Take the Key and Lock Her Up (Embassy Row #3)(13)

But I have to trust someone, and right now she’s my only option.

“Some might say you’re foolish for coming here,” she says.

I have to laugh. “It won’t be the first time they’ve said it. Trust me.”

The birds swarm around us, scattering on the ground as she tosses a handful of crumbs onto the grass.

“I was very pleased to hear from you, Grace. Surprised, but pleased.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

“I’m glad.”

“I want to stop running.”

“That’s good, Grace. Let us—”

I spin on her. “I want to end it.”

The PM studies me. We’re thousands of miles from Adria, but it feels like we’re right back where we started.

“If the royal family is after me, I want to prove it. I want to …” But I honestly don’t know how that sentence is supposed to end. “I want to end it,” I say again. “And the Society can help me. Or you can get out of my way.”

“I see,” the PM says. I know she knows I’m serious—that I’ll burn them down. All of them. I won’t stop until the wall of Adria is nothing but a pile of smoldering dust.

“Now you can stand with me or you can stand against me, but you should know I have three conditions.”

If PM Petrovic is angry with me, she doesn’t show it. She just gives a little laugh, as if she’d known this moment was coming all along. Her eyes actually twinkle.

“Of course you do.”

“First, you clear Alexei’s name. He didn’t kill anyone. It’s not right that John Spencer’s murder has been blamed on him just because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t care what kind of story you have to spin or how many lies you have to tell. After this, Alexei stops being a wanted man. Okay?”

When the PM looks into my eyes, I can’t read the expression that lives there.

“Can you do it?” I ask, and she looks as if I might be joking—like no one could possibly be this na?ve.

She tosses another handful of crumbs to the pigeons and says, “Yes. We can do it.”

She means it, I can tell. And at last I breathe a little easier, at least for Alexei’s sake.

“Second,” I say, because it feels like I’m on a roll, “my brother stays out of this.”

This time the PM stops laughing.

“Your brother is the rightful king of Adria, Ms. Blakely. He is very much in this.”

“And that fact almost killed him,” I shoot back. “You have me. You have the spare, so you don’t need the heir. I am expendable, so you can have me. And if I’m not good enough, then I will get off this bench and disappear and no one will ever see me again. Understood?”

For once, the PM looks at me as if I might be more than a reckless teenager, a liability. A girl. She’s looking at me as if I might actually be worth a sliver of her respect. And, grudgingly, she gives it.

“I understand.” She nods and tosses the last of the crumbs to the birds before turning back to me. “And your final condition, Grace?”

She smiles like maybe Alexandra Petrovic and I are becoming friends. Or maybe we’re just starting to not be enemies.

“My third requirement is the hardest, I’m afraid.”

“And that is?”

“Stop lying to me.”

I expect her to laugh again, to look at me like I’m playing dress-up inside my mother’s world. But the PM simply rises. For a second, I think she’s going to say no, to turn her back on me and all my drama.

But instead she raises one eyebrow and says, “Very well, then.”

She extends a hand, and I rise and take it. I know we’re sealing our deal—that we’re partners. Allies. But mostly, she’s just the devil I know.

I tell myself it’s going to be okay, and maybe I even let myself believe it. But then the PM glances behind me, gives a nod. “Go ahead.”

Before I can react, there’s a hand on my shoulder, a pinch in my neck. I turn to see a guard behind me holding a syringe.

He’s tall and broad, like Dominic. Like Dad. So I don’t try to fight. I just spin on Prime Minister Petrovic, staring daggers, feeling betrayed. I want to shout, but my tongue is too thick and the words are too heavy.

“It’s not personal, Ms. Blakely. But I can’t deny it’s fitting.”

I want to hit—to run—but my head is starting to swirl. My legs turn to rubber and the men take me by the arms. Eventually, it’s too hard to keep my eyes open. I’m just looking for a soft place to fall as they toss me into the backseat of a limousine. Soon, there’s nothing left but darkness and laughter.





When I wake, it feels like I’ve slept for weeks—years. And maybe I have.

Groggily, I push myself upright on the narrow sofa. My neck hurts. My throat aches. My legs almost refuse to move as I try to swing them to the floor. There’s barely any light, but my eyes are so used to the black by now that I can see the smooth walls that surround me, the bare bulb that swings by itself from the ceiling, dusty and dim. The room is small, maybe four by five. If not for the open, empty doorway, it would feel like a cell.

I tell myself that the light is electric—not gas. The floor beneath me is tile. I’m not in the tunnels beneath Adria; I know it in my gut. This room is dim and quiet and damp, but it is not the Society’s main headquarters, of that much I am certain. But that’s all I know for sure.