23
Gabrielle
Scheiße, the circus had come to town. And the ringmaster? The one person I didn’t want to speak to. No, not my mother—okay, there were two people I didn’t want to speak to right now—but Phil.
Who told my bodyguards I was at the sheriff’s office? I’d hoped to slip away, to get back to Baldwin’s Shore and hide out until I could explain matters to Colt, then beg for his forgiveness. But now that plan had been scuppered.
“Your Highness,” Aksel said from the doorway, as if that answered my unasked questions. He’d headed up my protection team since the accident, when Mor had replaced the entire crew of the chase boat that shadowed Papa and me whenever we went sailing. I’d tried to tell her that what happened wasn’t their fault, but she’d overridden me, and Aksel was the result.
