Page 113 of Prince Charmless
“Glad I could be of service,” she says, holding a neon green fuzzy pillow.
I pick up a cracked CD featuring Justin Timberlake’s face. “This looks well-loved.”
“Oh, it was.” She sets the pillow aside. “It’s bizarre you’re in here. Like, all this stuff was so important to a little girl you don’t even know. I wonder if I told my younger self you’d be standing in my bedroom one day, she would believe me.”
I look around the bright teal walls and assume that little girl I don’t know picked out the color herself. “This place is a time capsule. It feels like I should be wearing my retainer.”
“I guess we never got around to, uh—” She picks up a rainbow rubber bracelet from her nightstand. “Cleaning it out.”
I sit on the bed next to her. “I’m having a small dinner for the Charlotte Foundation next week. It’ll be our launch party.”
She takes my hand. “That’s great, Taylor. I know how hard you guys have been working on that.”
She’s goddamn right we have. Julien and I, along with the two other people we permanently hired, have done everything ourselves. Our setup has been frugal, so most of my mother’s inheritance will go into non-bureaucratic affairs. The thing that bothers me the most about the Crown’s charities is that so much of the money is donated to pencil-pushing nonsense. Efficiency has been the keyword for the Charlotte Foundation, and I’ve never been this confident in a project before. Even Alex wasn’t there to supervise.Do you need help?he asked just enough times to make me feel condescension. No, Alex, I didn’t needyour help. Go and cry about it to your wife, husband, or whoever your other significant other is.
“Who’s coming to the party?” Melina asks.
“You, I was thinking. But my dad will be attending, and maybe an ex-prime minister, if you’re okay with that. Julien and Rachel will be there too.”
“Which ex-prime minister?” she asks suspiciously.
“Jean-Paul Rainier.” One of the more tolerable ones.
“I’d love to come. It just makes things kind of official.”
It does.
She looks at the picture on her nightstand. It’s of her, Mateo, and their father at the beach. “Have you done background checks on my family as well?”
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
“Don’t act like you didn’t do one on me,” she says. “If you were smart, which you are sometimes, Mr. Dartmouth, you’d probably do some research on your date before you parade her out in public to make sure she doesn’t have a controversial past life full of sex, drugs, and political activism.”
“They make a file for everyone who gets within five meters of me. Sorry if that’s an invasion of privacy. I guess it’s protocol.”
“Find any juicy details?”
“Alex only tells me their results if he finds something notable.”
Melina raises her brow because she knows I’m being intentionally vague.
“I know your father is in prison,” I admit. “If that’s what you’re getting at. Alex went more in-depth after I kissed you and felt the need to tell me ahead of our trip to America. I stopped him before he went into any details.”
“You aren’t curious?”
Yes.
“No. It’s none of my business.”
“What if he’s an axe murderer?”
I lean back. “Is he...an axe murderer?”
She laughs. “No, it’s nothing violent. His charges were white-collar stuff. Money laundering. He used to work in auto body repair and was running, or helped run, a chop shop out the back of the garage. Which one, depends on the lawyer you talk to.”
“He was stealing cars.”
“Not steal, exactly, but incentivizing it. My dad’s a nice person and disastrously likable, but he got caught up in something he shouldn’t have. Made acquaintances he should’ve made.” She picks at her nails. “I still don’t know why he didn’t tell me he was running out of cash. Mateo and I would’ve given him some, but he’s just so stubborn. God, I felt so stupid when he was arrested last year. All the signs were there, his shady friends, him acting weird when I stopped by his work unannounced.”
