Be My Princess

"Maaku, when exactly did you think of using that video against Angel?" Francis asked after he had refilled their glasses.

"Exactly when your guard showed it to me." Josephine proudly replied.

Francis looked at his mother with admiration. "And for how long have you had Andrew following my every move?"

Josephine chuckled. "You should be happy I ordered him to watch over your every move as soon as he was assigned to you. We wouldn't have this video otherwise."

"How did he even get to the Forest Palace without being seen?"

"You got him there."

Josephine smiled and savoured for a moment the sight of her son trying to wrap his mind around her statement.

"He was hiding in the boot of your car." She finally explained.

Francis nodded then looked at his mother with squinted eyes. "Why did you have him follow me from the beginning? Don't you trust me at all?"

Unmoved by her son's offended tone, Josephine looked him right in the eyes. "Given what you almost did to the maiden, how do you think I should answer your question?"

Francis finger-drummed on his glass. He really was no match for his mother.

"Point taken…" He said in capitulation. "Are you sure that nothing will come to foil our plans this time?" He then asked.

"Rest assured, mwaanaam[1]. This time around, there won't be any unexpected turn of events that can possibly take this victory away from us.

"In the case of Miss Natacha Irung, I made the mistake of forgetting that human emotions are very unreliable instruments. But in this case, I have made sure to get rid of any evidence that could possibly lead to the truth of what happened in that palace. Even if your cousin and the maiden stand to testify of the truth, they will not be able to present tangible evidence of their version of the facts. The king will be forced to make his ruling on the basis of the only piece of evidence at hand… the recording we graciously made available to them."

"And he will have no other choice but to yield to the High Council's request for a change in the crown!" Francis added with an enlightened look.

"Exactly!" Josephine concurred.

"Wow, Maaku… you have really succeeded at getting the crown back for me." Francis said with an appreciative look. "Too bad I could not hold to my end of the bargain and get the maiden for you…"

"Don't worry about that. It will be more than enough to see you sitting on that throne instead of Angel.

From the place where she was standing, Kat looked at mother and son toasting once more to their foreseeable triumph with disbelief. She took a few staggering steps backwards before retracing her steps back to the West Wing.

~ And what if it isn't? ~

It seemed as if the question Angel had asked her a week before were chasing after her, resounding louder and louder in her mind as she increased her pace.

"This is all my fault…" She thought as she ran through the alleys of the garden. "I have to warn him…"

When she reached the West Wing, Kat did not decrease her pace and took the steps two by two before the maids' puzzled eyes. It was only when she reached the landing that she gave herself a moment to catch her breath and recompose her demeanour before walking towards the crown prince's bedroom.

She did not know whether Angel was allowed visitors; so, as she stepped closer to the guarded door, she made an internal prayer that, if visits were not allowed, the guards would still be magnanimous enough to let her in.

"I need to see the crown prince," Kat announced to the guards when she had gotten close to them. "It is of utmost importance."

Without a word, and to her relief, one of the guards opened the door for her.

Angel was sitting behind his desk in the study and lifted his head as soon as he heard the sound of the door being opened. When Kat appeared in the doorframe, he quickly stood up, both surprised by her visit and alarmed by her concerned expression.

"Changadim Kat? What brings you here?" He enquired when she entered the study.

"Crown Prince Angel…"

Angel smiled. "Along with my princely duties, I was also relieved of that title. It's only Prince Angel at the moment."

For a moment, Kat looked at Angel and envied his ability to stay that serene while he was trapped in a situation that, in all aspects, appeared to be without issue. And seeing him stand so strong in front of her made her feel like taking refuge into his arms to draw from his serenity in order to pull her crumbling spirit back together.

Angel led Kat to the reading space past his desk, settled her in one of the tub chairs, sat facing her and waited.

"I went to see Prince Francis…"

Angel's expression changed.

Angel's look softened at the young woman's desperate expression. He wanted to stop his heart from racing at the feeling that Kat was actually caring about him; his mind wanted to convince his heart that it could just be generic care like the one she had shown when the king had collapsed, but it was utterly failing at it. Still, in order to refocus on the motive of Kat's presence in his bedroom, he chose to ignore the tirades of his stalwart heart.

Given how disheartened the maiden was at the moment, there was only one thing he could conclude. "Did you discover that Lady Josephine and Prince Francis are the instigators of everything that has happened lately?"

Kat's eyes widened. "You know?!"

Angel nodded.

"But… why didn't you say anything?"

"Because it was only a hypothesis before the last leak," Angel explained.

The young woman looked at the crown prince in puzzlement. "Then, why are you still not saying anything?"

"Because, sometimes, being still – like the Bible advises us to – is the best way to see the unravelling of your adversary's schemes," Angel replied with a mysterious smile.

That was the answer to the first question that he had asked in the chapel. Do not rush into it.

The fact that the cottage had been meticulously tidied up right after he had left with Kat was the main reason why he had felt the strong need to bring the case before the king despite the maiden's opposition. Hence, he had felt rather torn by the answer he had received when he was in the chapel. It was only when he had seen the video uploaded to the internet that he had understood why he had needed to wait.

"How did you come to suspect them?" Kat asked, now intrigued.

"We've already found the hacker." Angel simply answered.

Kat's face lit up. "The one responsible for the two first leaks?"

"The three first leaks and the anonymous e-mail you received…" Angel corrected. "Don't forget the video of Natacha threatening to end her life."

"He was responsible for that video too? I assumed that it was one of the many guests present at the event that day."

"Whenever there is an event where members of the royal family are of attendance, guests are not allowed to bring in any devices that could allow them to take unauthorised pictures or record videos of the royal family. Anyone who does so risk severe legal proceedings." Angel explained. "Anyway, when we looked into the hacker, the reporter who took pictures of Natacha and me in Kinshasa, and the evidence we were able to gather when we investigated the journals that published the article on your presence at the palace almost at the same time as the information was leaked on the internet, we discovered that they all somehow connect back to Mr Adolph Irung." He added.

Kat frowned. "Natacha Irung's father? He is the mastermind behind all this?" She sceptically questioned.

"That's what the evidence led us to think. And it rather lined up perfectly. Consider the fact that the pictures of Natacha and me in the hotel corridor were never released on the internet but only sent to you. As if the sender wanted to discourage you from further interacting with me by showing you that I already had my heart set on another woman."

"Now that you point it out, I realise that, on the internet, I've never seen the pictures of the two of you kiss…" Kat interrupted her sentence and quickly glanced at Angel. "By that, we can suppose that it was Mr Irung's doing…" She chose to continue in order to chase the awkwardness.

She mulled for a moment then looked back Angel with an expression of illumination. "But how would Mr Irung have come to know about my presence at the palace?"

The crown prince smiled in appreciation. "You would really make a good detective."

Kat timidly smiled as her heartbeat picked up the pace.

"This was the only flaw to an otherwise cleverly thought plan." Angel continued. "So I asked Peter to look into any connection Mr Adolph Irung could have in the palace, and he discovered something very interesting…"

Kat hanging onto Angel's lips.

"Mr Irung has been friends with Lady Josephine since high school." He finally let out.

"What?"

Kat was first surprised by Angel's revelation; then she saw all the pieces of the puzzle fall into perfect fit.

"Any other day, I would have found it ludicrous. But now…"

The image of Josephine and Francis toasting to their soon victory flashed in her mind.

"Someone close the royal family or a member of the royal family… just like you had suspected." She added.

Angel nodded. "At first, I did not want to believe it either. There was no plausible reason why the royal consort would plot against the Throne. That's why I came to doubt whether I should carry on with the investigation after Mr Irung held the press conference on behalf of Natacha. But there was just no other way to look at it… And by God's grace, this last case has been able to provide me with her motive."

"The crown…" Kat muttered.

Angel nodded. "The Throne was never the target of all these attacks. I was. And if I lose the crown, Prince Francis is first in line to be considered by the king to replace me."

"So you can prove that Lady Josephine is the true mastermind behind everything and also prove that you fought with Prince Francis because you were trying to protect me, right?" Kat asked with revived hope.

At that moment, one of the guards came to stand in the study's doorway and cleared his throat.

Angel stood up and stretched his hand to help Kat stand up as well. "I am only allowed thirty minutes per visit." He explained.

⁂

After the investigators were done giving their report, the royal secretary stood before the king.

"With no other piece of evidence found during the investigation, the video recording at hand and the testimonies of every party involved in this case will be the only elements on which basis Mwant Yav will make his ruling."

George Chang took back his place on the right side of the throne. "We call first to testify, Prince Francis!"

Francis left his mother's side and stood before the throne. Following the royal secretary's questioning, he reiterated his statement before the king and the representatives of the High Council with the same show of distraught.

"We now call to testify, Prince Angel!" The royal secretary announced after Francis regained his seat.

Given his confinement status, Angel was not sitting left to the king, on his throne, but between the queen mother and the royal consort down the throne instead.

"Can you take us through the events that took place on the night you had an altercation with Prince Francis?" George Chang asked when Angel stood in the place where his cousin was previously standing.

Angel bowed. "Your Majesty, before I give my statement, can I be granted the permission to present our findings on the investigation of the four incidents that have taken place over the past ten weeks conducted by the RIS under my supervision."

David Kakes stood up. "Your Majesty, I fail to see how this could be of necessity to our current case."

"My request is based on the fact that there is a direct connection between all those preceding incidents and the one that requires Your Majesty's ruling at the moment," Angel explained at the address of the king.

"Granted." The king replied.

Angel bowed in gratitude. "Since the moment pictures of Miss Natacha Irung and myself were anonymously and illicitly released on the internet, I have been supervising the investigation conducted by the Royal Intelligence Services in order to identify the person behind that lawless act.

"We thought that it was just an isolated incident at first. But we were soon proven wrong when we discovered that, in each of the cases that followed, the same person was at the origin of all the internet leaks."

At that moment of Angel's exposé, Luke Tshisol, RIS lead investigator, handed files to everyone in the room.

"Strong of that discovery, we set ourselves to look for a common mastermind pulling the strings in the shadows in every case. It took us quite a while; but we were able to connect the paparazzi from Kinshasa, the reporters in most of the journals that were first to release articles on the maiden's presence at the palace, one of the calligrapher's employees and, most recently, the hacker who was responsible for all the internet leaks back to one person: Businessman Adolph Irung."

One corner of Josephine's mouth curled up. The file she was given contained details on the identity of all the people Adolph had made available to her and how they related to him. Just as the businessman had predicted, all roads were leading back to him…

Before the Head of the High Council could interject, Angel continued: "At this point, everyone here must think that it all falls into perfect alignment with what was revealed through the press conference held by Mr Adolph Irung over a week ago. We too thought the same until we could not find answers to the following two important questions: 'How did Mr Irung come to know everything about Changadim Kat's presence at the palace down to the minute detail?' and 'Who was his connection within the Royal Estate?'

"Hence, we proceeded to investigate the palace staff, the employees at Mr Irung's company, and even all his connections involved in each case in order to find a linkage. It was a long and tedious work, but in the end, we managed to find one connection…"

Angel looked at Luke Tshisol, and the investigator distributed a second file to everyone. That time around, Josephine lost a bit of her composure when she opened the folder.

"What you hold in your hands are high school pictures of Businessman Adolph Irung with, according to the testimonies of several old classmates, his ever since very close friend… Josephine Nsamb… or, as we currently know her, the royal consort, Lady Josephine."

Josephine tightened her hold on the folder and stood up. "This is preposterous! Are you insinuating that I am the one who gave the information away? Why would I ever do something of the sort?" She let out in an indignant tone.

"Right now, I am only stating the findings of our investigation." Angel calmly replied. "I am by no means making any insinuation."

Josephine squinted her eyes. Was Angel trying to get her to expose herself? The royal consort looked at all the eyes fixed on her, then smiled. "My apologies." She said as she sat back down. "But if I am allowed to place a query regarding your findings; I would like to know why Prince Angel's connection to Mr Irung's daughter is not being taken into consideration here."

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[1] My child