Summary: About last night…
“Good morning, sunshine.”
Damien’s eyes shot open, squinting into the bright morning sunlight streaming in through the window. He blinked several times, trying to get his bearings. Asleep on the couch, naked under his blanket, with his phone resting on his chest. And Riley standing over him, smirking.
“Um, hi. What time is it?” He noticed his balled up pajamas and underwear at his feet, and tried to stealthily cover it with his blanket.
“8:00. Late night? I didn’t even hear you come in.”
He yawned, stretching his arms over his head. Riley stared shamelessly at his chest as he flexed and relaxed. “Eyes are up here, Riles.”
She rolled her eyes. “You could’ve slept with your clothes on.”
“Well at least one of us fell asleep wearing my clothes.” He raised an eyebrow at her, walking around the apartment in one of his t-shirts. As he said it his eyes fixed on the lacy black panties that were peeking out underneath. She turned away from him to walk into the kitchen, swaying her hips a little more than was necessary. “Now whose eyes are wandering, Nazario?”
He grinned, shaking his head. Baggage aside, that old chemistry was still going strong. It was good to see her back to her usual annoying self, instead of the scared, withdrawn woman she’d been the last few times he’d seen her.
“Have you heard anything from Liam?”
Guilt and shame washed over him like a cold bucket of water. “Um, just that he’s OK. His security team is keeping him at the hotel and turning away visitors for now. Bastien gave me a phone number to reach him at if you want.”
She shook her head as she poured herself a bowl of cereal. “Nah, that’s OK. He doesn’t like us to communicate electronically until we know for sure who’s been conspiring against me. Better not to leave any traceable evidence of our relationship.”
“Right. Smart.” He shifted under the blanket, trying to sit up without making himself indecent. He realized his stomach was sticky and cringed. Definitely shouldn’t have fallen asleep without cleaning himself up first.
Riley settled into the chair across from him, digging into her cereal. “So what’s the plan for today?”
He scratched his head, trying to think of an elegant way out of this. Nothing came to mind. “Riley…I’m naked under here.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Completely?”
He cringed. “Completely.”
“But…why?”
“Ugh, can you just turn around or something, please?”
She rolled her eyes and noisily scraped the chair on the floor as she turned it to face the wall. “Pull yourself together, dude.”
“I’m trying.” He frowned as he grabbed his balled-up pajama pants and boxers. Desperate, he used the boxers to wipe the mess off of his stomach and then shoved them down between the couch cushions, then pulled on the pants. “OK. I’m decent.”
She turned the chair back around, scraping the floor just as loudly as before. “If you call that decent, I guess.”
He got up and headed for the bathroom, pausing to kiss Riley’s forehead on the way. “Don’t pretend you don’t love it.”
“Whatever, old man. Fix yourself up; you look like shit.”
“Why do people keep saying that to me?” He murmured to himself as he locked the bathroom door behind him. “…Oh.” He leaned over the sink, studying his face in the mirror. His eyes were red and tired, with dark circles under them aging him badly. He splashed cold water on his face, trying to freshen up, but ‘tired and damp’ was not really an improvement over ‘just tired.’ Sighing, he stripped and hopped into the shower.
He was just massaging the shampoo into his scalp when he heard pounding at the door. Groaning, he turned off the water. “What?”
“Kai won’t stop calling you,” Riley complained through the door. “Hurry up.”
Kai was up bright and early, working at Damien’s office doing his favourite thing: pinning pictures up on the big wall.
The night before, he’d gone straight to the office after Damien called him from the ball. Damien had overheard the assassin refer to somebody as ‘Your Grace,’ the traditional address for a duke or duchess in Cordonia, so he’d compiled a list of all of them. Fifteen total duchies, most of them governed by a married couple, left him with twenty-six names. Narrowing it down to only those who had daughters in attendance at the ball brought it down to twelve.
He’d scoured Cordonian gossip websites for the best headshots he could find of all of them, and made full-page colour printouts of each of their faces at the 24-hour copy shop down the road. And now, after a two-hour power nap and a potentially deadly amount of coffee, he was tiling them carefully on the wall, along with images of the daughters in question. His rainbow-coloured yarn, on loan from Nadia, was itching to start making connections.
“You look chipper.”
He hadn’t heard Damien come in over the sound of the ‘Monday Motivation’ playlist he’d been blasting through the tinny computer speakers. “Hey, you! I thought you’d never show.”
Damien ran a hand through his still-damp hair, looking over the wall of photos. “It’s nine a.m., Kai. What’s all this?”
“I’m glad you asked, Detective!” Kai turned back to the wall with a flourish. “One of these rich fucks tried to kill your girl. Is it him?” He pointed dramatically to a photo of a very generic-looking middle-aged man. “Or is it…HER?” He pointed to a photo of a perfectly nice-looking woman. “Maybe this prick? OK honestly I do think it’s this prick.”
Damien stepped closer to read the label on the photo Kai was pointing to. “Duke Karlington. That’s Madeleine’s father. He’s been on my list since day one.”
Kai was practically bouncing with excitement and caffeine. “Of course, right? It makes perfect sense. He wants his daughter to be queen, but the king is like, ‘I don’t want to marry this blond demon!’ so this old Duke is like…”
“Yeah, Kai, I get it. I appreciate the very spot-on impressions, though.”
He bowed dramatically. “Thank you. But yeah. This guy totally did it, right?”
Damien nodded, still studying the wall. “Yeah…yeah, he totally did. But we’ll need proof. The NYPD and LAPD have basically given up on this, now that they’ve got their shooter and the person pulling the strings is almost certainly overseas. We’ll have to coordinate with Liam’s royal guard to nail this guy before this goes any further.”
“Liam,” Kai repeated. “Just your buddy Liam, your casual pal, ordinary dude Liam.”
“Oh, fuck off.” The slight grin on Damien’s face did not go unnoticed. “His Majesty, King Liam of Cordonia. Better?”
He couldn’t help himself. “Is that what you call him in bed?”
“Kai.” Damien flopped into his desk chair and buried his face in his hands, groaning. “You’re the only one who knows about that, you know.”
“Yeah, I figured. But you know you have to tell Riley, right?”
Damien looked pained, but nodded. “That’s a discussion for another time. We need to make sure they’re going after this guy. The king’s guard will have access to evidence that we don’t.”
“Right. So you’re going to see him.”
“Liam? No, I’m going to see Bastien Lykel.”
Kai hated himself for how relieved he was at that. “So what should I do?”
Damien threw an arm around his shoulders and gave him a quick squeeze, making him blush. “You should finish this beautiful wall of yours, and make sure we’re not missing something with these other potential suspects.”
He smiled at that, picking up his bag of yarn. “On it. Go get ‘im, boss.”
Damien fidgeted nervously in the hotel elevator, unsure what to expect when he got to Liam’s floor. How many low-level guards would he have to sweet-talk to get to Bastien? He plastered on his most charming smile as the doors began to open.
To his surprise, the hallway was deserted. He walked slowly down the corridor, wondering if he was on the wrong floor. Rounding a corner, he finally spotted Bastien and one other guard standing outside of a set of double doors. Bastien looked his way immediately, enough venom in his gaze to stop him dead in his tracks.
“Mr. Lykel…” he began, trying to shake off the sudden nerves. “I’ve got some information…”
He was striding towards him already, holding out a hand to stop him from coming any closer. “Mr. Nazario. I must ask you to leave. The king is not available to you.”
“Right, I know, orange alert and all that. I’m here to see you actually, I brought my files…”
“Let me be clear,” Bastien went on, still staring daggers at him. “The king is not available to you, period. You will not try to contact him again.”
He was dumbstruck. What was happening? “He’s my client…”
“And I will personally ensure you’re paid what you are owed. But you will not hear from His Majesty again.”
Damien was torn between pleading for him to just listen, or telling him off for being an asshole. He settled for just staring blankly ahead, mouth hanging open like a numbskull.
To his surprise, that seemed to work. Bastien’s furious glare softened as he took his elbow and led him into a small sitting area. Without a word he passed him a phone with an audio file loaded up on the screen. Feeling a cold dread settle in his stomach, Damien hit play and held it to his ear.
Breathing, just heavy breathing. And then a familiar voice: “Do you remember how I felt inside you, Damien?”
The phone fell from his hand as the cold dread turned to hot panic. It bounced on the carpet before Bastien slowly retrieved it, not taking his eyes off of Damien.
“You said…the number…it was secure…”
“I was wrong. And now I’m running a skeleton crew while everyone who would have had access to the phone is suspended from duty until I can determine who compromised it.”
“How long is…”
“It’s all there, Mr. Nazario.”
“Why?”
Bastien frowned. “Blackmail, obviously.”
Damien sat down in a daze. His chest was tight and his stomach had turned, his face burning hot with shame. “This is my fault.”
“I told you he was never safe.”
“What do they want?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“I’ll guess: for him to honour his engagement to Madeleine.”
“I guess we’ll see.”
Numbly he handed over the folder in his hands. “It’s Duke Godfrey. I can’t prove it, but I’m almost certain.”
Bastien nodded, flipping through the folder’s contents. “I’ll look into it. Thank you.” He turned to leave.
“Wait,” Damien called after him, his voice shaking. “Could you…just…tell him I’m sorry? I never meant to fuck up his life. I just…” he trailed off, unsure what he could possibly say to make anything better. “I’m just sorry.”
Bastien nodded again, returning to his post in silence.