Offense & Defense

"Christine!" I yell out, and at first after she got done being startled, she didn't want to have anything to do to me.

"I'm not trying to do anything more than simply figure out what I did that pissed Natalie the fuck off!" I yell at her. This may or may not have calmed her down and got her to look at me curiously.

"You don't know?" she asks me.

I shake my head.

"All Natalie told me was that if I was going to drop Gage Price, I could've at least had the decency to let her know so she could've tried to fix whatever was wrong," I say to Christine. "The problem is I never dropped Gage Price."

Christine shrugs at me. "Well, she's out of a job most likely because they all think you dropped them because of her," Christine says. Then she narrows her eyes at me. "It's 12 noon right now. Do you know where your press officer is?"

At first I'm about to snort and laugh at this question. What a fucking joke.

But then I start to think.

Christine looks at me and raises her eyebrow.

"Think about it," she says to me. "If you didn't do anything, but Natalie thinks you did, then who else would be the one to know enough about your involvement to remove you from Gage Price?"

Fucking hell.

I tell Christine that I have to go and I start walking to my motorcycle.

I call Jacques before I get on the motorcycle.

“Jacques,” I tell him. “Get ready to go to St. Albans. Call me when you land. We’re going to have some digging to do.”

I get a call from Jacques that evening.

"Jacques, tell me everything we know on Nadia Scow," I speak into the phone. "And I don't just mean the standard shit we ask before someone starts working for the Crown. I mean I think Royal Intelligence needs to do a quick scan of her right now."

Jacques is nothing if not efficient because it takes him literally all of two days to get back to me.

It's not as if I'm sitting around on my ass during that time.

I do as much research onto the Constitutionalists as I can. If they’re focusing on me, I can’t help but feel that somehow this is all fucking connected.

Sure enough, there’s websites already running as to ‘the Crazy Prince’ and how he’s biting the hands that feed him - firing his PR company.

I place a call to Silas the next day.

"Tell me everything the Constitutionalists have been up to," I ask my brother Silas as I call him. He takes my call, despite being in the middle of a Cabinet meeting and sighs.

"They've mainly been pointing to the shenanigans of the Royals of St. Albans and calling us unfit to lead," he says wearily.

This doesn't make any fucking sense.

"Wait a second," I say to Silas as I talk into the phone. "Mom and Dad abdicated the throne to enjoy retirement and I doubt they warrant much gossip, and you're a family man with kids. That means they're all fixating on..."

I trail off as I make the connection in my head.

"Yeah, baby bro," Silas says. "They've started focusing on you. It's nothing you did or didn't do. It's that the rest of us are too boring and by using you they think they have the greatest chances of stirring up a popular revolt."

"What if I was in the process of cleaning up my act?" I ask Silas.

"Well then firstly I'd probably have to pinch myself," Silas says with a chuckle. "But you'd probably cut the Constitutionalists at the knees. In fact, baby bro, this last month you've been on some good behavior, haven't you? I think I read about how the Anti-Royalist factions in St. Albans were starting to get worried."

We talk for a few more minutes but everything is starting to make sense.