Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 88487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
“Oh, ha ha ha.” West grabbed a lock of Jin’s hair and gave it a little tug. Not even enough to cause the slightest pain. But instead of releasing it again, Jin watched as he rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger as though he were savoring the sleek feel.
Jin released a fake gasp. “Touching the prince’s hair! That is a beheading offense. No one may touch the prince’s hair.”
West snorted. “Really? No one?” Even as he asked, he wrapped that same lock of hair around his finger, tying them together even tighter.
“Yes. No one.” He stopped and cleared his throat. It was getting harder to speak. “Except for my husband.”
“Husband?”
Jin managed a small nod before he broke into a grin. “And the lovely woman who comes each day to put my hair up in a touji1 for me. I’ve tried to do it on my own and it’s just a mess.”
“Dianxia, will you please tell me what’s going on? Why did you put a contract out on yourself?”
He wanted to sigh. West was dragging them back to the problem when they were having an enjoyable conversation about nothing at all. He would have preferred that. “I am sitting in your lap. You can at least call me Jin.”
“I don’t think I should.” West sighed and his arms loosened, which Jin didn’t want to happen. “You shouldn’t even be sitting in my lap. I’m making a fucking mess of this. We need to get up.”
“Wait!” Jin grabbed West’s arm and pulled it closer again. “Five minutes. I’ll give you anything I can if you’ll permit me five more minutes of feeling like a normal person.”
West hesitated, and then his arms closed around him. “Five minutes, and I’m keeping track. You better be talking the entire time, Dianxia.”
“Jin.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
With a smirk, Jin settled his head on his shoulder. He’d get West to use his name. Maybe even his given name.
But that joy slipped away from him as he remembered the other part of the agreement. He had to tell the story.
“My country is out of money,” he admitted. “The past several years have been a drain on Gaoxing’s resources. Horrible typhoons hit us two years in a row, devastating numerous cities all along our coasts. As we were rebuilding, the world suffered the rebirth of COVID that forced everyone everywhere to shut their borders yet again. We remained closed the longest because we have such a small, isolated population. My father and his medical advisors were afraid a rampant outbreak would cause a large number of deaths and put too much strain on our medical system.”
“Which is what happened everywhere throughout the world,” West murmured.
Jin grunted. “We still struggled with it, but we got all of our population vaccinated, so our death rate was much lower.” Jin paused and sighed. “After the plague, there was the recession that started in the West and rippled across the globe.”
“And you were affected?”
“Mn. We don’t do much in the way of manufacturing, unlike Japan and China, but Gaoxing produces several high-end wools and silks that aren’t made anywhere else in the world. Another major source of income for us is tourism. The typhoons and plague ravaged our tourist income.”
“And the recession reduced demand for your only other major export,” West added on a soft groan. “Fuck.”
“Pretty much. We’re a financially cautious people, so we had ample savings before the typhoons.”
“But you needed to rebuild.”
“Afterward, we had to support our people through the plague. Businesses that had been around a dozen generations were in danger of going under. People were losing their livelihoods. We cut taxes and paid out stipends to help them through this rough patch.”
“Year after year, the destruction kept coming and your father emptied the kingdom’s coffers to support your people.”
Jin nodded, rubbing his cheek on West’s shoulder. “I did nothing to stop him. Never said a word. I think I believed, like him, that the next year would be better. That the spending would be lean for a while, but we’d get through. Except we never could have guessed that we’d have to face year after year of tragedy.”
“Okay, I get that you’re in a mess, but how does putting a hit out on yourself fix anything?”
“I was doing it for the life insurance money,” he mumbled.
West’s entire body shook until he tipped his head back against the mattress and laughed out loud. It was a rough and rusty sound as if he were out of practice. Jin glared at him. He wanted to make West laugh, but not like this. With a huff, he attempted to push out of his arms and to his feet, but West’s hold on him tightened, trapping him in place.
“Don’t get pissy with me because the beautiful and sweet Dianxia is attempting to commit insurance fraud.”