Jinx was taking this whole I’m-ready-to-start-dating thing a little far.

“Oh my God, you’re going to need the perfect outfit. First date and hotness, come on.”

“Okay wow, you’re really excited.”

“Of course, I’m excited. That’s if you’re ready. If you’re not ready, I can be totally unexcited. That’s what best friends do; give you what you need. Tell me what you need.”

“I’m ready. I mean, I want to be ready.”

Jinx sighed. “Honey, if you’re not ready, you don’t have to go. But I will point out that it is just a date. If you don’t like him, I will come to the rescue. I’ll create a diversion. There’ll be bombs. There’ll be—"

I just shook my head. “Oh my God. It’s a drink. I can manage a drink. A drink will be fine. Fun even.”

“Uh, good, because you’ve been in serious mopey-mopey land. And well, this guy might be totally hot, but—"

“It’s a drink. I can do a drink. Besides, it’s good for me to get out. I’ve been going to work and travelling, coming straight home, and sitting in the apartment. I’m pretty sure you want me out of my crusty, stained pajamas at some point.”

“Yes. Please, Lord, yes. Because as much as I love you, those things are hideous. And you must help to décor the place.”

“Well, I’m glad I’m finally getting to help class the place up a little. I just didn’t expect to be so messed up over this.”

“Honey, it’s love. It hurts. It really does. No one expects you to be over it right away or to jump back into something, but I’ve been worried. Seriously worried. So to see you taking an interest in doing something other than sitting in the apartment curled up with a good book and watching episodes of Idle and the Boys all of a sudden, I’m a little spooked.”

“It’s not been that bad.”

Jinx slid me a raised-brow glance as we walked past Jazzy Boutique. “Oh, it hasn’t?”

“Okay, it’s been that bad. Actually, do you mind? Let’s pop in here. Might as well window shop.”

“Still pinching every penny, huh?”

“I don’t really have a choice. My savings are gone. And New York was one expensive city. But, I am actually gainfully employed now, so, I’m making money. But maybe there’s an accessory that will work for tonight instead of a whole new outfit.”

Jinx laughed. “You got it. Besides, we’re about the same size, so no big deal.”

I laughed at that. “Jinx, you’re five foot two. Your skirts will barely cover my ass.”

“You know, that’s beside the point. My tops will fit you.”

“Yes, okay fine. But honestly, any dress or skirt you have will be a joke on me. And the pants, let’s not even go there.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ve always thought you loved capris.”

I was taller than her by six inches. When I tried to borrow her clothes, things became obscene quickly. “Hardy har. Let me stop at the ATM and get some money.”

I’d stopped using my credit cards. Well, I’d cut up my credit cards that were linked to my parents’ accounts. I had my own credit card, but I only used it for emergencies. It was weird, but I kind of liked being on a budget. For the first time, I was the only one responsible for my finances. It felt good. Even if the way it had all happened sucked.

I put my card in, punched in my code and waited. When the balance popped up on the screen, I blinked. What the hell?

Instead of flashing insufficient funds as it had on that fateful day back in New York, my balance was four times the amount it should have been. Someone had put all my money back.

Except, who had that kind of access? My parents didn’t know where I banked anymore. What the hell?

“Come on, we’ve got to go. If you want to get some shopping in before we go, hop to it.”

“Jinx, please look at that amount and tell me what it is.”

Jinx peered over my shoulder. “Wow! I guess what you call broke and what I call broke are two different things. You’ve got ten grand in there. I think you can buy more than an accessory.”

“Yeah. That’s just the thing. Two days ago, I had two thousand dollars in there, and I haven’t been paid yet.”

“Oh shit. Do you think it’s your parents again?”

“I don’t know how it could be. I’m using a completely different bank. I’m using my name, but they wouldn’t have my account number.”

She chewed her bottom lip as she considered. “Well, I wouldn’t put it past them. Your father has contacts. It’s possible he found out.”

“Yeah, but with the way everything is, I don’t trust money showing up out of the blue. That worries me.”

“I get you. What do you want to do?”

“Well, I’m still only getting an accessory, because as far as I’m concerned, that’s not my money. I’m sure it’s a bank error.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

But even as I withdrew fifty dollars, I wondered about that. It could be a bank error. It happened all the time. But for that kind of amount, it was highly unlikely. I didn’t trust my parents. That was for sure. But considering what the king had told me about Lucas’s accounts and how it had been made to look like he’d been stealing from him, I was extra wary. If there was a whole royal conspiracy going on involving Lucas and someone had put it together that we had been a thing for a hot minute, maybe that money was meant to implicate me in something. The problem was I had no idea who to go to, to ask.

You could always ask the queen. She told you to call her Penny.

Could I? She was the queen, but she’d been nice. She seemed to want to help me. I still had her card with her personal number on it. I’d tucked it away in a drawer because really, when would I ever have opportunity or reason to call the Queen? Well, it seemed like a perfectly good time at that moment.

“Come on. What are you waiting for?”

As I followed Jinx, it occurred to me that even when I wanted to stay as far away from all the royal trouble as I could, I was right at the heart of it.

“Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, but do you think this is the wisest course of action? After the vote it will cause unnecessary speculation. Optics matter sire.”

I slid my father-in-law a long glance. “Having the blood tested? Yes. I do. He was tested once. But because his mother is claiming a falsified test, I need to be able to prove that he’s my brother.”

Ethan was quiet for a moment. “I understand that. The need to confirm. We thought we confirmed once. I should know, I was there.”

I lifted my eyes to level a gaze on him. “You were there?”

“Yes, sir.“ He shifted on his feet. “Your father asked me to oversee the process. I remember it well. She didn’t want him tested, but eventually she relented.”

“Do you know of any reason she wouldn’t want it?”

Ethan shrugged. “No, Your Majesty. But I remember her being scared. Terrified really. Terrified people do dangerous things.” He shook his head. “Or stupid things.”

I scrubbed a hand down my face. “Did she tamper with the test?”

Ethan shook his head. “No. But she attempted to give a false result for the test. I—I never told your father. She was cagey during a meeting with him, so I followed her. I’m not proud of invading her privacy, but my job was to protect the Crown.“

“What happened, Ethan?”

“She wanted to know if there was a way to forge DNA tests. She was on the phone with a friend.”

“Shit.” Ice ran through my veins. “So what she says is true?”

He shook his head. “Not necessarily. I suspected she might not be speaking the truth. I never particularly trusted her. And I knew she’d been having a relationship with Pietro Luca simultaneously.” He cleared his throat. “I didn't want her to think she had a meal ticket, so when your father asked for the DNA test, I took a hair sample from Lucas myself, not sure how far she would go for money.”

I frowned. “And the results came back positive.”

Ethan nodded. “They did. Problem was she seemed surprised by that outcome. Before we could confront her, she was in the wind.”

“Fuck, Ethan. I wish my father was here. There was so much to ask him. So much I wish I knew.”

“I wish I could give you those answers.”

“Do you think this is part of a greater conspiracy?”

Ethan considered a long time. “Maybe. Your father was so enamored with her at the time. I never particularly trusted her. And then she ran. There is no telling what her motivations were then… or now.”

“Okay, let’s get Blake on this case. They’re the best at what they do. Testing the blood, doing it themselves at a locked down facility. I’ll trust the results.”

Ethan nodded. “So would I. Your father would have too. The true test will be if the other members of the Regents Council accept it. You need their support.”

I shook my head. “No, I want their support. I don’t need it.”

“For something like this, yes, you do. You don’t want to shove through the signing. You can make it happen. You can force their hands. But you really don’t want to do that, do you? Knock on wood, should something happen to you before you produced an heir, he would be on the throne. So you see why, to protect the monarchy, to protect the throne, we cannot just shove it through.”

I really detested words like ‘cannot’ and ‘should not’ when used in my presence. But I respected Ethan, and he was right. It was the same reason I hadn’t wanted to use my voting seats when it came to naming Lucas a legitimate heir. Thanks to a little succession loophole, I’d gained more votes than any other king before me. It made me infinitely more powerful. I could, in essence, do what I wanted. I really only had to convince two others to vote along with me, and I’d have the majority. But I didn’t want to get my way like that. I didn’t want to be a tyrant. I would find a way to make Tressel cooperate. I would have to. He meant to attempt to lay the embezzlement at Lucas’s feet, but I wasn’t going to let that happen. I just needed find the right amount of leverage and squeeze. It might be obvious, but he would always demand it. He would insist on keeping his seat, and he would be a thorn in my side. First things first. “I need to clear Lucas of any wrong doing. Are your men on it?”

Ethan nodded. “Yes. Even though Tressel has gone back to try and right the records, I’ve got the forensic analyst from Blake Security on it. They’ll find it. The trail the leads back to long before you even located Lucas.”

I nodded my thanks.

Ethan considered for a moment. “What about Tressel’s daughter? From what Penny says, she and her father are not close. But perhaps she’s willing to talk to him, to help in some way.”

“I considered Lady Bryna Tressel. She did what I asked. She went to Lucas and asked him to come home. He declined. As it was, when I left Italy, I was on the plane with Penny, Bryna, and no Lucas. I left some Royal Guards with him, with strict instructions not to let him out of their sight. Fuck, I hate this.”

“That was you once.”

“Yeah. I know. The point is, it’s not me now. And I really, really need it to not be him.”

Ethan chuckled low. “Yes, well, he’ll find his way. In the meantime, you’ve got men on him. I’m surprised he didn’t request Roone and Marcus.”

“Roone’s still pissed, so it might be impossible to assign him to Lucas because he might as easily kill him as protect him.”

Ethan nodded. “Got it. Have you talked to Marcus? We can put him on Lucas’s permanent detail since he already knows.”

“I have no problem with Marcus. He seems to be a very top-of-the-line sort of soldier. I don’t want Lucas to feel like he’s in prison.”

Ethan’s brows drew up. “But, isn’t he? Until we find out who’s behind the conspiracy, don’t we need to keep him under wraps and out of trouble?”

“Yes, about that. I’m considering having everyone on the Council sign before he arrives. That way, it will be public that Lucas is my brother. It would be clear to all who he is and why he’s important. It makes it very clear to anyone after him that he’s now got the full protection of the Crown.”

“And it solves your Tressel problem.”

I nodded. “Exactly. Tressel has worked his whole life to save his title, to get the prestige. It’s one thing to go after Lucas. It’s another thing to actively go after a recognized prince. He wouldn’t do it. So that could either neutralize him or make him angrier. I’m not sure which, but it would give Lucas a little more protection.”

Ethan nodded and made some notes in his notepad. “We’d have to assign a lot more men to Lucas, which he would hate, but it’s for his own good.”

My heart squeezed. I reconsidered my father. Had he and my mother had these same conversations about me? When I was busy traipsing around starkers from hot tub to hot tub, hooking up publicly in the back seat of limousines with debutantes and socialites, had they forever been concerned about my safety? This was horrible. Lucas wasn’t even my child, and I was on hyper alert. God this would be even worse with a child.

Speaking of children, I needed to broach the subject of Penny with Ethan and I wasn’t sure how. “So, Ethan, can I talk to you?”

He raised a brow. “Aren’t you already doing that, Majesty?”

“You know, openly, man-to-man.” Still his brows lifted as he looked at me innocently, eyes wide like he had no idea what I was getting at. I was pretty sure he was dicking with me, but it was so hard to tell. He was so proper all the time. “You know, just us guys.”

“Well, considering we are men, and it’s just the two of us… it’s been just us from the beginning.”

“Oh, for the love of Christ, Ethan.”

His low chuckle reminded me of a happier time when my father had been alive and the two of them had been friends. I would spy on them with my spy goggles from the hall and listen to grown-up talk. Usually it was sports. And they sipped their scotch. Sometimes it was women. Those were the times I remembered Ethan laughing a lot, or when he caught Penny doing something completely outrageous. But usually, he was shouting.

“Ethan.”

“Sorry, Your Majesty, I couldn’t help myself.”

I leaned forward, still not sure Ethan was the best person to talk to about this, but I had no choice. “About Penny.”

He sighed and sat back. “Your Majesty, we’ve discussed this. Anything you want to talk about, the birds and the bees, anything you need to know, you can come to me as your father. But if you want me to manage Penny in any way, you’re on your own.”

Oh, Ethan had jokes today. “Hardy har. The birds and the bees I have covered.”

“So you say, but where are my grandchildren?”

“Oh, my God, seriously? You and my mother, you have to stop.”

He shrugged. “Grandad sounds like a great title. You’re on the right track. You’re both young. Normally, I would say there’s plenty of time for that, but I’m not young. And frankly, I would like grandchildren. Is that what you’re trying to get to?”

“Ethan, stop being deliberately daft.”

He sobered immediately and nodded. “Of course, Your Majesty. What can I help you with?”

“Your daughter. Someone has to tell her she can’t be in the field anymore. I’m pretty sure she snuck out of the castle the other day. I cannot prove it, because there seems to be no record, but I looked all over for her. On camera, off camera, I couldn’t find her. She didn’t have her phone. I know because her phone said she was in the damn study. Which she wasn’t.”

Ethan chuckled. “That’s my daughter. She’s very much like her mother. I learned early on that trying to control her would never end well for me. So perhaps you talk to my daughter instead of trying to get me to lay down some edict.”

“Look, I’ve tried. We’ve fought about it. I’ve talked to her. Hell, I’ve begged. Everything. When I first considered her remaining a Royal Guard, it never occurred to me that she would still continue in the field. She’s the queen now.”

Ethan nodded sagely. “With all due respect, Your Majesty, she’s your wife first. She’s a woman second. She’s going to do what interests her and excites her. What, she’s supposed to sit around in your bed, all day?”

That was a thought. Then again, I understood what he meant because I didn’t want her to sit around and not do anything either. “But there’s so much charity work to be done.”

“And she does it. Just in her way. She’d rather go and teach a class of young students how to paint than perform duties in some formalized, structured way. You have to remember that about her. She loves to paint. See if you can center her with that. But asking her to not be Royal Guard, I’m not sure that’s a possibility. Because once she decides she wants to do it, she will do it.”

I knew what had happened while Penny and I were in New York. She was trying to toe the family line. She became a Royal Guard because it was what was expected. But what she really wanted to be was be a painter. But then when we came home, everything had changed, and she’d gotten into the job that she loved and had saved my life more than once. And it seemed like she no longer wanted to leave it behind. In my mind, after we were married, she’d paint exclusively, way out of the range of any danger.

But oh no, Penny had insisted she was going back to work. Then she read her father the riot act for giving her desk duty again with my mother. Eventually, she managed to transfer where she was put on my service, though still on desk duty. And honestly, her father couldn’t really fire her, but it was getting out of hand.

“Ethan, tell me something to do. Say something.”

“Maybe there’s nothing to be done. Maybe you just have to let Penny be Penny.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. If I let Penny be Penny, she’s likely to do something rash. And given the fact my own brother is acting like an idiot, I can only handle one irrational person at a time. Thank you very much.” It looked like I was going to have to deal with Penny on my own terms.