“My apologies.” Elias gave her another formal nod, but this one felt sarcastic. Probably because she heard the laughter in his tone and saw the twinkle in his eyes. “If I tell you about the secret entrance to the dungeons, will that be enough to coerce you into staying?” He gestured for her to precede him up a spiral staircase.
“Dungeons? Aren’t those more for a castle rather than a palace?” Because Kelsey knew the difference now. Fortifications versus fancy housing.
“Extensive dungeons—more like a prison—are in castles. But you definitely want somewhere to toss wrongdoers while interrogating them. When the original structure was built in the 1600s, times were more violent. Less civilized.”
“Will you show me the dungeons?”
“There’s a private access to them from your suite. They were turned into a gym about eighty years ago. Also a pool and squash courts.”
“There’s no door to anywhere but the balcony…” Kelsey trailed off. This was the coolest thing ever. She couldn’t wait to tell Mallory. “There’s a secret passageway from my room?”
“From each of the royal apartments. God forbid anyone see the royal family wandering about in spandex and dripping sweat.” Elias pushed past her to fiddle with the latch on a wooden door. When that didn’t work, he put his shoulder into it, and the timbers creaked before opening. “I’ll be sure to get that fixed. Nobody really comes up here anymore, not since Queen Serena died.”
“This was her private spot?” Kelsey knew the answer before she’d taken more than three steps inside.
The round shape gave the room away as the turret. Rather than furniture, the floor was heaped with pillows in faded, green-sprigged chintz. A low shelf by the far window was filled with well-worn paperbacks. On top were an assortment of candles, a crystal bud vase, and photos.
She rushed over and dropped to her knees. These weren’t official, posed photos. These were family shots. The queen with her children, all as babies. A very pudgy Christian, another with toddler Christian in a hilarious romper sticking his tongue out at baby Genevieve while the queen laughed.
And a third that had to be her, Valentina. Kelsey had never seen a baby photo of herself before. Her parents claimed they’d all been lost in a basement flood. She’d seen Mallory’s, but her own baby books didn’t start until she’d been more than a year old.
The queen…looked like her, which she’d already noted in the formal portrait in the throne room, but it was more evident in this photo. No crown or poufy hair. The queen—her mother—sat on a blanket at the edge of a lake. Christian and Genevieve were wrist deep in a bowl of grapes, both grinning with their mouths stuffed. And the utter happiness and love suffusing Serena’s face as she looked down at the tiny blond baby in her arms took Kelsey’s breath away.
Or maybe it was the thickening of unshed tears in her throat.
“Kelsey.”
“Yes?” She sniffed, and curled her legs beneath her.
“I need to tell you something. I need you to listen without flying off the handle until I get all the way through.”
Elias was wearing his very-serious-bodyguard face again. Even though they were very alone. That did not bode well. “Just a heads up that no woman on the planet likes to be told that a man is worried she’ll fly off the handle.” She held up a hand. “And don’t try and tell me it got mangled in translation.”
“Fair enough.” He closed the door. Stayed over by it, hands behind his back. “I’m the one who took your phone. Don’t blame Anya.”
“Okay.”
“I took it to put a recording…” It was the first time Elias seemed to be stuck on finding the right word in English. It was sort of adorable. “…a listening device in it.”
Not okay. Not adorable. Kelsey surged to her knees. Sort of. All the pillows making her wobbly reminded her of being a kid in a ball pit. “You bugged my phone?”
“Yes.” If Elias was any closer to the door, he’d be on the other side of it. “But not to listen to you. We want the ability to listen in when you talk to your parents.”
“Why?”
“That’s what you do with suspects.”
Kelsey crossed her arms, shook her head, and gave him the should-be-patented “you disappoint me” look learned at Cybill Wishner’s knee. “I told you, there’s no way they kidnapped me. They’re good people, Elias. They love me and Mallory. They devoted their lives to healing the sick.”
But he stood his ground. Elias crossed his arms. Ricocheted a patronizing, “you’re not as smart as you think” look right back at her. “They know something. You don’t have adoption records. Your birth certificate is forged—we checked. Oh, and, of course, your fingerprints prove you’re the child of King Julian and Queen Serena. The Wishners may have been good parents to you, but they are not innocent.”
“I’m sure if you let me talk to them, they’ll explain everything.” At least, that’s what she and Mallory had been whispering to each other every night, in an effort to stave off their growing fears. Because nothing added up about their loving, supportive parents stealing a baby.
“We’re giving them the chance to do that, which is what I needed to tell you. We had them taken into custody before you even left New York.”
“Custody?” She’d watched enough iterations of Law and Order to immediately flash to bars slamming them into a cell. With that distinctive, hollow, double bing that always accompanied it. “You had them arrested?”
“Yes. Arrested, then flown to New York and held for questioning while we were granted extraterritorial jurisdiction. Interpol, our own Intelligence and Security Agency, your FBI, and the Kenyan National Intelligence Service—all these agencies were a part of the search and thus now want to be a part of getting the answers. It has been…complicated to work through all the channels.”
Holy fuck. Her parents were sitting in jail right now because of her. Because, for whatever reason, they’d chosen to love her and raise her. Guilt almost outweighed her anger at not being notified. At least it solved the mystery of why they weren’t returning her calls. “Wait…Kenya?”
“That’s where your family was vacationing when you were abducted.”
Oh. She’d been to Africa? That fact was as surreal as the rest of this mess. Kelsey stood, letting her arms fall to her sides. “But they’re in jail? Why?”
“Because it is obvious the Wishners know something about the kidnapping, even if they were not responsible for orchestrating it themselves.”
Elias kept using their last name rather than referring to them as her parents.