My Fake Husband Was Bleeding On My Floor — Then The Royal Guard Arrived
Part 2
The words hung in the stale air of my tiny living room, heavy and suffocating. Your Majesty. My brain refused to process the syllables.
The floorboards beneath my feet felt entirely unsteady, as though the foundation of the building had suddenly turned to liquid.
Callum—my Callum, who left wet towels on the bathroom floor and burned scrambled eggs on Sunday mornings—stood frozen, his broad shoulders rigidly tense beneath his faded flannel shirt.
“Get out.” His voice lacked the gentle warmth I knew, replaced by a glacial, echoing authority that sent a sharp tremor down my spine.
The two men in immaculate dark suits did not flinch.
They remained anchored to my cheap linoleum floor, their heads bowed, a silent testament to a stubborn loyalty I could not comprehend.
They ignored his command, immovable monoliths invading my sanctuary.
The door hinges let out an agonizing squeal, pushed wider by a slender, leather-gloved hand.
A woman stepped over the threshold, bringing with her the sharp, metallic scent of ozone and an unbearably expensive floral perfume.
She belonged in a grand, sweeping palace, not a cramped third-floor walk-up with peeling floral wallpaper and water-stained plaster ceilings.
Her posture was razor-straight, draped in a masterfully tailored charcoal coat that likely cost more than my entire year’s salary.
Ice-blue eyes assessed the room with a surgical detachment, finally dragging their contemptuous weight over my worn sweatpants and oversized, fraying sweater.
She looked at me not as a person, but as a smudge of dirt on an otherwise pristine windowpane.
“He ordered you to leave, gentlemen.
Wait in the corridor.” The men rose in seamless unison, vacating the space without a single glance backward.
The woman closed the door with a soft, definitive click, trapping the three of us in the suffocating tension.
“I am Beatrice, Envoy of the Crown.” She offered no handshake, no polite inclination of her head.
Instead, she moved with predatory grace toward the center of the room and placed a sleek, heavy metallic briefcase onto my scuffed, uneven coffee table.
The substantial thud rattled my cheap ceramic mugs.
“We have a rather delicate, unfortunate situation, Nora Hayes.” Beatrice flicked the silver latches.
The case sprung open, revealing suffocating rows of crisp, banded currency.
Millions of dollars.
Right there, resting casually beside my half-eaten morning toast.
“A regrettable indiscretion.
The Crown is willing to compensate you extraordinarily well for your immediate, untraceable disappearance and the swift, quiet annulment of this absolute farce of a marriage.” Farce.
Disposable trash.
The unspoken insults slashed through the numb fog wrapping tightly around my mind.
I looked at Callum, desperately searching his face for the ordinary man I loved, the man who held me when I cried over lost jobs and unpaid electricity bills.
Callum stepped forcefully between us, becoming a towering, solid shield blocking Beatrice’s icy, dissecting gaze.
“Close that case immediately, Beatrice.
Do not dare disrespect my wife.” His fists clenched violently at his sides, his knuckles turning a stark bone-white.
The raw danger radiating from him terrified me almost as much as the money did.
The dizzying reality crashed down upon my shoulders, an invisible weight crushing the very breath from my burning lungs.
King.
He was a literal, ruling sovereign of an entire nation.
He held the power of armies, the wealth of empires, the history of a bloodline stretching back centuries.
Every quiet late-night whisper we shared in the dark, every mutual struggle over scraping together rent money, every tender promise of a simple, unassuming future together fractured into a million jagged pieces of deception.
My husband was a monarch wrapped in a masterful, flawless illusion.
The staggering mountains of crisp cash sat there in the open case, glowing with an unnatural malice, mocking my pathetic, desperately ordinary existence.
Would I let them erase my existence, or would I fight for a man who didn’t even belong to my world?
