The Prince

“Perhaps it’s nostalgia.”

Søren didn’t deign to answer that with anything other than an even colder glare.

“You can’t deny jealousy would make sense as a motive for this,” Kingsley continued, taking his legs off the seat and sitting forward to return Søren’s glare.

“Jealousy? Really?”

“Don’t act so skeptical. I sent that reporter to Elizabeth to ask her questions about you. A strange woman she’d never seen before investigating her brother and what did Elizabeth do? Told her every last thing about you two.”

“Elizabeth was trying to protect me.”

“Or she was bragging.”

“I pray for you, Kingsley.”

Kingsley grinned. “Pray harder.”

“It’s not Elizabeth. She hates what happened between us as children even more than I do.”

“Hate? Really? You know you enjoyed yourself. What did you call it, that summer you two played together? Like Adam and Eve?”

Søren fell silent for a terrible moment before answering. “I said we were like Adam and Eve…in hell.”

The chauffeur opened the door and Søren got out without another word. In silence, they walked to the front door.

Before Kingsley could knock or ring the bell, the door flew open, to reveal Elizabeth standing in the vaulted foyer. Last time Kingsley had seen her, she’d looked ten years younger than her actual age. Auburn hair, violet eyes…a true New England beauty. But today she looked panicked, frantic and aged by fear.

“Thank God,” she breathed. Rushing forward, she threw her arms around Søren’s neck. Kingsley tensed, but Søren embraced her with the affection of a brother and nothing else. “Andrew called you?”

Søren pulled back. “No. No one called us. What is it?”

She ran a hand through her curly hair. “I even thought about calling the police,” she said and Kingsley’s eyes widened in surprise. Elizabeth had as good a relationship with the police as he did with reporters. Although he did recently f**k a reporter into near unconsciousness in the back of his Rolls. But that was business, not pleasure. Well…business and pleasure.

Elizabeth glanced back and forth between Søren and Kingsley.

“Tell me what happened.” Søren spoke the words in his comforting pastor’s voice, although Kingsley could detect the faintest trace of fear under that calm.

Fear? Søren? Kingsley never thought he’d live to see this day.

“I’ll show you. Come with me.” Elizabeth finally noticed Kingsley. “You, too, Kingsley. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’ll take all the help I can get.”

“Always happy to be of service. We are family, after all…in a way.” He glanced at Søren, who said nothing to that. Elizabeth knew of her brother’s brief, tragic marriage to Marie-Laure, Kingsley’s sister. What she thought of it, he neither knew nor cared, but the marriage, ill-fated as it was, at least gave Søren a safe excuse to consort with the likes of him.

“I don’t know if this is a family you’d want to lay claim to,” Elizabeth said as she led them deep into the house toward the center staircase. At the top of the steps she turned left and guided them toward the east wing, the nursery wing.

Surreptitiously, Kingsley watched Søren’s face. Every room in this house held memories of the horrors of his childhood. His mother had given birth to him in her tiny room at the end of the east wing. Out of sheer willpower, she’d labored completely in silence, not willing to let Søren’s sadist of a father have the satisfaction of hearing her scream. In the library, Søren had nearly lost his life when his father had found him coupling with his sister on the floor by the fireplace.

Elizabeth led them to the last room on the left.

Søren’s childhood bedroom.

She opened the door and let the state of the room speak for itself.

“Mon Dieu…” Kingsley breathed, and covered his mouth.

In this room, an eleven-year-old Marcus Stearns had fallen asleep one night and woken up inside his own sister.

In that bed, he’d lost his virginity in an act of rape and incest.

And now someone had set that bed on fire and burned it to the floor.

On the wall, written in ashes, were the words Love Thy Sister.

“Should Kingsley…?” Elizabeth whispered.

“Kingsley knows. He’s one of two people I’ve told.”

Wincing internally, Kingsley glanced at Elizabeth’s face. Did Søren just let it slip that he had another confidant? Like her brother, Elizabeth was dangerously intelligent. Kingsley prayed she’d assumed Søren meant his own confessor. If she learned her priest-brother had seduced a girl in his congregation…the whole world would burn for it.

Elizabeth nodded. Søren only stared at the words on the wall.

“I didn’t call the police,” she continued. “I didn’t want to explain to them about us, what that meant. But I have alarms on the doors. I always arm them at night. I even have cameras on the front of the house, the driveway. No one came up. Should I call the police? I will if you say so.”

Søren slowly shook his head. “No. You shouldn’t. This is beyond them.”

“Then what—”

“Get out.” Søren faced her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Get out and take the boys with you, far away. Europe. Asia. Australia. Go abroad and stay on the move. Leave now.”