Chapter 2 - THE PRINCESS WHO REFUSED TO DIE
Alina fired first.
Not at Richard.
At the ceiling.
A steel pan dropped from a hanging rack, slamming into one gunman’s face.
Rovan shot the lights.
Darkness swallowed the kitchen.
Marcus cursed.
Somebody fired.
Bullets tore through cabinets.
“Move!” Alina shouted.
She grabbed Marcus and ran toward the freezer.
“You’re taking us into a freezer?”
“Trust me.”
“I met you ten minutes ago!”
“Then trust me quickly.”
They entered the walk-in freezer.
Rovan followed and slammed the heavy door.
Marcus stared at shelves of meat.
“This is your escape plan?”
Alina kicked a metal panel near the floor.
It popped loose.
Behind it was a narrow maintenance passage.
Marcus blinked.
“How do you know that’s there?”
“I’ve worked here eight months.”
“As a real maid?”
“Yes.”
He looked almost offended by the answer.
They crawled through the passage as men pounded against the freezer door behind them.
Marcus followed Alina through dust and pipes.
“So you’re actually royalty?”
“Not the best time.”
“Your family was killed.”
“I noticed.”
“And Richard Vale knows you?”
Alina stopped.
Her silence answered him.
Rovan touched her shoulder.
“We keep moving.”
The passage opened behind the hotel laundry room.
They rushed outside into a rain-soaked Manhattan alley.
A black SUV waited.
Rovan opened the door.
Marcus stopped.
“I’m not getting into a mystery SUV with an armed general and a princess who just stabbed a guy with a champagne bottle.”
A bullet struck the brick wall beside his head.
Marcus jumped into the SUV.
“Changed my mind.”
Rovan drove.
Behind them, two vehicles tore out of the hotel garage.
Alina looked through the rear window.
“They’re following us.”
“I know,” Rovan said.
Marcus pulled on his seat belt.
“Does everyone in Velkria drive like this?”
Rovan accelerated through a red light.
“Only the old people.”
The chase tore through downtown traffic.
One SUV pulled beside them.
A rear window lowered.
“Gun!” Marcus yelled.
Alina shoved him down.
Shots punched through their door.
Rovan turned hard, forcing the enemy SUV toward a delivery truck.
Metal screamed.
The pursuing vehicle spun across the intersection.
The second kept coming.
Rovan reached beneath his seat and handed Alina another pistol.
Marcus stared.
“How many guns do you have?”
“Enough.”
“That answer does not make me feel better.”
Alina leaned through the broken rear window.
She took one breath.
Fired twice.
The first round broke the pursuing SUV’s windshield.
The second hit a front tire.
The vehicle swerved, crashed through a construction barrier, and disappeared behind them.
Silence filled the car.
Marcus slowly looked at her.
“Where did a princess learn to shoot like that?”
“My father believed princesses should survive revolutions.”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Rovan drove them into an underground garage beneath an old apartment building in Queens.
Inside the apartment were weapons, laptops, maps, and photographs pinned across one wall.
Marcus stepped closer.
One photograph showed Alina at sixteen beside the King and Queen of Velkria.
Another showed the royal motorcade burning on a mountain road.
Marcus turned.
“The official story said terrorists killed your family.”
Alina stared at the photograph.
“The official story was a lie.”
Rovan removed his coat.
“The attack was an inside job.”
“By who?”
Alina looked at Richard Vale’s photograph pinned beside one other man.
A gray-haired politician with cold blue eyes.
Prince Stefan Petrov.
Her uncle.
“My uncle took control of Velkria two weeks after my parents died,” she said. “Vale got mining rights worth billions.”
Marcus understood.
“You think Vale financed a coup.”
“I know he did.”
Rovan opened a safe.
Inside was an old encrypted phone.
“There is more.”
He turned it on.
A video appeared.
A young man was sitting in a dark room, bruised and thin.
Alina stopped breathing.
“No.”
The man lifted his face toward the camera.
Her younger brother.
Prince Leo.
Presumed dead for three years.
Alive.
He whispered four words.
May you like
“Alina… don’t come home.”
Then someone behind the camera struck him.
