Broken Prince: A Novel (The Royals Book 2) (2 page)

T
wo hours later
, I’m freaking out. It’s past midnight, and Ella isn’t back.

Would she just come home and yell at me already? I need her to tell me that I’m an asshole who isn’t worth her time. I need her in my face, spitting fire at me. I need her to scream at me, kick me, punch me.

I fucking need her.

I check my phone. It’s been hours since she left. I punch in her number, but it rings and rings.

Another call and I’m shuttled to voicemail.

I text,
Where RU?

No response.

Dad’s worried.

I type out the lie hoping that it gets a response, but my phone remains silent. Maybe she’s blocked my number? The thought stings, but it’s not totally crazy, so I run inside and go up to my brother’s room. Ella can’t have blocked us all.

Easton’s still sleeping, but his phone is charging on his nightstand. I flick it on and type out another message. She likes Easton. She paid off his debt. She’d answer Easton, wouldn’t she?

Hey. Reed told me something happened. U OK?

Nothing.

Maybe she parked down the road and is walking on the shore? I pocket my brother’s phone in case she decides to contact him and hurry downstairs toward the back patio.

The shoreline is completely empty, so I jog down to the Worthington estate, a property four houses down. She’s not there, either.

I look around, down the rocky shoreline, out into the ocean, and see nothing. No person. No imprints in the sand. Nothing.

Frustration gives way to panic as I race back to the house and climb into my Range Rover. Finger on the start button, I rapidly tap my fist against the dashboard. Think. Think.
Think.

Valerie’s. She must be at Valerie’s.

In less than ten minutes, I’m idling outside of Val’s house, but there’s no sign of Ella’s sporty blue convertible on the street. Leaving the Rover’s engine running, I hop out and hurry up the driveway. Ella’s car isn’t back there, either.

I glance at my phone again. No messages. None on Easton’s, either. The display tells me I have football practice in twenty minutes, which means Ella’s expected at the bakery where she works. We usually ride together. Even after she got her car—a gift from my dad—we rode together.

Ella said it was because she didn’t like to drive. I told her it was dangerous to drive in the morning. We told each other lies. We lied to ourselves because neither of us was willing to admit the truth: we couldn’t resist each other. At least that’s the way it was for me. From the moment she walked in the door, all big eyes and guarded hope, I couldn’t keep away.

My instincts had screamed at me that she was trouble. My instincts were wrong. She wasn’t trouble. I was. Still am.

Reed, the destroyer.

It’d be a cool nickname if it wasn’t my life and hers that I’m taking down.

The bakery’s parking lot is empty when I arrive. After five minutes of nonstop pounding on the door, the owner—Lucy, I think—appears with a frown.

“We don’t open for another hour,” she informs me.

“I’m Reed Royal, Ella’s…” What am I? Her boyfriend? Her stepbrother? What? “Friend.” Hell, I’m not even that. “Is she here? There’s a family emergency.”

“No, she never showed up.” Lucy’s brow creases with worry. “I called her and she didn’t answer. She’s such a good employee, I thought maybe she was sick and couldn’t call in.”

My heart sinks. Ella’s never missed a day at the bakery even though it requires her to get up at the ass-crack of dawn and work nearly three hours before classes start.

“Oh, okay, she must be home in bed,” I mumble, backing away.

“Wait a minute,” Lucy calls after me. “What’s going on? Does your father know Ella is missing?”

“She’s not missing, ma’am,” I call back, already halfway to my car. “She’s at home. Like you said, sick. In bed.”

I peel out of the parking lot and call Coach. “I’m not gonna make it to practice. Family emergency,” I repeat.

I shut out the shouted expletives from Coach Lewis. He winds down after a few minutes. “All right, son. But I expect your ass to be in uniform bright and early tomorrow.”

“Yessir.”

Back home once again, I find our housekeeper, Sandra, has arrived to make breakfast.

“You see Ella?” I ask the plump brunette.

“Can’t say that I have.” Sandra checks the clock. “She’s usually gone by now. So are you, for that matter. What’s going on? Don’t you have practice?”

“Coach had a family emergency,” I lie. I’m so damn good at lying. It becomes almost second nature when you hide the truth every hour of every day.

Sandra tsks. “Hope it’s nothing too serious.”

“Me, too,” I answer. “Me, too.”

Upstairs, I enter the room I should have checked before racing off. Maybe she crept in while I was trying to find her. But Ella’s bedroom is dead silent. Her bed is still made. The desk is spotless.

I check her bathroom, which also looks untouched. Ditto with the closet. All her stuff is hanging on matching wooden hangers. Her shoes are lined up in a neat row on the floor. There are unopened boxes and bags still stuffed with clothes that Brooke probably picked out for her.

Forcing myself not to feel bad about invading her privacy, I dig through her nightstand—empty. I flipped her room once, back when I still didn’t trust her, and she always kept a book of poetry and a man’s watch in the nightstand. The watch was an exact replica of my dad’s. Hers had belonged to Dad’s best friend Steve, Ella’s bio-dad.

I pause in the middle of the room and look around. There’s nothing here to indicate her presence. Not her phone. Not her book. Not her…oh hell no, her backpack is gone.

I tear out of the room and down the hall to Easton’s.

“East, wake up. East!” I say sharply.

“What?” He groans. “Is it time to get up?” His eyes flicker open and he squints. “Oh shit. I’m late for practice. Why aren’t you there already?”

He shoots out of bed, but I grab his arm before he can dart off. “We’re not going to practice. Coach knows.”

“What? Why—”

“Forget that right now. How much was your debt?”

“My what?”

“How much did you owe the bookie?”

He blinks at me. “Eight grand. Why?”

I do some quick math. “That means Ella’s got about two G’s left, right?”

“Ella?” He frowns. “What about her?”

“I think she ran.”

“Ran where?”

“Ran away. Ran off,” I growl. I shove away from the bed and stalk to the window. “Dad paid her to stay here. Gave her ten grand. Think about it, East. He had to pay this orphan who was stripping for a living ten grand to come live with us. And he was probably gonna pay that to her every month.”

“Why’d she leave?” he asks in confusion, still half asleep.

I continue to stare out the window. Once his grogginess wears off, he’ll put it together.

“What did you do?”

Yep, here we go.

The floor creaks as he whips around the room. Behind me I can hear him muttering curses under his breath while he dresses.

“Doesn’t matter,” I say impatiently. Turning back, I give him the rundown of the places I’ve been. “Where do you think she is?”

“She’s got enough for a plane ticket.”

“But she’s careful with her money. She hasn’t spent hardly any of it while she’s been here.”

Easton nods thoughtfully. Then we lock eyes and speak in unison, almost as if we’re the twins of the Royal household, instead of our brothers, Sawyer and Sebastian. “GPS.”

We call the GPS service Atlantic Aviation owns and that my dad installs in every car he’s ever bought. The helpful assistant tells us that the new Audi S5 is parked at the bus station.

We’re out the door before she even starts to recite the address.

* * *

“
S
he’s seventeen
. About this tall.” I hold my hand beneath my chin as I describe Ella to the ticket clerk. “Blonde hair. Blue eyes.” Eyes like the Atlantic. Stormy gray, cool blue, fathoms deep. I got lost in that gaze more than once. “She left her phone behind.” I hold up my cell. “We need to get it to her.”

The ticket clerk clicks her tongue. “Oh sure. She was in such a hurry to get away. She bought a ticket to Gainesville. Her grandmother died, you know.”

Both East and I nod. “What time did the bus leave?”

“Oh, hours ago. She’d be there by now.” The ticket lady shakes her head in dismay. “She was crying like her heart had been broken. You don’t see that anymore—kids caring about old folks like that. It was sweet. Felt terrible for her.”

East clenches his fists beside me. Anger radiates off of him in waves. If we were alone, one of those fists would be in my face.

“Thanks, ma’am.”

“No problem, dear.” She dismisses us with a nod.

We exit the building and stop at Ella’s car. I hold out my hand and Easton slaps her spare keys into my palm.

Inside, I find her key fob in the middle console, along with her poetry book and what looks like the title of the car stuck between the pages. In the glove compartment, she’d stashed her phone, which still shows all my unread text messages.

She left everything behind. Everything associated with the Royals.

“We gotta get to Gainesville,” Easton says flatly.

“I know.”

“Are we telling Dad?”

Informing Callum Royal means we could take his plane. We’d be there in an hour. Otherwise it’s a six-and-a-half-hour drive.

“I don’t know.” The urgency to find her has lessened. I know where she is now. I can get to her. I just need to figure out what angle I should take.

“What’d you do?” my brother demands again.

I’m not ready for the wave of hatred he’s going to send my way, so I stay quiet.

“Reed.”

“She caught me with Brooke,” I say hoarsely.

His jaw falls open. “Brooke? Dad’s Brooke?”

“Yes.” I force myself to face him.

“What the
hell
? How often have you been with Brooke?”

“A couple times,” I admit. “Not recently, though. And definitely not last night. I didn’t touch her, East.”

His jaw clenches. He’s dying to take a swing at me, but he won’t. Not in public. He’d heard the same things from Mom.
Keep the Royal name clean, boys. It’s easy to tear it down, so much harder to build it up.

“You should be strung up by your nuts and hung out to dry.” He spits at my feet. “If you don’t find Ella and bring her back, I’ll be first in line to see it done.”

“That’s fair.” I try to stay calm. No point in getting upset. No point in tipping this car over. No point in roaring even though I’m dying to open my mouth and release all of my anger and self-loathing into the air.

“Fair?” He snorts with disgust. “So you don’t give a shit that Ella’s in some college town getting groped by drunks?”

“She’s a survivor. I’m sure she’s safe.” The words sound so ridiculous I practically gag as they come out. Ella’s a gorgeous girl, and she’s all by herself. There’s no telling what could happen to her. “You want to drive her car back home before we head to Gainesville?”

Easton gapes at me.

“Well?” I ask impatiently.

“Sure. Why not?” He rips the key fob from my hand. “I mean, who cares that she’s a hot seventeen-year-old by herself, carrying almost two grand in cash?” My fingers curl into fists. “It’s not like some junkie high on meth is gonna look at her and think, ‘there’s an easy mark. That five-foot-something chick who weighs less than my leg isn’t gonna beat me off’”—it’s becoming hard to breathe—“and I’m sure every dude she runs into has good intentions. None of them will drag her down a dark alley and run train on her until she’s—”

“Shut the fuck up!” I roar.

“Finally.” East throws up his hands.

“What do you mean?” I’m practically panting with rage. The pictures Easton painted with his words make me wish I could Hulk out and run to Gainesville, destroying everything in my path until I find her.

“You’ve been walking around like she’s nothing to you. Maybe you’re made of stone, but I like Ella. She…she was good for us.” His grief is almost tangible.

“I know.” The words are wrenched out of me. “I know, goddammit.” My throat tightens to the point of pain. “But…
we
weren’t good for her.”

Gideon, our older brother, tried to tell me that from the beginning.
Stay the hell away from her. She doesn’t need our kind of drama. Don’t ruin her like I ruined—

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What it sounds like. We’re poison, East. Every single one of us. I slept with Dad’s girlfriend to get back at him for being a dick to Mom. The twins are involved in shit I don’t even want to know about. Your gambling is out of control. Gideon is—” I stop. Gid’s living in his own hellhole right now, but that’s not something Easton needs to know about. “We’re screwed in the head, man. Maybe she’s better off without us.”

“That’s not true.”

But I think it might be. We’re no good for her. All Ella has ever wanted is to live a normal, regular life. She can’t have that in the Royal household.

If I wasn’t completely selfish, I’d walk away. I’d convince East that the best thing for Ella is to be as far away from us as possible.