Royal Watch (Royal Watch #1) - Stacey Marie Brown Page 0,94
destroy you.
“Let me.” My throat closed, barely getting it out. My chest ached with the thought of going to him, but I knew I was the only hope for my family. Fredrick would just make it worse. William wanted me to beg.
“What?” He jolted back, his head shaking. “No!”
“Uncle—”
“I said no, Spencer. This is an adult problem. I will not send my niece to handle my problems. How would that look?”
“We’re past that. Believe me. I don’t want to go. But…” I took a deep breath. “It’s the only way. This is exactly what he wants.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just trust me.”
“Trust you?” he sputtered. “You are a child!”
Funny, he was always nagging Landen, saying, “You’re not a child anymore. Start acting like it.” But me, I was still a little girl.
“You are young and na?ve. You do not understand what that man wants. He is a snake. He will try to take advantage.”
“I’m not naive, Uncle Fredrick.” I stepped up to him, tilting my neck to look up at him. Confident. Controlled. “I know exactly what he wants. I’m not unaware of Lord William’s reputation. Nor am I a fool. I won’t let him touch me. But I’m probably the only one that can possibly get us out of this.”
He stared down at me as if he had never really seen me before.
“I’m not asking. I’m telling you,” I said, holding his befuddled gaze. “Go home. Figure out what we can sell or do to keep us afloat. But I will handle Lord William.”
He blinked several times at me. It was a full minute before he nodded, silently backing away.
“Be safe. He is a conniving man.” He gave me a look over his shoulder, a thread of awe in it, before he dipped his head and strolled out of the garden.
Not wanting to reconsider, I pulled my mobile out of my pocket, finding Lord William’s contact info online and pushing the call button.
“My dear Ms. Sutton, I had a feeling you might call me today.” His voice purred into the line, condescending, causing chills to hack at my skin. “You ready to repent on your knees? Embarrassingly refute something you said you would never do?”
I bit back all the cross words I wanted to tell him, my mouth pinching together to keep them in.
He only laughed at my silence. “Without even a word, I can feel that fire in you simmering.”
“This is purely business,” I stated.
He laughed, full and loud. “Sure, my dear. Business. Whatever you want to call it. Tomorrow. My office. Noon.”
“But—”
“Find a way,” he spoke over me, his tone twisting with cruelty. “Whatever you have to do, Spencer. Because if you don’t make it, try and go around me, or tell your fiancé, I will not only tell the press about your family woes, and let me say not all your family’s actions were legal, but also about your affair with your bodyguard.”
“There is no affair!”
“Maybe. It doesn’t matter. The claim is enough for the press to twist the most insignificant touch into a seedy love,” he responded with sureness. He was right. The media craved sordid stories, even if they had to make nothing into something because the public loved drama. “Even Theo won’t be able to brush it aside because this video I have of your bodyguard going into your bedroom that night after he attacked me? Mmmm… definitely suggests something else. So much heat between you two, no one really watching you two could deny it.”
Bloody hell. Lord William followed us? Took video?
“You are despicable.”
“Thank you.” It was like I could feel his grin over the phone. “See you soon, my dear. If you are on your best behavior, I might suddenly have great sympathy for your family’s predicament. I can be very kind and forgiving to those who prove themselves to me.”
He hung up.
The mobile slipped from my ear, my chest heaving with fear and disgust. I watched the fog curl around my ankles, a few drops of rain tapping at my cheek. But I felt no cold over my skin.
It was all on the inside. The implications of this meeting, the trouble my family was in, froze my soul into ice bricks of terror, sorrow, revulsion, and despair.
What the hell had I just done?
Chapter 25
“Landen… pick up. Pick up,” I hissed into the mobile, my feet moving back and forth, indenting the same ten meters as I paced over the wet grass, my brain rolling over and over what just