If it was July, and I couldn’t remember speaking to him since October, I needed to talk to him.
I needed to talk to him more than I needed to sleep, so I took a shower and changed clothes, and then waited until quiet had descended upon the house, and then I tiptoed down the stairs and slipped out the front door.
Just like I always had since I was a little girl, I crossed the lawn and then blindly sifted through the ivy to locate the loose portion of the fence. Pushing the plank aside just enough to squeeze my way-more-slender-than-usual body through, I slipped into the Sterlings’ summer estate and staggered to the front door.
Agnes, a member of the estate staff, whom I had known my entire life, answered the door and then her eyes widened. “Miss Isla? Are you all right?”
My throat was still as dry and rough as sandpaper. “Where’s Malachi?”
She continued to stare at me and then pushed the door wider. “He’s on holiday elsewhere this summer. Would you like to speak to Her Highness?”
My stomach sank like a brick, and dread swallowed my insides. If I had gone missing for months and ended up in a remote jail in the middle of Mexico, I had probably done a host of irresponsible things. Things that potentially included blowing him off, despite the fact that I would never blow him off. If nothing else, the fact that I hadn’t been around for half the summer meant he didn’t really have a reason to be here either—but that was the absolute best case scenario that I could come up with.
I refused to even let myself consider what the worst case scenario might have been right then.
My head began to throb from all the thoughts flying around trying to make sense of all of it, and I gave a weak nod as Agnes offered her hand to help me step over the threshold. She led me to the front drawing room, where I eased my aching bones to sit down on a loveseat.
After only about two minutes, I heard a group of loud footsteps on marble approaching, but I barely had the stamina to sit up straight, let alone turn my head to look at them.
King Andrew, Queen Deirdre, and Prince Philipp were suddenly standing in front of me, their faces etched with palpable disdain.
“Isla,” Andrew began, “I’m honestly shocked that you’ve turned up here like this.”
I stared at him, and desperation reduced my words to only those that were absolutely necessary. “I need to talk to Malachi. I don’t have my—”
“There’s nothing else that needs to be said between you both,” Deirdre clipped, her face like stone. “Enough was already communicated. We spoke with your parents months ago. I’m not sure why they permitted you to come here. You may speak to them. There will be no more communication between you and the Duke.”
My stomach curdled, and my mouth and throat went all the more dry. “Why?”
Philipp took an intimidating step toward me, his sharp jaw pulsing like it had a heartbeat. “Do you really need an answer to that, Isla?” he hissed.
“Philipp,” Andrew warned, but didn’t take his eyes off me. He nodded toward the door. “Go back to your home, Isla. Speak to your parents. Please don’t return.”
This was the worst case scenario, and tears burned my eyes as the three of them went blurry. The only thing that compelled me to shakily push myself off the couch and propel my feet to the door was the sudden urge to vomit.
I stepped out of the Sterling Estate for the last time ever and returned to my house.
Slipping back through my own door, I was greeted by Papá bellowing at me in Spanish in a borderline incoherent rage.
“Where in the hell were you!” He stomped from the great room and across the entryway to where I was practically hanging by my grip on the doorknob, and then he grabbed my arm to start dragging me up the stairs. “You will not leave this house! You created so much shit that it will cost me a fortune and a lifetime to clean all of it up!”
“Ernesto!”
Mamá was jogging up the stairs after us, him taking the steps two at a time, me tripping and falling, but he continued to drag me. The rug scraped my already battered shins, and I didn’t even have the strength to cry, let alone protest or attempt to stand up and follow.
“Ernesto, stop! Help her stand up!”
“She has already received far more help than she deserves! She is lucky that I brought her home from that shithole and allowed her to return to this house!”
He dragged me all the way down the hall and back to my room, where he finally picked me up by gripping my biceps and threw me onto my bed. I landed in a heap of gangly legs and arms, and my clothes were all out of place from being two sizes too large, and what in the hell had I done?
“Papá, I’m sorry,” I managed to eke out in Spanish through my dry, constricted throat. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened. I don’t remember any of it, but Malachi is—”
My words were cut off by the blinding white pain of him throwing his open palm in a hot, hard slap across my face.
“Malachi is gone!” Papá shouted. “You abandoned and betrayed all of us, and I’m sure that included him! He is the least of your problems right now, so I do not want to hear you speak of such trivial bullshit again! You dropped out of school to run off to Mexico, where you took a man’s life, Isla! And that was after you did God knows what else for six months while you barely communicated with us outside of demanding your inheritance and telling me to stay the fuck out of your business! For God’s sake, how fucking dare you leave this house after what you have already put us through!”
All of the oxygen fizzled out of the room as I stared at him through bleary eyes. “I what?”
He lunged for me, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me violently. “If your shitty memory has decided to fail you about this, too, that is your own goddamn problem. You are an entitled little monster, and I will give you nothing beyond a roof over your head for the rest of your life.”
With that, he threw me backward onto the bed and slammed out of the room.
My entire body convulsed with fear and adrenaline, and I barely had the stamina to sit up. Mamá stood in the center of the room, hand clasped over her mouth while she stared at the rug.
A sob choked out of me. “Mami… please…” My jaw hung as words in either language failed me. “I don’t know what… I don’t know… I don’t know…”
“Child,” she murmured, then shook her head, all the while refusing to look at me. “God save your soul.”
“Mami… Please tell me. I don’t know. I don’t know any of it.”
She couldn’t even look at me, but she managed to explain.
“It was October. You had just finished your mid-terms. You sent a message saying you were going away with a girlfriend for a long weekend. We transferred extra money to you and didn’t think much of it until we tried to reach you about Thanksgiving plans. Your phone was turned off. We called the Sterlings to see if Malachi had heard from you. They told us you broke up. It stunned us, and that is when we knew something was wrong. Your phone was still turned off, and we left many messages. We said we were going to call the police if you didn’t call us soon. Then you called. You said everything was fine, but that you had decided to leave school. You sounded like a shell of yourself. You were cold and disconnected. We asked if you were using drugs, if you were depressed, if you had been overwhelmed by college. You said no. You said you were tired of school and wanted to travel instead. Your father was angry, but he transferred some money anyway. He said you had until the end of the year to get this nonsense out of your system and come home. You didn’t come home. You didn’t call again, but you sent us messages. Very hateful messages. You demanded money. You insisted that your father owed you your inheritance. He refused to send any more money. We traced the activity in your bank account, but it was merely ATM withdrawals in the city near your university. The Sterlings refused to speak to us, so we didn’t know what had happened between you and Malachi. We were convinced that the break-up had caused you to lose your mind, and we believed that you were holed up somewhere in the city. We had no evidence or reason to believe you were elsewhere, and the messages continued for months, so your father washed his hands of you and decided that you could live on the money he’d already sent, and you could come home when you were ready to apologize and get your act together. You continued to send messages demanding money, but we stopped responding to them. We left with your siblings for our summer holiday in Los Cabos. We were there when your father received a phone call from a sheriff in a small town outside of Monterrey, who told him you’d been arrested after an altercation. A man was dead. They told us you had called them, so all of it looked like self-defense, and you had many injuries, but you were catatonic and couldn’t make a statement either way. Your father paid them above and beyond your bail in a sort of under-the-table restitution so we could simply bring you home. He paid them a lot of money, child. Enough to make this situation go away. But because this situation exists, you absolutely cannot leave this house again. You cannot go harass the Sterlings. Malachi left to travel after he graduated, and when he returns home, he’ll begin his time in the Corwick Navy, and then he’ll have his official duties as a senior royal. None of them are part of our lives anymore. These are the unfortunate, sad consequences of your behavior. I’m sorry you cannot remember any of it. I have to believe that’s a byproduct of your regret, because I refuse to believe that my own daughter could do the kinds of things you did without conscience or remorse. Please comply with your father’s wishes. You have eliminated any options you previously had for your future. This is your life now because of the choices you made, whether you remember those choices or not.”