Page 6 of Maid for the Alien Prince

He would rock me gently in his lap until I fell calm and quiet. But now, I was the one playing the role of the adult.

Two months away, and everything had gone topsy-turvy!

“Whatever it is, it’ll be all right,” I whispered. “I promise. Everything’s going to be okay.”

My biggest fear was that he would catch an illness—that he would slowly fade away before me—but he had clearly said that he had done something, not that he was sick or injured.

But he was injured, I realized. His emotions were tearing him up from the inside.

Slowly, he began to relax, his breath coming in hitched sobs at the back of his throat. “I did something… I did it for the greater good, but I was wrong…” He looked up at me and squeezed my knee.

“What is it?” I said. “I can’t believe it’s anything too bad. You would never do anything to hurt anyone.”

He nodded. “I didn’t hurt anyone. But I… I… stole something.”

The words were like rocks falling into the pit of my stomach.

Stole something.

The greatest sin. My father, the distinguished manager of the summer palace, had punished many of his staff over the years for stealing—often ending in outright dismissal.

“Once someone betrays your trust, there’s no way you can trust them ever again,” he’d always said. It had been his mantra for twenty years.

And now he had been the one to break his own rules?

“What did you steal?” I asked in a steady voice.

“Priceless antiques. Although, when I took them to the pawn shop, it turns out they’re not so priceless after all. Everything has a price when you come to sell them.”

Priceless antiques…

When he told me he had stolen something, I figured we’d be able to replace it. But if it was priceless… and an antique to boot… There might not be another one of its type in existence.

“What else?” I asked, my throat dry. “Did you… take anything else?”

I couldn’t bring myself to use the word ‘steal’ when referring to my father.

“Just antiques.”

There could only be one place he’d taken them from. The palace. Nowhere else in town had so many antiques—besides the museums. And I didn’t think he had it in him to steal from a museum.

Then again, I didn’t think he had it in him to steal from the palace either!

“I’m sure if we speak to the Prince, he’ll forgive you,” I said. “After all, twenty years of service has to mean something.”

“He fired me,” Dad said, his voice quivering, causing another cascade of tears to roll down his cheeks. “He fired me!”

So that was what the yelling was for… Why Dad was so distracted…

The person who had fired him—most likely the new manager of the property, Ges—had yelled and slammed the door on his way out.

But my fear wasn’t that he had lost his job. It was a blow, as my father had truly loved his position in the palace, but the real tragedy was that he would never find another Head of the Household job again—for the same reason none of his staff who had stolen from the palace had either.

There was no second chance for trust.

What concerned me was that the new Prince might press charges. Dad could end up being crushed by a prohibitive fine or, worse yet, have to serve time on a prison planet…

My dad was too old and would not survive such a place. It had become a matter of life and death, and no matter what Dad had done—I didn’t care if he’d stolen the crown jewels—I could not allow him to die.

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