Princely Bastard Read Online Free PDF Page B

comes the voice of another woman, “you deny you’re wanted for manslaughter?”
    “Yeah, I deny it.”
    He’ll live. Maybe.
    I think about these words—words I can faintly recall from last night, and I also think about all the other guys I’ve knocked out over the years. Some badly. And I suddenly become frightened, with the reporters not helping at all. All at once ridiculous questions fly at me in a hundred directions. They really believe I’m a fucking prince.
    But I don’t. So, while shaking my head, I back up into the building, and I make sure the door is securely closed. Then I run up the four flights of stairs as fast as I can. I run and run, trying to get away from more than just the people outside—while wishing Aimee hadn’t left. I wish this hard.
    Unfortunately, as I reach my floor I know this wish won’t come any more true than the others I wished before. So, I just ramble down the corridor toward my apartment. Though as I get to the door I stop. I stop because I feel something in my back—something I’m pretty sure is a gun.
    “What do you want?” I say, after raising my hands.
    “I’m here to help you, Mr. Stuart,” a man tells me, in what sounds like a British accent.
    “Help me with what?”
    “Help you commit suicide.”

chapter five
     
    Aimee
     
    I REACH THE bedroom window and stop, right before turning back to the door—a door leading to Mark.
    I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go anywhere, and I hope he calls me. I hope because I really don’t want to return to who and what I was.
    But Mark doesn’t say a word. And, not knowing what else to do, I open the bedroom window—and I immediately sense it: it’s hot out, much hotter than yesterday. It’s summer hot. And I get the feeling that the weather in LA is like the neighborhoods—going from one to the other at random.
    But I have much bigger problems than the temperature. So, I look down at the alley many stories below. It seems empty, apart from a few parked cars—and, after a brief bout of hesitation—with my legs both hurting and unsteady from the previous night—I step outside onto the rusty fire escape.
    Instantly, I wish I hadn’t. Because the whole thing creaks loudly and shakes a bit—and the metal even gives a little to my feet. And I wonder when someone stepped on this last, and if it were after I was born. But I continue downward anyway, slowly and carefully, with the creaking and shaking only getting worse.
    Finally, I reach the bottom landing and stop. I stop because the ladder doesn’t extend any farther and I’m nowhere close to the ground. Still I close my eyes and bend my knees, and pretend I’m gonna jump.
    Though I don’t pretend long, as I hear voices—and I open my eyes and see a pair of reporters talking to each other at the mouth of the alley, with cameras in their hands.
    I just know they’ll hear me if I jump, so I take a deep breath and lean against the brick wall of the building—and wish my mother was here, and not helping some girls halfway around the world. Because I need her. I need her badly. Which reminds me of a time when she was the one in need.
    AFTER MY FIRST encounters with Rudi, for months she visited me at the home, with each visit no more than a few weeks apart. She also emailed me almost daily, and phoned me, too—and made plans for future visits.
    During these, she would take me to exotic restaurants—restaurants I never imagined going to in a million years. And afterward we’d often take long walks, along the Freedom Trail in downtown Boston or on the beaches of Nahant, where she’d ask me all sorts of questions, as if she were really interested in me and my life.
    I tried hard to discourage this interest, in spite of growing more and more attached to her—or maybe it was because of it. Sometimes I’d ignore her completely, and other times I’d be rude and belligerent. But she kept coming, and it wasn’t long before I started counting the days till she