Chapter 283 The Demand
ADRIANA
I stood there for a moment and processed that.
Someone had wiped it. Someone who knew the camera system, knew where the footage was stored, knew how to remove it cleanly enough that only the one night was affected. That wasn’t a random act. That was someone covering a specific track.
I left the security room and drove back to the house and went looking for Leo.
I heard him before I found him. He was in the ballroom, his voice carrying through the door in a register I hadn’t heard from him before, level and authoritative and without any of the fifteen-year-old uncertainty that sometimes still surfaced when he was tired or caught off guard.
“The next time any of you say anything about my parents, I won’t be offering a warning. This was courtesy. It won’t be extended again.”
I stepped back from the doorway as he came out, and he pulled up short when he saw me.
“Mum. How long have you been there?”
“Long enough.” I looked at him. “You’re letting them go?”
“When I’m ready.” He fell into step beside me. “They’ll stay until I decide the lesson has landed.”
I didn’t say anything about the method. He was the Crown Prince and he’d been given authority and he’d used it in a way that I understood even if it was more extreme than I would have expected from him. The people in that room had said something that had gotten under his skin, which meant it had been bad, and Leo didn’t react to things that weren’t bad.
“You didn’t find her,” he said.
“No.”
He nodded slowly. “Uncle Roy came in this morning. I saw him going into Dad’s office. I thought maybe Dad had called him to help.”
I stopped walking.
Roy was here and I hadn’t been told.
I thanked Leo and left him and went toward Elijah’s office. Hazel was just coming out of it when I turned the corner, and she saw my face and stepped sideways, away from the door, pulling me gently with her.
“You know,” she said.
“Leo told me Roy was here. What’s going on?”
She looked at me for a long moment with the expression she used when she was deciding how much to say and to whom. Then she exhaled.
“We checked the security footage before it was wiped,” she said, quietly. “Elijah and I went this morning, before you came downstairs. We pulled the bathroom corridor section from last night.” She paused. “The person who was in that corridor, the one you heard in the bathroom. It was Roy on the footage.”
I stared at her.
“Elijah doesn’t believe it,” she said quickly. “He thinks the footage was doctored. That someone manipulated it specifically to implicate Roy. That’s why he called him to tell him someone might be trying to set him up, and to find out if Roy has any enemies who know about his connection to the family.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He thought you might react before we know the full truth. He didn’t want you looking at Roy differently based on footage he believes was fabricated.” She held my gaze. “Don’t tell him I told you. He wanted to verify it first.”
I thought about the voice in the bathroom. The one giving orders, the one who knew exactly what they wanted and how to get it. I had heard that voice clearly and I had not recognized it as Roy. But I had been inside a locked stall, pressed against a wall, not breathing — which meant my perception hadn’t been ideal.
“I don’t think it’s Roy either,” I said. “The man in the bathroom said he wanted to take back what was his. That Elijah had something that belonged to him.” I looked at Hazel. “That’s not Roy. Roy has never had anything taken from him by Elijah. This is someone with a personal grievance. A real one.”
“Which means we need to go through Elijah’s history. Anyone he’s wronged, anyone who believes he has something that should be theirs.”
“That’s a significant list.”
“I know.” She stepped back. “Start somewhere. Don’t tell him I told you.”
I went back to my room and sat on the edge of the bed and began turning through the names I knew, the old disputes, the political fallouts, the people who had been on the wrong side of Elijah’s decisions and had never fully accepted it.
I heard a knock on the door and told the person to come in.
A maid entered, holding an envelope. “A letter came for you, My Queen. A guard handed it to me at the lower entrance. I don’t know who brought it.”
I took it.
After everything that had happened in the past months, the red crown, the letters left at the gate, Thomas Gray and his endless manipulations. I didn’t trust anything that arrived unannounced. I turned the envelope over twice before I opened it.
The letter inside was short and direct. The handwriting was printed rather than cursive, which told me someone was being careful about being identified.
‘If you want to see your daughter again, take your children and leave the kingdom. Leave and never come back.
Divorce Elijah.’
I read it twice. Then I read it a third time to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood.
The demand was so specific and so personal that it sat in my chest like something with weight. This wasn’t about the throne, not primarily. This was about Elijah. About me and Elijah specifically. Someone wanted me gone from his life badly enough to take our daughter to force it.
The door opened behind me and I folded the letter in one movement and held it behind my back and turned around.
Elijah was in the doorway looking at me. He had already noticed that something was wrong and was choosing between asking and waiting.
“What’s in your hand?” he said.
“Nothing.”
“Adriana.” He stepped into the room and closed the door. “What are you holding?”
I looked at him, my husband who had been unconscious for seven months and had been back for three weeks and was already carrying more than he should — and I made the decision in under a second.
I held the letter out.
He took it and read it. I watched his face move through something that was very controlled and very cold and settled into something I recognized as the expression he wore when he was deciding how angry to allow himself to be.
He looked up.
“When did this arrive?”
“Just now. A guard handed it to a maid. No one saw who brought it.”
He looked back at the letter. Then back at me.
“Divorce me,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Someone took our daughter and their ask is that you divorce me.”
“Yes.”
He folded the letter and held it and was quiet for a long moment.
“This isn’t about the throne,” I said. I watched his face as I spoke. “Whoever this is, their grievance with you is personal.”
He looked at me steadily. “I know who it might be,” he said. Very quietly.
“Tell me.”
He crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at his hands and the letter and then at me, I waited for him to speak.