# Chapter 15
Elena noticed the change in Angelo before she understood it.
He was quieter at breakfast. He walked the grounds later than usual, at hours when fewer staff were about. Twice she had seen him deep in conversation with Reyes, both men falling silent the moment she came within earshot.
She said nothing for four days.
On the fifth, she confronted him directly, in the garden, with the particular bluntness she reserved for moments when patience had run out.
"You're keeping something from me."
Angelo didn't insult her by pretending otherwise.
"Yes."
"Is it about my father?"
"Partly."
"My brother?"
Angelo hesitated, which was answer enough.
"Angelo."
"I gave Reyes my word I wouldn't say anything until we understood more," he said. "The same way I gave your father my word about something else, weeks ago. I don't take that lightly."
"You're choosing him over me."
"I'm choosing to protect you the only way I currently know how."
Elena's eyes flashed. "I don't need protecting. I need the truth."
"Sometimes those aren't the same thing."
"Don't." Her voice cracked slightly on the word. "Don't you dare decide what I can and can't handle. I have spent my entire life being protected from things — from grief, from fear, from anything that might crack the careful picture everyone insists on showing the country. I am so tired of being protected, Angelo."
Angelo looked at her, and something in his resolve wavered.
"There was a payment," he said quietly. "To a man inside your father's own ministry. Someone leaked the route your parents took that day. We don't yet know why, or who is behind it, only that it wasn't chance."
Elena went very still.
"Someone did this on purpose."
"We think so."
"To hurt my parents?"
"We don't think that was the goal. We think it was meant to frighten your father. To make him doubt his own safety enough to lean on people he shouldn't."
"Because of Marcus," Elena said slowly, understanding arriving all at once, the way it sometimes does. "Because if something happened to my father, and Marcus isn't—"
She stopped herself before finishing the sentence, but Angelo saw the moment the full shape of it settled over her.
"You know," she whispered.
"I've suspected," Angelo said carefully. "Your brother didn't tell me anything. I only noticed what everyone else has been too kind, or too afraid, to say aloud."
Elena sat down heavily on the garden bench, the fight suddenly gone out of her.
"My father is going to lose his son," she said, "and someone out there is trying to use that grief before it's even happened."
Angelo sat beside her, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched.
"We're not going to let that happen," he said.
"You can't promise that."
"No," he admitted. "But I can promise I won't stop trying."
Elena looked at him for a long moment, something raw and unguarded in her expression.
"Why does this matter so much to you?" she asked again, the same question from the lake, weeks earlier. "Truly. Not the promise to my father. Not duty. Why does it matter to you?"
Angelo didn't look away this time.
"Because somewhere in the last month," he said, "your family stopped being a king and queen I rescued, and started being people I would do almost anything to protect. You most of all."
Elena's breath caught.
Neither of them moved for a long moment.
Then, slowly, deliberately, she reached over and took his hand, and Angelo did not pull away.