Page 55 of A Valiant Prince

“Yes, but it’s also frowned upon to give out classified information,” he whispers.

“Jesus Christ, does Anna know?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “No, I need to tell her. But I wanted you to know first. You deserved to know first,” he says to me.

My brain has a million and two questions now. I feel like the mother I thought I knew, I didn’t know at all.

“Jack, we’ll have to talk about my mother later. I need more answers, but what Anna found…well, it may start to bridge our intelligence gap,” I say to him as I begin to fill him in on what was in the box in my mother’s closet.

“How many boxes are there?” he asks.

“There’s probably about a half dozen left and another half dozen that I had piled up for trash,” I say.

He curses. “I’m sending someone over to get them and scan them,” he says.

“But…my grandparents?” I say.

“Call them. Tell them you have a friend who’s going to stop by for the boxes,” he says. “Make up something; you’re a smart kid.” Jack picks up his phone and walks to the edge of the patio, clearly making a call to whoever will be getting my mom’s things.

I dial my grandparents and tell them that we had to head out of town for a meeting and that a friend is picking up my mom’s boxes for me, so I can get them shipped to my house to go through later. I hate lying to them, but I know it’s better to keep them safe right now. I freeze when that thought pops into my head. I now know why my mother kept her life a secret, why she did what she did. She was protecting me. And then my stomach flips because I realize that I don’t completely know what she was protecting me from and that unknown scares the shit out of me because now it’s not just me, but my family and Anna and her family.

Chapter Eighteen

Iwalk back into the living room where Anna is busy typing away. It dawns on me suddenly just how scared I am right now. I’m scared to tell Anna what Jack just told me. I’m scared for Anna. I can’t lose her.

As though sensing me, she slowly turns. I can tell by her face that whatever she’s been finding online is not any better than what I just learned.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her before she can inquire about what Jack and I spoke about a minute earlier.

“Sebastian…he’s not so clean,” she says, frowning.

“Meaning?” I ask.

“Meaning, I found some strange offshore bank accounts. People with nothing to hide would not have these accounts,” she says. A little crease forms between her eyebrows.

“But how do we know that he’s using those accounts to hide something?” I ask her.

She moves over so that I can see the screen. My jaw drops. There are photos of Sebastian with a number of the anti-monarchists that were in my mother’s articles, and then there’s a screenshot of an email account, his email account. I almost want to roll my eyes, of course, Anna just went straight to the source and hacked his email. I read the emails and my stomach clenches.

“Is that…” I trail off as I look at the “To” and “From” columns in his account.

“He’s been corresponding with our favorite underworld assassin,” she says.

“So, it’s him. He’s behind it all,” I say.

She shakes her head. “I don’t think he is,” she replies.

“What do you mean? He’s got emails with M!” I practically yell. Anna’s eyes dart toward the kitchen.

“Shhhh,” she hushes me. “There are also encrypted emails. I’m trying to break the code right now. It’ll take a little while, probably a day of me running my encryption software to break the code. But he’s talking to someone else, and I’m thinking that he’s a middle man. His encrypted emails to M are basically like he’s giving directions but for someone else. It’s odd, almost like he’s not actually sending them. The verbiage doesn’t match his normal dialogue. But then there are these other ones, that I can’t quite figure out,” she says, pursing her lips. “What’s wrong?” she asks, suddenly realizing that I too have news.

I sit down on the back of the sofa. She stands and walks over to me as though sensing whatever it is, it’s something very serious.

“Jack…just told me some interesting information,” I say.

She takes my hands in hers and squeezes them a little. “Is everything alright?” she asks as her brows knit together once again.

I run my thumbs over the soft skin of her hands. “My mother was intentionally killed,” I blurt out because I really don’t know what else to say.

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