Page 103 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“Ugly?” She couldn’t imag­ine Luis be­ing any­thing but hon­or­able.

“Carlo died a month af­ter Raul’s birth. Luis and Sofia were crowned king and queen. Luis was work­ing day and night to pick up his newly ac­quired reins of power, while Sofia was strug­gling as a brand-new, in­ex­pe­ri­enced mother.”

“Surely she had staff to help. She was the queen!”

“She suf­fered from se­vere post-par­tum de­pres­sion, some­thing no army of nan­nies could cure. Un­for­tu­nately, no one un­der­stood the sever­ity of her is­sues un­til Sofia tried to com­mit sui­cide by tak­ing sleep­ing pills.”

Quinn winced.

“Luis is still eaten up by guilt over the fact that he didn’t no­tice his wife’s de­spair,” Mikel said. “He blames him­self for not spend­ing enough time with her to see what was hap­pen­ing. Of course, he got her help im­me­di­ately. He thought she was im­prov­ing, but six months later, she drove off the side of a moun­tain.”

“So the car crash that killed her wasn’t an ac­ci­dent?”

Mikel shrugged again. “The in­ves­ti­ga­tors ruled it an ac­ci­dent. Luis be­lieves she fi­nally suc­ceeded in tak­ing her own life, even though she left no note in­di­cat­ing that.”

“So how is Odette in­volved in all this?”

Her boss lifted a hand to coun­sel pa­tience. “As I said, Luis still blames him­self for Sofia’s death. Back then, he ev­i­dently went a lit­tle crazy with the guilt. Odette came to visit Hélène and Lorenzo, and Luis vented his grief in what he de­scribed as a tem­pes­tu­ous af­fair with her.”

“Wow! I wasn’t ex­pect­ing that,” Quinn said. “He seems so…con­trolled and so aware of the fact that he’s the king, so he has to be­have like one.”

“He was young, only twenty-five. He was un­der tremen­dous pres­sure as he stepped into his fa­ther’s shoes. He was a new par­ent. And then his wife killed her­self. I think he had to let all those emo­tions out some­how, or they would have eaten him alive.”

What was she do­ing at age twenty-five? Try­ing to make an hon­est liv­ing, which had re­quired dis­tanc­ing her­self from her fa­ther as much as pos­si­ble. She’d thought that was a lot of pres­sure, but it paled next to what Luis had gone through.

“So does Luis re­act neg­a­tively to Odette’s name be­cause he re­grets hav­ing the af­fair, or is there some­thing more to it?”

“He says it ended badly when he re­al­ized his be­hav­ior was en­dan­ger­ing the crown. Even more, he was ne­glect­ing his new son, who now had only one par­ent. He ter­mi­nated the re­la­tion­ship some­what abruptly and fo­cused on those two as­pects of his life.” Mikel gri­maced. “Read­ing be­tween the lines and know­ing Odette, I sus­pect she was an­gling to be the next queen. Get­ting dumped would not have sat well with her.”

Mikel paused and then shook his head.

“I know re­venge is a dish best served cold, but that was more than twenty-five years ago,” he said. “Odette has found suc­cess in her own right. I can’t see her sud­denly de­cid­ing to go af­ter Raul now. Es­pe­cially be­cause her suc­cess in busi­ness is a di­rect re­sult of her ties to Cal­eva.”

There would have to be a trig­ger of some sort. Quinn would look for one.

“I think we should run her name by Ricci, even though his ini­tial list led nowhere,” Quinn said. “I’ll em­bed it in a set of other names to see if he re­acts.”

“You re­ally think that Odette is in­volved?” Mikel sounded in­trigued and skep­ti­cal at the same time.

Quinn shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt to take a hard look.”

“Keep it dis­creet,” Mikel said. “Hélène would not be happy to have her long­time friend’s rep­u­ta­tion dam­aged with­out good rea­son.”

Great. Gabriel’s mother would be pissed at her. Quinn swal­lowed. “Un­der­stood.”

“And how did the din­ner go other than arous­ing your sus­pi­cions about Made­moi­selle Fontaine?” Mikel asked, his tone dry.

“The food was re­ally good. They even served ap­ple pie in my honor.”

Mikel waited.

“Okay, it wasn’t as bad as I ex­pected. Mostly.” Quinn pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Gabriel claims that the king likes me.”

“Gabriel may be bi­ased.”

“Yeah.” She thought for a few sec­onds. “I think I sur­prised the king by be­ing…not aw­ful.”

Her boss huffed out a laugh. “It is rare to sur­prise el rey. Buen tra­bajo! Well done!”

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