The Crown Jewels (14 page)

I wasn’t just a prick, I didn’t deserve a girl like Julia. Shame filled my heart for setting her up like that. I never expected this to happen, though. But now that it had, it only opened my eyes to what a loser I was.

I had to do what was right for Julia. I knew then that I’d have to leave. I also knew I’d never have the courage to tell her to her face that I was leaving.

I felt awful about that too, but I just couldn’t do it.

Hell, with my reputation, I wouldn’t be surprised if she expected me to bail on her anyway. It was what I was known for, after all.

JEWELS

All through lunch with my father, I had to suck up my feelings about the jewels being stolen. Vicky was furious, and my father left her alone to deal with the aftermath of having the palace burglarized.

I acted outraged and concerned, but inside I was full of shame and guilt. Why didn’t I think to close the stupid door behind me? Will hadn’t even reset the alarm on the cases after pulling out his crown. The crown that I had asked him to put on.

We wouldn’t even have been there if it hadn’t been for me. And if I hadn’t slapped him like a crazy woman then he wouldn’t have left so abruptly.

This was all my fault.

And I had absolutely no idea how to fix it.

I was beyond grateful that Will at least had the good sense to go in and delete the video surveillance of the two of us together. At least there was that silver lining.

“How’ve you been getting along at the palace?” my father asked. He was sitting across from me at a small street side cafe in SoFo on Södermalm Island. Trendy hipsters streamed in and out of the cafe, as my father tried to have a normal conversation that didn’t involve mysterious jewel heists.

“It’s okay. Honestly, I’m ready to get back home. And I was hoping you and I were going to spend more time together.”

“I know, things have been hectic, Jewels. I was hoping to spend more time with you at the ball the other night, also. In fact, I was hoping to have a father-daughter dance at some point. But somehow, I never saw you again.”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I wasn’t feeling well, and the crowd was overwhelming me, so I retired early to my room. I would have said goodnight, but you and Vicky looked like you were having a wonderful time and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“You can interrupt anytime, darling. You’re my daughter,” he smiled. “I love you, Jewels.”

“I love you, too, Dad,” I replied. Our food arrived, thankfully not leaving much room for deep conversation. Or any more lies.

He dropped me back off at the palace, promising to call me later when he was finished with work. The palace was eerily quiet when I walked back in, with only the staff haunting the hallways silently. You could almost cut the tension in the air, and I retreated quickly to my room to call Sally.

I needed to talk to her desperately. When I pulled my cell phone out of my purse, I saw that she’d already called me three times and sent me five texts while I was at lunch.

I read the texts and my heart began pounding violently in my chest.

“Julia! OMG! Why aren’t you answering your phone!?”

“This is huge. Are you okay?”

“You’re driving me crazy - pick up the phone!”

“Julia, please tell me you haven’t jumped off a turret or something? Call me, dammit!”

“You’re all over the news. If you don’t call me right away, I’m getting on the next plane to Sweden!”

By the time, I’d read the last text, I was nauseous. What news? I dialed her number, terrified of what she was going to tell me.

She answered before the first ring even finished.

“Juliaaaaaaa! Where have you been!”

“At lunch with my father. What the hell is going on?”

“You haven’t seen it? Oh, my God, Julia, you really haven’t?”

“Seen what, Sally? Tell me!”

“The news. You’re all over the news! You’re on TMZ, ET, CNN, there’s an article on the Huffington Post, the BBC…”

“The news? Why? What?”

“Oh, honey. Someone leaked a video. Of you. And Will. Kissing? In some dark basement or something. Where were you? And then you slapped him! Julia, I can’t believe you slapped him! It was actually kind of hot.”

I dropped the phone and sank to the floor.

“Julia? Julia! Answer me!” I could still hear Sally’s voice coming from the phone beside me. I picked it back up.

“Sally, I gotta go.”

“Julia, don’t hang up on me—,” I hung up the phone to the sound of her still yelling at me, and reached for the remote. I was just about to turn the television on when I heard a commotion outside my window.

I ran out to the balcony and saw a swarm of reporters and photographers at the entrance to the palace. The guards were holding them back as they tried to lunge past them to get to Bertolf, who was holding the door open with a bewildered look on his face.

Was that the
paparazzi
? The scene was chaotic, countless microphones were being pushed in Bertolf’s face as he tried to close the door to camera flashes going off. The guards kept pushing them back until they were off the stairs and they began setting up camp in the garden across the drive.

I ran back inside, and turned on the television. My stomach churned when I saw my worst nightmare come to life.

Me. Will. Kissing. A lot. His mouth on my breasts. His hand clutching my ass. My head thrown back in ecstasy. The look on his face as I slapped him.

The look on my face as I watched him leave.

Exposed. Plastered all over every television, every website, and soon to be every gossip rag in the world. I grabbed my computer, and went to the TMZ website.

There I was.

The headline?

Mystery Woman Gets a Good Look at the Crown Jewels.

I read the article, and by the time I was finished, I was shaking.

The slap heard around the world! Who’s the mystery woman who got away with almost knocking out the Prince of Sweden? Word on the street is that she only did what many other women have wished to do. Prince Wilhelm is known for his playboy ways. Does this mean he’s finally met his match?

If anyone knows who the mystery girl is, please contact TMZ.

“Oh, fuck,” I said to the empty room. The blue canopy swayed in the breeze around me and I threw myself on the bed.

I looked over at the nightside table.

The emerald necklace was gone.

WILL

“Not now, Bertolf.” I was in my room, laid up in my bed with Willy, trying to hide from the entire world, when my isolation was rudely interrupted by Bertolf’s incessant knocking.

“Her Majesty requests your immediate arrival in her chambers, My Lord,” he said through the door. “May I come in?”

“Fine!” He walked in, and stopped at the foot of my bed.

“Her Majesty insists you come right away, My Lord.”

“Now?” I was not in the mood for my mother’s bullshit right now. The SOPA would figure out who took the crown, and we just needed to leave the investigation up to them. I was confident Jewels and I were in the clear, and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

“Now, sir.”

“Fuck, whatever,” I responded, getting out of bed and walking to her quarters. I knew better than to refuse my mother, or I’d never hear the end of it. She wasn’t the most forgiving person in the world, either.

The energy of her fury hit me with the force of an inferno as I passed through the arched threshold of her chambers. She was alone, and Bertolf, who had followed behind me the entire way like a shepherd herding sheep, backed out without a word as soon I was in. The heavy wooden doors closed with a soft thud and you could have heard a pin drop.

If it hadn’t been for the thumping heart that was pounding against my chest so intensely, I mean. As it was, all I could hear was blood rushing through my veins.

The look on my mother’s face was unlike any other. I’d only seen her look like this twice before.

I shuddered to think of the rage that she expressed back then.

The first time, I’d been seventeen, rebellious, reckless and daring. I’d been hanging out with an older crowd, and I’d gotten my first taste of the forbidden fruits - booze, weed, naked girls. Suddenly, I wasn’t the perfect Prince anymore. I stopped going to mass, much to my mother’s dismay. I snuck out of the palace late one night, slithering through the musty, dark, underground tunnels that my Great Grandfather, King Gustav the Third, had insisted be installed in a moment of paranoia over the Russo-Swedish War of 1788. He’d insisted on his own secret escape route. He entrusted only one person to build it, and it took the man eighteen months to complete. Catherine and I had spent many hours hiding in them and exploring them in our childhood.

My friends picked me up on the other side of the palace gates, and the party began. I ended up in a fight at a bar that night, my friends having snuck me in. I’d ended up getting a little too intimate with a woman on the dance floor before realizing she had a date. By the time her date had attempted to punch me, people had begun to recognize me and pictures were being taken of the two of us wrestling on the dance floor, the disco lights flashing below us on the retro dance floor.

The cops were called, and I was escorted home to the palace in a police car.

When my mother greeted me at the door that night, she had the same look on her face that she did now.

The second time was when I called off my engagement with Seraphina. Mother adored Seraphina and she approved of her pedigree. Her parents were part of the elite crowd of high society snobs, herself representing Sweden in the International Debutante Ball. She’d won Girl of the Year of 2014. Whatever that meant.

Seraphina and I dated on and off for a few years. She was practically part of the family. A perfect date when I needed one for some mind-numbingly boring Royal event. She was perfectly mannered and dressed, at all times. After many unsubtle suggestions from my mother, I proposed, even though my heart wasn’t really in it.

Seraphina was beautiful, sure. She would have made a lovely bride, a perfect Princess. But she was boring as a rock, and shortly after I proposed, panic set in. I broke up with her two days before the engagement was set to be announced. When my mother found out, she was furious.

Just as she was now.

I struggled to remind myself that I was a grown man and I could handle her. But, somehow, when your mom looks at you like you just broke your sister’s leg or something, you’re transported into your younger self.

“What is it, Mother?”

“Have you seen the news, Wilhelm?”

“Nope.”

“Turn it on. Now,” she snapped. I hit a button on the wall, and the wooden partition hiding her television opened. I turned it on and gasped.

“What the hell?” I exclaimed, walking closer to the screen.

It was me. And Jewels. The picture was grainy, but it was real. The footage I had erased, sure I would never see again, was staring back at me. Like a demon risen from the dead, I looked at it in horror.

My lips, Jewels breasts, my hands caressing her hips, groping her ass. When she slapped me on the screen, I flinched.

I shook my head. I hadn’t flinched when it actually happened.

Somehow I knew she would stop me that night. I certainly didn’t know it was going to be a slap that everyone and their mother was going to see, though.

My mother. Oh, for fuck’s sake.

I turned slowly to face her.

It wasn’t pretty.

“How could you, Wilhelm?”

“Mother, I —,”

“Silence!” she demanded.

“You’ve disgraced the entire family! My God, you’ve disgraced the entire nation! What kind of man have you become, Wilhelm? I taught you to respect women, to respect yourself. To respect our family. To respect
me
!”

“This is the ultimate betrayal, Wilhelm. What will Ben think? Are you trying to sabotage my marriage to him, is that it? Or is this just a game to you? Is Jewels just another floozy in your long line of whores?”

“Jewels isn’t a wh—,”

“Silence!”

I took a deep breath, determined to survive her barrage on my character. I wasn’t about to just stand by and let her disparage Jewels, though. None of this was her fault.

I continued to silently endure her verbal lashing, the words hurled at me one by one until smoke was practically escaping from her ears.

After I while, I spaced out, only a few words soaking into my awareness…laughing stock…embarrassment…disappointment.

By the time I heard ‘get out’, I was beyond ready to do just that.

I was at a complete loss as to how this happened, or how to fix it. Any damage control that existed was far beyond anything I could come up with right now. I was sure I deleted the part of the tape that we were on. None of this made any sense at all.

I raced to find Jewels before she discovered this nightmare on her own.

I knocked gingerly on her door and waited. The relief on her face when she opened the door warmed my heart. When she threw her arms around my neck, I embraced her tightly, burying my face in her hair..

“Will!” she exclaimed. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

She pulled me inside and closed the door.

Her suitcase lay open on her bed, and she was frantically rifling through it.

“Jewels, I have some really bad news.”

“If you’re talking about the tape, I’ve already seen it,” she said quickly. “There’s paparazzi crawling all over the outside of the palace! A couple of photographers tried to climb up one of the turrets but one of the guards pulled them down. It was wild! But that’s not —,”

“—Jewels, I’m so sorry!” I said, rushing to lock her balcony doors and draw the curtains. “I swear I deleted the tape. I can’t believe this happened!”

“They don’t know who I am. Why didn’t they say anything on the news about the missing crown, though? Will, I have to tell you about the em—,”

“—hjärtat, they’ll figure out who you are soon enough. They’ll figure everything else out, too. These people are vultures, you have to understand. They’ll stop at nothing. Once they figure out we’re about to be related, they’ll be frothing at the mouth.”