Page 72 of A Valiant Prince

She takes a deep breath and pulls up the fourth email. “No one else in the family has the same protection setup as my father. I…don’t want to believe this, but the words, the phrases even…Hans,” she says, looking back at me, tears in her eyes.

“What? No,” I say.

“It makes sense though, Logan. Hans owns a company, a company that would benefit if our countries had no monarchies. I just…I can’t reconcile it. I don’t want it to be him,” she says.

“Maybe it’s not, maybe, it’s someone setting him up, like Sten? Maybe Sten wants it to look like Hans?” I ponder.

She shakes her head. “No, because Sten wasn’t at a café, at least not while he’s been here. But the café is in the building that Hans owns. It’s his company’s building,” she says.

“Are you sure?” I ask her.

She nods. “I don’t want it to be,” she says, her lip trembling.

I pull her into my arms, trying desperately to wrap my head around all of this. I still don’t understand how Anna is jumping to these conclusions so quickly. And second, I don’t want it to be Hans either, for Anna’s sake.

“Anna, show me what you are seeing. Walk me through all of it,” I say to her, still staring at the screen over her head in complete confusion.

She takes a breath and pulls out of my embrace, looking back at the screen. For the next fifteen minutes, she carefully walks me through the dark web, the email accounts she’s hacked, and the encrypted messages that she’s found. Then she sighs and pulls up a message that is talking about Hans’s plane that was bombed.

“This is how I know for sure,” she says, pointing to a line on the screen.

The bomb needs to be placed in the back cargo hold. There’s a secret compartment I had built there. Move the blue side panel over and you’ll find a hidden door. The combination is 3-3-2-8. Make sure to secure the panel back over the door once the bomb is in place.

“That’s my aunt’s and uncle’s birthday. Only my uncle would know that there was a secret compartment on his jet. My aunt hadn’t flown on that jet yet. He had bought it while she was doing charity work,” Anna says quietly.

This time, I believe her. She’s right. There is no confusion. Even though that email was sent from Sebastian’s email account, Anna has shown me that the account was indeed hacked and the messages deleted, only they weren’t deleted because whoever did it hadn’t yet wiped a backup cloud linked to the email, probably because hacking the email company’s server was a whole lot harder than hacking one email account.

“Uh, why didn’t you start with this?” I ask, looking back at her.

She shakes her head. “I…I don’t know. I…Jesus, Aunt Lara…” She trails off and turns back to the screen.

“He can’t be alone with Aunt Lara!” she suddenly exclaims, jumping off the bed. I get up, following her as she sprints across the room and throws open the door.

“Anna?” I hear Lucas ask.

“Where’s Pete?” she asks him.

“He’s—”

“I’m right here,” Pete says, running up from around the corner. “What’s wrong?”

“Did Hans leave to go back to the hospital, yet?” she says, her breathing coming harder with each word.

“He just left, maybe two minutes ago. Why?” he asks.

“Jesus, we need to go, now!” she exclaims, grabbing his hand and dragging him down the corridor. Lucas and I follow them.

“I don’t understand, Anna. What the hell is going on?” Pete says, coming to an abrupt stop at the top of the staircase.

He grabs Anna’s arm to stop her from tumbling headfirst down the staircase. “It’s him, Pete. It’s him!” she exclaims, tears flooding her eyes as she practically screams the words.

“Calm down. How do you know this, Anna?” he asks her. His grip on her tightens slightly, and I take a step forward.

“Pete, let her go,” I say to him. He looks over at me but releases Anna.

“I have to be sure of this, Logan. What she’s saying…it’s treasonous,” he says.

Anna grabs Pete by his collar with both hands. “Pete, I swear to god. No, I swear on my mother’s grave. It’s him. I ran a search. I found an email. Only he would know what was in that email. There are others. We have to go, now! I’ll explain everything on the way to the hospital,” she cries out as she releases Pete and starts down the stairs.

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