Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 116570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
“And you got it?”
“Yes.”
“How? From where?”
“I was discreet,” she said quickly. “I went to a store outside the palace. I bought other things besides the test, and I came back and held it on my person the whole time—”
“How did you pay?”
“My card,” she answered.
“Your card or the palace accounts card.”
“My card.” She froze. Her eyes widened, and she immediately took the phone out of her pocket to check. “I-I didn’t have cash, so I used the electronic card on my work cell phone by accident.”
“And that one has the palace accounts card.”
She nodded. “Is this because of me? How? I don’t understand.”
“Rikl!” I called out, and the doors opened as he stepped back inside the room. “I am finished with Ms. Mikkelsen. Thank you.”
“Wait—”
I nodded for him to take her.
Before going back to my desk and picking up the files there, I looked through it one more time.
I didn’t want to face him, but it had been hours. And he told me to come to him if I had a suspicion, and now I did.
He wasn’t going to like it.
No one was.
But they needed to know, and the police would go further if I were wrong.
Picking up the papers, I exhaled before walking out of my office. I did not run. I did not meet anyone’s gaze. It took me all of seven minutes to reach his office, and the moment I stepped inside, he asked the only question he cared about right now.
“Who did this, Iskandar?” He focused on the video of Odette that kept replaying on the news. “Who is the traitor?”
“I am not one hundred percent certain—”
“You are certain enough to be in front of me, aren’t you?” he snapped, turning his glare to me. “I don’t care if you are twenty, or fifty, or one hundred percent. Tell me. Who did this?”
I swallowed and exhaled the name like the curse it would be. “Mr. Ambrose.”
“What?” I asked, not sure I had heard him right. “Did you hear who you just named?”
“Sir...”
It was the first time I saw him truly waver.
But soon, he regained his composure to explain. “Like you, I have been wondering who in the world could possibly be the media’s source. Palace gossip always exists, but for it to leak out at such an extreme bias...it can’t happen. Or it shouldn’t happen. Mr. Ambrose should have gone through everyone who worked here one by one. Anyone who had so much as texted a word about the royal family’s business would have been dismissed in the past.”
“He is one man. Hundreds of people work here—hundreds more come in and out.”
“We’ve never had a problem before.”
“There has never been an Odette before!”
“Exactly! The leaks began around the time you left for Seattle. Who built the profile on Miss Wyntor initially, sir?” he asked me. “Which made him privy to the fact that Miss Wyntor was allergic to peanuts.”
“Ambrose. However, we banned peanuts from the palace. Of course, anyone would have guessed she was the reason.”
“Maybe. But the severity of the allergy?”
“They may not have wanted to kill her. Maybe they wanted to embarrass her in front of the world?”
He frowned. “Why did no other personal secretary have the night off except Wolfgang, sir?”
I paused. “What?”
“Wolfgang was the only one who knew to carry an EpiPen—two, in fact. He worries a lot. What if the first one broke or if he lost it? Or if she needed two. So, he carries two. No one else in this palace does except him. Yet he wasn’t supposed to be there yesterday.”
“Wasn’t it just his normal day off?” I asked softly, the conviction I had fading.
“Our normal days off are usually switched with another day if a major event is happening to which a member of the family may need us. Wolfgang planned on staying, but Mr. Ambrose told him not to bother coming in yesterday as he would take care of Miss. Wyntor. He said it was of the highest importance that he make sure the day went well. Wolfgang, not wanting to argue, agreed not to come. But again, because you know Wolfgang...”
“He came just in case.”
Wolfgang cared deeply about the order of things until the order went against his personal code, and then he did what he thought was right. It was what made him a good person but not fit to be a royal guard despite coming from a whole family of them.
“Iskandar, I see how you could have these suspicions...but Ambrose has been with Odette dozens if not hundreds of times. He had ordered her lunch himself at times when she spent hours with her tutors. If he wanted to harm her, he could have done it at any time. He did not have to have it done during the state dinner—”
“But he only found out she was pregnant yesterday.”