“She isn’t here. Her mother fell ill and she headed to Liverpool. Here, she left this for you.”
I looked down at the letter my mother had pulled from her pocket, and I knew this wasn’t going to be a fairy tale ending. I smiled and bowed my head as my mother moved through the hall and out the doors to the gardens. She patted me on the shoulder as she passed, obviously seeing the distraught look I was wearing. I walked slowly and smiled at the nobles lingering in the halls, before bolting from the area and running all the way to my room. I sat down at the table and opened the letter.
Milos,
It is no surprise that this whole arrangement is not working out. I cannot stand by and allow myself to be degraded and embarrassed on a regular basis. I need some time. I will stay your wife on paper, but I will not be living in the castle any longer. I understand if this affects my payment, but at this point, I have found I have no other choices.
I wish you all the luck in the world,
Adriana
I folded the piece of paper and set it on the table with a feeling of sickness deep in my stomach. She was gone, and I had been the one to completely destroy her. I leaned back in the chair and stared out as clouds moved closer to the castle. At that moment, I felt completely lost, completely done, and with very little understanding of w
hat to do next. I couldn’t believe I had not only screwed up my place in this Kingdom so badly, but I had purposely hurt the first woman I ever really had feelings for. I sank down in my chair, taking what little pride I had left down with me.
For days, I sat in my room, refusing any visitors, taking my meals in solace, and staring out at the grim stormy sky. It felt like the weather was mocking me, but I just didn’t give a damn. Adriana had been the light in my life I never knew I needed, and I had extinguished it before even understanding what it was.
She haunted my mind at every turn, and even sleep eluded me. I would wander the halls of the castle at night like a ghost, remembering everything from my childhood and feeling ashamed at the man I had become. It had become a dark and lonely existence, and I could tell that even my mother did not know how to help me. Instead, she left me to my thoughts, with the hope that eventually I would find the solution and bring myself back up from the depths.
Mother had always told me that a true king could pull himself from any emotion, any vice, and any situation for the betterment of his kingdom and his people. For some reason, even after all I had done, she still felt that those attributes were somewhere inside of me, waiting to get out. I, however, had never felt confident in the idea that I could be a great king or a good husband and father. So, instead of facing those fears with the tenacity of the royal blood that flowed through my veins, I fled, seeking refuge in the dark dirty crevasses of strip clubs, bars, and loose women. It was almost as if all these years I had pushed the thought away, no longer wanting to even try to be the man my mother, and now Adriana, knew I could be. The fear was stifling, and when it hit me, I was almost paralyzed, grasping at anything I could to take the feeling away, not caring who it affected.
Adriana had given it a good try, a better try than almost anyone else in my life. She didn’t care about my wealth or crown. She cared about me. I hadn’t even realized until that moment that her agreement to the contract was less about money and more about the man she saw during the few moments that I opened up and talked about myself. The moments where I had let down my guard and allowed myself to be an actual human, and not just some spoiled rich asshole that cared very little for others. She had seen something in me that was impossible to see in myself.
After several days had passed, I found myself staring out the window, something that had become routine for me. I would stare off into the country, thoughts banging against my brain, hoping to find some kind of answer in the darkness beyond the castle. Standing from my chair, I started to pace around the room. I felt the anxiousness in my feet and chest, and as I approached the cupboard, I stopped, running my hand across the bottle of whiskey. It had been staring me in the face for days, but I had managed to keep myself from indulging, knowing I would just feel worse in the end. At that point, however, my motto seemed to be, fuck it, so I grabbed a glass and poured myself two fingers. Had I just stopped after that, I might have actually begun to feel better, but I always had an issue with excess, and to excess was exactly where I took the drinking.
One glass turned to two, and two to three, and before I knew it, the bottle was emptied. I called the servants to bring me more, and even though I could see the knowing look in their eye, they did their duty and brought me what I needed. The thoughts that seeped into my brain when the glasses became full then empty was torturous, and I couldn’t get Adriana out of my mind. Her beautiful smile, her luscious lips, and her understanding nature eventually began to feel as unreal as my ability to bring her back.
My life had been a succession of events starting at childhood and raging through the years. My father’s death had not even begun to simmer in my chest when I met Adriana, and I knew that his death was something I was pushing back against. Adriana gave me relief where no bottle could, but because I let my fears drive me to a darker place, I completely destroyed the good in her, taking myself down with it.
Back into the twisting and turning hell of drinking, I threw myself, not finding any more solace in the spinning of the room than I did in the passing clouds, but at least I had found a cure to my insomnia. My despair switched between utter hopelessness and anger, and eventually many of the servants refused to come to my chambers for fear that they would find a glass thrown at their head. Everything was starting to spin out of control, and even though I wasn’t on a plane to some city with clubs and strippers, the loneliness of my room and the unforgiving depth of the bottle started to become worse than the paparazzi on the doorstep.
Chapter 17: Adriana
Driving back through Liverpool was more disheartening than I thought it would be. In my memories, our old apartment seemed so much worse than the flat my mother had inherited, but as I drove into Toxteth, I realized that I might have imagined it nicer than it really was. Everything was run down, and the streets were littered with drug dealers and thugs.
I wrapped my arms around my belly and thought about raising a child in this life. This had been my life as a kid, so I knew it could be done. But after the luxurious, peaceful place I had just returned from, my old neighborhood looked like a festering cesspool of filth. The taxi pulled up in front of the complex, and I pulled myself out of the cab, exhausted from the trip. The papers were piled up on our stoop, and it was obvious nothing had been maintained by my mother.
The place had fallen from half-crappy to full-on shitbox. I struggled with the thought of what the inside would look like. The doors creaked on their hinges and swayed with the breeze as I struggled to pull my suitcases inside and then slammed the door behind me. At the sight of things, I quickly realized that cleaning had not been on my mother’s to-do list.
I tipped over the empty liquor bottles as I moved through the hallways. The drapes had been drawn closed inside the living room, and I almost missed my mother, passed out at the dining room table, surrounded by empty bottles. Nothing could have brought me a clearer idea of reality than that moment. I walked over and pulled the drapes open, letting the sunlight flood the floors. My mother grunted in her own slobber. I walked over and pulled her to her feet. She stumbled slightly as she tried to open her eyes, but instead, she just patted me on the head and leaned into me.
She was heavier than I remembered, and getting her to her room was quite a strain on my body. I threw her down on the bed, grabbed a towel, and started cleaning her up. My heart hurt a bit as she clasped my hand and smiled, feeling my presence back in the house. This had been my normal routine for many years, and even though I knew exactly what to do, a very large part of me didn’t want to. But what were my options?
I could have stayed at the palace. It was beautiful, clean, and luxurious, but it was also full of demons and secrets. I would have to take care of a drunk, fake husband and a very real baby. Or I could be in this flat, doing the same thing, but for someone that seemed, at least some of the time, to appreciate it. Either way, the decisions I had to make were no longer my own. The baby was growing in my belly, and I had already fallen in love.
After my mother had been tucked in and I knew she was safe, I started to comb the apartment to really see what the damage was. Besides being dusty and full of bottles, it seemed that mother hadn’t been able to completely destroy it, at least on the inside. I opened the fridge and held my breath, seeing the same food I had left in there months and months before, still sitting on the shelves, covered in mold. A deep breath didn’t even fully explain the reaction I had at that moment, but I shrugged it off and grabbed some gloves, getting to work making the place habitable again. At least I could find comfort in knowing the cleaning supplies would be right where I left them.
When the place was cleaned and the laundry had been started, I grabbed my purse and headed out for the city. I needed money, and I knew my mother wasn’t going to be any help with that. She never had been. I pulled up in front of one of the most expensive jewelry stores in the city, and I jumped out, trying to avoid thinking about what I had to do. The man behind the counter was kind and took my giant rock to the back to examine it. I had nothing else to give, so I had resolved that I would pawn the ring Milos had given me to pay the bills. It wasn’t my finest hour, but it definitely wasn’t the worst, at least until the man came back with the ring in his hand.
“Sweetie, I hate to tell you this, but the stone in this ring is fake,” he said kindly.
“No, there is no way. Are you sure?” My stomach dropped, and I immediately wanted to curse Milos out before realizing I was there to pawn it.
“Yep, it’s a factory-made stone,” he sighed. “But if you still want to sell, I’ll give you a thousand pounds for the band, it’s 24k gold.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said, still stunned.
“These things tend to happen from time to time,” he replied, obviously having noticed I was beside myself with anger.