled.

“Scum of my sweaty scrotum,” Samsyn spat. Since it bested anything Brick had in mind, he gave the guy nodding props.

“And that means exactly what?” another reporter demanded, already inciting Carris’s act of “sincere concern.”

In a matching tone of laughable sobriety, Trystan declared, “The man who died by Brickham’s hand on Sunday, in front of Jayd Cimarron’s eyes, was a quiet local artist—”

“Named Louis LaBarre.” Irianna was back to her brutal impatience. “We know all that as well, Monsieur.”

“Of course you do,” Carris conceded with urbane ease. “Every one of you has done your due diligence, researching every detail you can, yes? That means you also know that LaBarre lived in Paris for just over twenty-five years—but that you hit sizable walls about learning anything about him before that.”