Page 109 of Passenger Princess

As seems to be her way, Ava loses patience and reaches over, grabbing the mask and tugging it off before tossing it to the ground. I stand and turn to argue with her, but her eyes are wide.

"You havegotto be kidding me," Ava says, standing there with her hands on her hips. Her makeup is impeccable, and she is wearing one of her tiny pink dresses, this one with sequins and feathers, with not a single hair out of place.

A fucking conundrum.

My conundrum.

"Preston?" she says, and I turn to the culprit, looking at him and sighing. Tied up in the chair with red eyes from some kind of irritant, glitter, and white powder all over his cheap black outfit is the reporter who has been following Ava, the one who wrote the article that got me fired.

"Isn't that Anne's boyfriend?" one of the girls asks, and my head swings in her direction.

"Oh my god, yes! That's it! She showed us those pictures of themat the beach last year and was bragging about him," Joy, Miss Montana, says, snapping her fingers.

Faces move to Anne, whose face is ghastly white. "This isnothow this was supposed to happen," she mumbles.

"You havegotto be kidding me," Ava repeats, now mildly entertained.

"Look, I was just doing a favor for my girlfriend; this gotwayout of hand," Preston says quickly. "It was all Anne's idea. It wasn't supposed to be this…insane. Just a…" He pauses, looking around with red eyes, his face covered in glitter. "A joke."

"Don't find kidnapping very funny," I say. "And what about the articles?"

"Look, this is a bit?—"

Over this charade, I walk over to him, grabbing his arm to bring him out the door to the security. He must think I'm approaching him to harm him, though, because he shakes his head.

"Okay, okay! I'll tell you everything!"

Ava looks at me with humor, fighting a smile because she knows me well enough to know I wasn't going toattackhim.

"Look, Anne was really upset that you were in the pageant. She asked me to write some articles, do some research, and find some dirt. My bosses liked the reach the articles were getting, so I kept it up, but I wasn't...I wasn't stalking you or anything."

"My man, you put a tracking device on our car," Ava says, even though we have no proof that he put it there. But when his face blanches, I know it wasn't him, though he knew about its existence, obviously.

"Look, that isn't... that isn't what it seems, it's?—"

"You followed us on a date in the park, took creepy surveillance photos, then followed us to a friend's house where we had dinner. I don't see how it could be anything but?—"

"You weren't evensupposedto be on a date!" Anne shrieks. "Miss Americana isn't allowed to date!"

"Don't you actively have a boyfriend you've apparently manipulated to try and...what? Get me fired? Bully me until I quit?"

She glares at Ava before crossing her arms on her chest. "Both." Ava nods her head like this makes all the sense in the world. “You weren't even supposed to make it to the final pageant. Aunt Reginapromised meyou would quit before then, that the mean articles and the messages you got telling you to or else would get to you."

The timing is impeccable as the door opens again, three security guards, one of them the Five Star guard, burst into the door. Their steps falter as they see the mess before them.

Behind them, Regina glides in, and instead of panicking like a normal fucking person, she takes in the disaster zone before her and sighs.

“What is going on here?”

“Your niece just tried to have me kidnapped for…some unknown reason.”

“If you weren’t here for this event, I would take your place, and everyone could see how I was the better fit!” Anne shouts, and I stare at her, shaking my head because that was her plan? To have her boyfriend kidnap Ava so she could wear the crown forone event? Never even thinking that it probably would have been at the very least postponed with Ava’s disappearance.

“And where wereyou?” Regina asks, glaring at me with her arms crossed on her chest.

“What?”

“Where were you? You’re her security, shouldn’t you have been here to protect her?”

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