didn’t matter. The message was clear enough: I was right. London wasn’t safe for us anymore. We’d gambled by staying linked to the royals. Now there was a price to pay.
“Tell Alexander I want to see him as soon as possible,” I told Georgia.
Her eyebrow arched. “That sounds like an order. He won’t like that.”
“But you’ll love delivering that message,” I said flatly.
“What is this about?” she asked. “That looked like the bullet you’d saved for Hammond.”
“It was.” I checked the lock of the back door as she followed alongside me. Then I began checking every window. “How long was the door unlocked tonight?”
“I let them in myself. No one was in the house without me present.” She sounded almost apologetic. “If I had known…”
I ignored her guilt. If Georgia had been here when the package was delivered, she would have seen who’d brought it. That meant it had slipped in with one of the evening’s guests. The problem was that we trusted all of them implicitly. I pulled up the security system’s app on my phone and began looking through recordings. It provided a list of every time a door or window opened. I watched each silently, Georgia hovering nearby, until I reached our own arrival. “You have a bigger problem than a single bullet. Whoever delivered it didn't bring it to the house themselves. One of the guests did.”
“There was no one here that would have done that.”
My eyes closed as I felt a headache coming on. “Exactly.”
“I’ll call someone to watch the house tonight, so you can get some sleep. I’m sure we can arrange a security detail while you’re in town. I’ll speak with—”
“No,” I cut her off. “I don’t trust Alexander’s men.”
“They’re my men,” she said coldly.
“And you know all of them? You trust all of them?”
“I don’t trust anyone,” she reminded me. “Except…”
“Who?” That was who I wanted here until I could figure out how to handle this situation on my own. I’d be retrieving my father’s gun from Alexander—if it hadn’t been taken as well.
“Brexton,” she said, “but he’s doing double time keeping an eye on Anders.”
“Get him here.” If MI-18, the shadowy society that had dark plans for the royal family, had any interest in Anders, they could have taken him out a long time ago. The threat to Belle was immediate. I could sense it. “Wait, Brex knew about the bullet.”
I’d shown it to him as proof that I wasn’t the one who killed Hammond when he came knocking on my door two Christmases ago. I had no reason not to trust Brexton Miles, but I couldn’t claim to know him well enough not to mention it.
Georgia shook her head. “There’s no way. Brex is an open book.”
It sounded like there was a story there, but she wasn’t going to share it with me. “Then, I want him. You can tell Alexander he’s coming back to London.”
“He’s not going to like that.”
“He owes me,” I said in a clipped tone. “I’ll remind him of that when we meet.”
Georgia didn’t try to reason with me further. She knew better. “You should get some rest. Once the baby gets here, you won’t be sleeping much.”
Despite everything that happened tonight, I couldn’t help smiling. The baby was the light in all this darkness. Soon, we’d meet the proof of our love. We’d be a family, and I would do anything to protect my child and her mother. “I won’t mind being tired then.”
Georgia started toward the front door and I walked behind her. She drew her coat off a hanger by the door. “Is there anyone else who knew about that bullet? The one you’d saved for Hammond?”
“No one alive.” I’d already asked myself that question. I couldn’t blame her for wondering.
“Maybe this doesn’t have anything to do with MI-18.”
“Do you really believe that?” All our troubles led back to them. It had taken years for us to put a name to the faceless organization. “No one else alive knows about that bullet, except you, Belle, and Alexander. Do you think one of them did it?”
“They want him,” she said softly. “Not to bruise your ego, Price, but why would they be interested in you now? You’re out.”
“I helped him. I stuck my neck out.” And now it was back on the chopping block.
She studied me for a moment, her dark eyes veiled in secrets before she turned toward the door. Georgia was down the first step before curiosity got the better of me.
“What