TWO

 

Felix

 

The apartment my father leased is too big for one person. Its opulence is a direct slap in the face to what I wish to spend this year achieving. Finding oneself while trapped in a fancy cage isn’t exactly what you’d describe as soul-searching. It’s more like dipping your toe into the pool before you seek refuge in the cabana from the mildly uncomfortable coolness of the water.

“I need to find somewhere else to live,” I tell my bodyguard. “This is too much.”

The man mountain tasked with keeping me safe during this next year shakes his head. “The King has given explicit instructions regarding your accommodations. He had his reasons for providing you with the penthouse.”

“He gave me ten mil to spend. I think I can afford to rent somewhere less—” I trail off as I wave my hand around the room.

“Worthy of a Prince?” Mario raises an eyebrow and grins at me from across the room after he finishes my statement. I bare my teeth at him in return. His reminder that very little has changed in my life, except for my location is galling, but he is correct. So far, my year away has been nothing like the reprieve I was promised and more like a new prison.

“You could tear up his check and get a job like a normal person?” His grin morphs into a smartassed smirk. “Rent a regular apartment. Drive yourself around. Cook your own meals. How hard could it be? It’s not like you’re a Prince who’s never so much as washed a spoon in his life?”

When I saw that Mario was waiting on the plane for me, gratitude that my best friend had been sent to accompany me on my year-long vacation had been my overwhelming emotion. If anyone understood how I felt about my future, it was Mario. Yet, after a week trapped in this building together, I was ready to admit defeat and head back home without him. Everywhere I turned, I was met with another reminder about how unsuited I was to any life other than the one I’d been born into.

Snatching the newspaper from the table next to my chair, I flip through the pages to the employment section. A quick scan of the available jobs sinks my last hopes. There isn’t a thing that I could do—not one job that I’m remotely qualified for.

It’s official.

I am useless.

Mario seems to sense my despair. He snatches the paper from me and starts reading it. I recline my chair, fold my arms behind my head, and stare at the ceiling above me. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but my father has proven his point. I am who I am—and not one bit more.

Defeat makes for an uneasy bedfellow, but I guess, it’s time to lie down and sleep with the dogs.

As much as I know it’s impossible, wild thoughts of running away spin around my head. Ten million dollars would last a normal person a lifetime. I could go to university—thirty isn’t old for further study in the real world—and find my passion. Then I could become a self-made man.

If you count self-made as someone who takes ten million dollars from their father, the King, and uses it to fund a new life.

The quiet rustle of the paper as Mario flips through the pages steals my attention. I swing my seat back into a seating position and stare at my bodyguard. He’s doing his best impersonation of a statue, but I know he sees everything.

Idly, I wonder if my rotation of security has a betting pool on how long the pampered Prince lasts away from his palace. I hope someone has chosen today, because I’m about to make it worth their while.

“I think—”

“This could work!” Mario cuts off my attempted capitulation with an emphatic announcement. “Here, check this out. It answers all your prayers.”

He shoves the newspaper at me, then jabs his finger on a small square at the bottom of the page.

 

Research Assistant - Private Investigations Firm.

Must be discreet. Able to think on feet. Solid moral compass. Believes in eye for an eye. Immediate start. Above average salary. Short term position. Unexperienced applicants encouraged. Email Harry at [email protected]

 

Part of me wants to laugh at Mario. That’s the smallest fragment. The safer side to my reaction. It’s the much larger portion of me—the part that would prefer to punch him in the face for daring to insult me like this—that he needs to worry about. Especially the last three words of the advertisement he pronounced was the answer to my prayers.

Unexperienced applicants encouraged.

Well, fuck you, Mario… and the bloody high horse you rode in on. It would seem that even my best friend has low expectations for me during this year. Why I’m surprised, I don’t know. I should be used to being underestimated. Nobody expects a Crown Prince to know anything more than which fork to eat with at State dinners.

The harshness with which I scrunch the newspaper before I toss it on the floor should alert Mario to my feelings regarding his idea of a solution. If he doesn’t get the picture, my stormy departure from the penthouse, complete with door slam, should give him some idea.

Finding myself out in the cold, in the middle of morning rush hour in the city, sets my teeth on edge. Everyone else has something to do. They have somewhere to be. And, someone to miss them while they’re doing it.

Not me. I could literally step off the curb and fall into an abyss and the only person who’d miss me would be my father—and that would only be when he next needed to parade me in front of a group of dignitaries.

“Well, isn’t this a fine fucking turn of events,” I whisper-shout.

Like a kid who thinks he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, I glance around me to see if anyone heard the uncustomary curse words leave me lips. My early feelings are validated when it appears that no one else has even missed a beat in their daily routine.

Since I’d rather shoot myself in the head than make my way back into the building and face Mario with my tail between my legs, I shove my hands down inside my coat pockets and hunch my shoulders to cover my ears. So far, my bodyguard hasn’t exited the building behind me which leaves me a never-before-seen opportunity to be by myself in the largest city on earth.

Seriously, what could go wrong?

A little bit of exploration never killed anyone.

Not even an unexperienced Crown Prince with an inferiority complex.