Olivia Sparks

Olivia was spent after her trip to the bathroom. She was laying down on the bed when Maxen got back inside with a big smile on his face, carrying a plate of celery sticks with peanut and pretzel butter dip.

"Niiiice!" Olivia beamed, clapping her hands. She could smell the celery a mile away and her stomach growled the closer Maxen got to their bedroom.

"Are you sure you're not pregnant or something? This snack is weird."

Olivia blinked at Maxen, unsure of how to break the news to him. She didn't want to disappoint him especially with how he was working hard on the baby-making department. "Well, I just had my period this morning, so nope." She pouted, pulling a sad face.

In front of her, Maxen rolled his eyes at how childish she looked. "That's great to hear. We don't want to shock the nation with a pregnancy announcement when they never saw us getting married first."

"Maxeeen." Olivia took a big bite of her celery stick, her eyes narrowed in on Maxen as she chewed her snack. "Babies… will have to wait. My IUD is still in place, so…"

Maxen frowned. He knew that pesky thing was still in place. He could feel the string mock him every time he's inside her. "I know. I'm just saying, nothing is ever foolproof."

"Uggh," Olivia grunted in discontent. For the last two months since they got hitched, only a few knew about them being married—Queen Isla, Auntie Martha, Eli, and Emily. "Let's talk about going public once the king hears about it." 

She placed the snack plate back on the tray, straddling herself on Maxen's l.a.p. "I don't want to ruin the privacy we currently have because for sure, once the king finds out about our elopement, he'll force us to go public and, I'm not ready for that yet. But I am almost ready, promise."

"Do you know what you signed up for when you married me?" Maxen kneaded her waist, earning him Olivia's giggle with her head thrown back. 

"Need I remind you it was my idea to elope that day? So yes, absolutely, I know what I signed up for. Your mom is hushed about the matter, Max. She knows this is our best chance to enjoy ourselves—our marriage."

"Case closed." Maxen nodded in agreement on Olivia's statement. He knew the weight of responsibilities that came with the crown and if it's up to him, he would shoulder the burden that would be forced on Olivia. However, that's not how things work in The Highlands. 

The king was a stickler for traditions and suffocating rules, things that Olivia knew she had no way of escaping the moment she vowed her "I Dos" to Maxen.

"Tell me about what you found out," he demanded, switching the topic to the most pressing ones. He then fed his wife her weird snack.

Munching on it, Olivia pulled out the paper she hid under the pillow. It was a print out of a court order about a burglary in Olivia's old neighborhood. "You won't believe where I found that."

���Where?"

"Page ten of Goooooooooogle." She wiggled her eyebrows.

"Wow, that's a first. I never went past the first page."

"I googled your name too, but that's for a different discussion. Here, look." She passed the printout to Maxen, giving him the gist of the article. "It was weird because that's not the sentence of the actual burglary in my pad, but of a different crime, just so happened, my name was included because apparently they had to list his past offenses which include a restraining order from me that's in effect for 100 years."

"Wow, at least your father did something right."

"About that… Rona Co was the guardian, so nope." Olivia made an 'X' sign using her two index fingers.

"That's weird. And she never mentioned it to you?"

"Not a thing."

Maxen scratched the skin on top of his eyebrows, thinking of a logical way to solve Olivia's mysterious nightmares.

Should they do it the legal way? But the glint in her eyes told him that she didn't want to go by the books on this matter.

"Should we go and visit him in England?" he asked.

"That's the thing…" Olivia trailed off. "When he was released years ago, he went back to his home country, and do you want to guess where he's been the entire time?"

Maxen bobbed his head.

Olivia's eyes widened. "Here. In Nisia."

Seeing that as his cue, Maxen held his palm up, receiving the piece of paper from Olivia. He neatly folded it and tucked inside his b.r.e.a.s.t pocket. "Are you ready to face him?"

"We all have to face our monsters at one point, don't we?"

"Brave girl." Maxen kissed the side of her head. He could feel how lighter her energy was compared to the last two months they had, all because of her recurring nightmare. "I'll tell Uncle Jin to pick you up later when everything is settled," he said, standing up to take his leave.

While Maxen did the logistics for her, Olivia busied herself looking through all her items of clothing. She started rummaging her walk-in closet in Notios Estate, yet she didn't find what she was looking for, so she went to her penthouse suite in Rockaway Tower. 

After almost two hours, Olivia flipped her walk-in closet upside down but ended up frustrated as she still couldn't find the green hoodie that she saw herself wearing in her dream. She knew she had one. It was her favorite hoodie, that was why she kept it with her all these years.

"Is this what you're looking for, Ms. Lin?" Yana asked, flipping a photo album that she found tucked in Olivia's shoe cabinet. It was a photo album of Olivia's old clothes that she still kept somewhere lying around.

Yana held it up so the pages would be facing Olivia whose eyes shimmered as she trained her sight on her long lost green hoodie.

"Yes, that's the one!"

Hearing Olivia's approval, Yana entered the code written beside the photo on the tablet, and it showed the location where the prized hoodie was—in her decoy apartment.

"So that's why we couldn't find it in the app," Yana mused. "It was listed as khaki and not green. Must be Sir Eli who tagged the color."

Olivia briefly glanced at the screen and saw a green jacket, not a khaki one. "Doesn't look like khaki to me, does it?"

Yana shrugged. "Well, it kinda is khaki." She swiped the screen with her hands, clearing it for dust that was never really there. She blinked and pulled the tablet away from her eyes, but it was still the same color to her. She thought of adjusting the screen's setting but she heard Olivia calling out to her.

"Yana, let's go."

"Oh, yes. Yes, President. I'm coming." Hugging the tablet to her c.h.e.s.t, Yana trailed behind Olivia as they headed to the fire exit.

Just as they were to go down to Olivia's decoy apartment through the fire exit, the alarm in the penthouse suite went off.

Shadow carried Olivia like a sack, rushing her back inside the panic room in the penthouse suite. She stayed inside with Yana keeping her company.

"They haven't fixed that yet?" Olivia frowned. She raised a brow on Yana who was also wondering how it happened when the MIBs and Shadow had the whole system change recently after the alarms would randomly set off even when they were not around.

"I heard from Secretary Gail that they're running tests on the newest model they installed, so maybe, this is one of the dry runs that they're conducting."

Skepticism was painted all over Olivia's face. It was enough to drench Yana's armpits with sweat. Lucky for her, Shadow arrived at the perfect time to switch off the alarm after Olivia's security team made a sweep on the place for threats and found none.

"Might be another faulty wiring, President. It's coming from the wall that Prince Maxen had torn down," Shadow explained.

Behind her, MIB2's lip twitched. He thought, why did Shadow have to mention that it was Maxen who tore down the wall, reminding Olivia of that incident would only cause more trouble for the MIBs?

They were already busting their asses off to remedy the problem, and now they had to triple their efforts because for sure, Prince Maxen would receive an earful from his wife for his misdeed.

"If the alarm goes off again, let me know so we can try Madam Chanel's system."

Shadow bowed. "Yes, president."

Soon, Olivia and Yana were searching the walk-in closet in the decoy apartment. The latter exclaimed upon seeing the hoodie, "It is green."

Olivia c.o.c.ked a brow on Yana as if telling her, "I told you so." She was all smiles, sniffing the hoodie she hadn't seen for a long time. Wearing it over her layer of clothing, Olivia smiled, thankful that it still fits her lithe frame.