Royal love

Chapter 57

Sebastian folds his arms once the groceries are all put away. I'm standing a few feet across from him, on the other side of the kitchen.

His house isn't the biggest. I looked around while he was gone. Two bedrooms, a bathroom the size of a bathtub, a kitchen and a living room. The living room and kitchen are the two biggest rooms in his house and they still aren't huge.

The kitchen has a drawer for utensils like spoons, forks, knives, and straws. Another drawer for cooking utensils like spatulas or the really sharp kind of knives, but most of his drawers and cabinets are empty. Like his fridge.

There's a glass table, that seats four people, in the more secluded part of the kitchen. There are three walls around it and each wall has a window.

The cabinets and drawers are all wooden and so are the floors. The counters are black. His fridge is not normal size but it's not mini either, it doesn't fit into the hole in the wall all the way like it should.

"So, what questions do you have?" He asks me, grabbing the baking supplies.

I think for a minute, track his every step. "Why did they want you to pay my ransom?" I ask. "I hate to say it but you don't look as rich as anyone else they could have asked."

He lets out a short, quiet laugh. "Your not wrong," he says before looking into my eyes, his dark brown orbs staring into my soul. "They've been on my tail for years. They know I have information about the royal family and if I hadn't payed your ransom they would have killed you and then tortured info out of me."

I sigh, sitting down at the glass table. "How do you know about the royal family?" I ask, preparing for the answer I know I'm going to get.

Sebastian looks at me with sad eyes. "He never told you," he says.

When I don't respond, he sighs.

"I was his boyfriend."

I feel the tears forming in my eyes.

He never told me.

A breath escapes me and then there's silence.

"He wanted to tell you, Adeline."

I nod, composing myself. I clear my throat to get rid of the soreness building up from the held back tears.

His lips form a line before he exhaled, blowing them back out into their normal position. "He told me a lot about you," he says slowly. "It's an honor to finally meet you in the flesh."

I nod.

"Do you have anything to do with his death?" I ask, carefully watching his face for a hint of a lie.

"No."

I find none.

"Do you know what happened?" I ask.

He nods, sighing. "I heard from the gangs of the city not too far from here that the mafia wanted the royal family dead. I begged him to be more careful where he went and try to stay safe but he kept going out." He sits down across from me with cookie ingredients.

"One night, after a fight with your parents, he went to a bar and got really drunk," his voice breaks. He pauses to compose himself, when he's ready, he continues. "He—"

"What was the fight about," I interrupt, not ready to hear the next part.

"Your parents, they made him watch things, weird things. They believed it would 'set him straight'"

I knew what they forced him to watch.

"Your dad hated him for being gay," he says. "'It's not natural' we're words I heard every time Alex would come over after a fight with him."

He begins making the mix, probably to distract himself from what he's saying.

"We never got serious because your brother was too scared he would mess my life up or I would get hurt because of him."

I nod, slowly.

"So... he went back to the palace drunk. His dad smelled the beer on him and sent him to his room." Sebastian takes another break. "The next morning he brought me a note he found in his bed that night. It wasn't from his mom or his dad, it was from a gang that had been in his room that night."

Sebastian gets up and disappears around the corner, when he reappears he's holding a crumbled up piece of paper.

"He told me no one would believe him when he showed them the note, he said they all told him he probably wrote it to himself while he was drunk out of his mind," he says handing me the note. "As if someone would write something like that to themselves."

I look at the note, not reading it for a second, taking in the sent of it, beer, the look of it, old, crumbled.

We don't want a gay king, count your days, Alexander.
-Spear gang

"It's horrible, I know," Sebastian says. "He was extremely paranoid after that. I will admit, I was glad he was being more cautious but it wasn't like him at all, and he wouldn't even come out to visit me. He only wrote notes for a month before he died."

Tears start swearing in my eyes again. My poor brother.

"One day when the letters had stopped for over a week, I went out to go to the palace, of course they wouldn't let me in but I knew something was wrong. I yelled at the guards that something happened to the prince but they called me crazy and sent me away. The next thing I know, the news tells me young prince Alexander committed suicide just the night before."

I feel my checks tingle as the tears stream down my face.

"His suicide note was never read to anyone, but your parents mailed me a note he was writing to me. He never got to finish writing it," he says his eyes now tear coated.

"I knew he hadn't killed himself, I knew someone had done it to him. So I spent years of my life trying to figure it out, and when I did, there was nothing I could do."

Word count: 1025
10:48 am
9-10-23
(Not revised)
Oop