Broken Prince: A New Adult Romance Novel (15 page)

"It's alright," the fat one said, rubbing at his cheek again. "I will translate."

"So," the tall officer said, leaning over the desk. "What is your name?"

"Brynn Tomlin."

"And when did you arrive in this country?"

They asked me question after question about my mother, her death, and why I was in Hungary. I showed them my student visa and explained as best as I could. The translating officer stumbled over some of the mathematical explanations I gave about the work I was doing in Budapest.

"And your relationship with Eliot Herceg?"

I looked up. The tall man looked at me knowingly, and a chill ran over my knees. I clasped my hands in my lap.

"Yes? What about it?" I asked, trying to keep my cool. There was no reason to be argumentative.

"Is the nature of your relationship sexual?"

I flushed hard.

"That doesn't seem to be any of your business," I said, as politely as I could.

"Has he given you anything?"

"Given me anything?"

"Yes, after your relationship began. Has he given you money? Presents?"

"I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"We have records which show a bank transfer to an American account from Dr. Herceg."

"And?" My heart was pounding. I didn't want Eliot to get mixed up in any of this.

"So he has given you money. You and your family."

"Yes!" The word came out strained. "Yes, he has been very kind."

"Did you tell him about the evidence you examined the other day?" The tall man began the question before I had finished answering the other one. It seemed that he understood some of my English, after all.

"No," I said.

"Not at all?"

“Nem!" I said.
No
.

"Why not?"

"I...I don't know," I said. I sucked in my cheeks. "I didn't want to talk about it."

The tall man walked around the table and stood above me. I crossed my legs and stared up at him defiantly. He wouldn't intimidate me with his size. He spoke slowly, his eyes locked on mine, while the other man translated.

"You are sleeping with a man. Living with a man. He has given you tens of thousands of dollars in money and presents. And you don't talk to him about the evidence you spent eight hours examining that day?"

"I didn't want to talk about it," I repeated.

"You told nobody about the evidence."

"Nobody!" How many times did they want me to repeat it?

The policeman threw a photo down on the table in front of me. My eyes widened as the image came into focus. It was another woman. Cut up, just as my mother had been cut up.

"Do you know this woman?" the officer asked. I shook my head no. I couldn't take my eyes off of the photo. Her face was calm, the eyes closed. Almost peaceful.

"Do you know who killed this woman?"

"No," I said.

"Do you know who killed your mother?"

I turned my gaze up to the officer and spoke evenly.

"If I knew who killed my mother, he would already be dead."

A knock on the door broke the officer's gaze. The buzz of office noise flooded the interrogation room as the door slammed open and Eliot appeared in the doorway.

"Brynn!" he said. He looked at the two officers. "What is all this?" He spoke quickly to the tall officer. They exchanged harsh words, and finally the officer left the room with a brisk stride.

"They have no right to keep you here," Eliot said to me, putting his hand on my shoulder. "Let me get a lawyer for you. Surely she's not being held?"

"No," the officer said to Eliot.

"Not being detained in any way?"

The officer swallowed.

"No."

"How did you know I was here?" I asked.

"Mark told me," Eliot said. "I was looking for you. The dean from your university is trying to call you."

"Sorry," I said. "They took my phone from me when I came into the station."

"It's about your grandmother," Eliot said, his voice low.

"My—what about her?"

"I don't know," Eliot said.

"Is she okay?" My voice was rising, and I didn't know how to stop it. All of the worry that I had been keeping cooped up was spilling out of me, and panic gripped my throat.

"I don't know," Eliot said. "They wouldn't tell me anything. Brynn, I have to go."

"Go?" My world was crumbling around me. My mother's killer was out there, stalking around Budapest unknown. Something had happened with my grandmother. And now Eliot was abandoning me.

"I have the presentation," he said. "In ten minutes. I have to get back to the Academy."

"Okay," I said. I couldn't blink, couldn't form a complete sentence.

"Call the dean," he said. "Let me know if you need anything."

"Okay," I whispered. "Go."

"I'll see you afterward."

Eliot squeezed my hand once. He didn't kiss me, only touched his fingers to mine in that brief moment. When he looked back from the doorway, there was worry in his eyes. Then he was gone.

The tall officer passed him and came back into the doorway, Csilla's mom accompanying him. He did not meet my eyes.

"There's nothing else we need from you," she said. "You're free to go."

She handed me my phone and I murmured a thank you that was inaudible under the chatter of the policemen around the office. Eyes followed me out of the police station as I pushed my way past the desks and through the crowded hallway, and I was thankful to be outside with space around me to breathe. There were three messages on my phone, but I didn't have the patience to listen to them. I dialed the dean's number that Eliot had given me and breathed deeply as the phone rang once, then twice, then three times. The phone picked up with a sharp crack of the connection. Stupid old phone. I had been too stubborn to let Eliot replace it for me.

"Brynn?"

She had been waiting for me to call.

"Yes?" I asked, not wanting to hear the answer.

"Brynn, I have some bad news about your grandmother."

"What is it?" In my head a pounding:
tell me, just tell me; tell me; just tell me.

"She's had a stroke last night."

"What? She had her medicine! Is she—is she okay?" A thud beat loud and hard in my ears. She had to be okay. My Nagyi was the strongest woman I knew. She had to be okay, she had to.

"She's in the hospital. I spoke with the attending nurse on the phone. They say that she's very sick. Are you able to come to the hospital?"

"I...no, I'm in Budapest. Can I call her at the hospital?"

There was a pause on the phone, and the dean cleared her throat.

"Brynn, I want to be clear with you about this. The doctors said that she won't make it through the week. Likely as not, she only has another day or two. Her heart is very weak. She's not in stable condition yet, and they are keeping her sedated until she's able to recover."

Time stopped moving. The static of the phone reception in my ear filled the world with its noise. I leaned back against the wall of the police station and closed my eyes, trying to sort out the meaning of the dean's words. There was no way Nagyi was that sick. She had her medicine! I had sent her the money for it! How could she possibly have had a stroke?

"Brynn?"

"I'm here." I spoke hollowly. The words didn't mean anything. Nothing mattered.

"I know that you still have a few weeks left in the program—"

"I'll come home." As soon as I said it, I knew that the decision was the right one. Mark would have to finish the paper up with Csilla. My Nagyi was more important than any math publication.

"We'll do whatever we can to make sure you graduate on time," the dean said. "There are options."

She continued talking in soothing sentences, and I assented to everything, not paying attention to a single word. My degree didn't matter at all. What mattered was getting back home. By the time I hung up the phone, I had already become narrowed in my focus. Eliot would think that I was a horrible person for leaving him so abruptly. It was for the best, so I thought. He would have no reason to come after me then. I could leave him to find peace on his own.

Was I the hero of this story, or the villain? As I ran into the street to catch a cab, I thought back to all of the sins I had committed. We'd had to memorize them in Sunday school when I was young. Pride and envy toward Csilla and Mark.  Sloth in my studies. Wrath toward the killer who had taken my mother, and now another woman.

The last three—lust, greed, and gluttony—were the sins I committed most of all toward Eliot. I was simultaneously possessive of his attention and unwilling to give him the same attention in return. I had spent the last year on the internship and trying to find my mother's grave. Now I was on another chase through the labyrinth of Budapest's streets for a murderer. Was it any surprise that Eliot no longer wanted my company? He'd found the answer he was looking for in his proof. I wished him nothing but the best, but at the same time I knew that I was not the woman he needed to support him.

And my father had been visiting Nagyi and sending her money. Was it possible that I was on the wrong side of reason here? Could I be mistaken? All my life, I had thought that I needed to escape my family and it would set me free. I was just beginning to realize that I would be the same insecure girl I had always been, the one with a jagged tear in her heart where a  mother's hands would have mended it. Eliot had it worse than I did. His scar was on the outside, a mark for people to ogle. Mine at least I could hide from peeping eyes.

Even here in Hungary, a half a world away, I was stuck in my own self. All of the mistakes I had made seemed to point blame directly at me. None of it was coincidence or chance. I had built up my own fate and I deserved every bit of it.

I had forced myself into harder research than I could handle, and I was floundering.

I had rushed into love with Eliot, and I had lost his affection.

I had ignored my grandmother, and now she was dying.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Eliot

Eliot stood outside of the conference room, shuffling his papers. The board was already fifteen minutes late to conclude their previous meeting, and Eliot's nerves were beginning to get to him. He'd been sitting on the bench outside the room, but now he paced back and forth, looking through the proof that he was supposed to explain to the board.

A gnawing in his stomach brought him back to the time when he was an undergraduate and had to present in front of his class. He'd never been fond of getting up in front of an audience to present his work. Fortunately, his previous mathematical results had been so important, nobody had pressed him for answers. The math spoke for itself. He'd gotten offers, of course, to lecture at prestigious universities and give talks at mathematical conferences. These he declined politely, and everyone assumed that he was one of those mathematicians who preferred isolation to fame. That was one nice thing about math - nobody expected you to love the limelight.

But now he had been forced into a position where he must defend his work. As much as Eliot knew that his recent discoveries would excite the board, he was not sufficiently prepared to answer questions about the proof. He'd just finished it, for one, and there might be holes, places to patch up the work, corollaries that did not work directly. He'd done his best, but he hadn't had time to pick over the proof with a fine-toothed comb, looking for errors. And why were they making him wait?

His phone rang. He jerked back, fumbling in his pocket to turn off the sound. A careless blunder—what if it had rung during the presentation? He looked at the screen and paused.

Brynn.

His eyes darted to the door of the conference room, then back to the screen. He answered.

"Brynn," he said, "I'm just about—"

"She's dying."

Eliot sat down slowly on the bench, putting his papers to the side.

"Your grandmother?"

"She's dying. They say she only has a day or two left." Brynn's voice sounded strained, tiny.

"Brynn, I—"

The door to the conference room opened and a man with gray hair and glasses leaned out, looking at Eliot.

"Dr. Herceg?" he said. "We're ready for you."

"Just one moment," Eliot said, the phone pressed to his ear and away from his face.

"Are you presenting?" Brynn asked.

"Not yet," Eliot said.

"Dr. Herceg," the man said, a frown creasing his face, "We need to start. We're already behind schedule—"

"One moment," Eliot repeated. "This is important."

"I'll call back," Brynn said.

"No," Eliot said. "It's okay—"

"I don't want to interrupt," Brynn said. "We can talk later."

Eliot slumped back against the wall.

"Alright," he said quietly. "Do whatever you need to do. I'll call you after the presentation. It shouldn't be too long. Brynn, I'm sorry."

"Dr. Herceg, the board is waiting—"

"I'm so sorry, Brynn. I'm sorry."

"I'll talk to you later," Brynn said, and hung up. Eliot stared at the phone in his hand. He hadn't told her he loved her. Perhaps he should call her back.

"Dr. Herceg!"

"Yes, yes!" Eliot couldn't keep the irritation out of his voice as he stuffed the phone in his pocket and picked up his stack of papers. The man looked severely put out, but Eliot didn't care. As he moved to the front of the room, he noticed that all of his anxiety had disappeared. The board members looked up at him expectantly. They looked like copies of each other—elderly men, some gray, some balding, all in drab suits and ties cinched around their necks. He had dressed the same way, in a fitted charcoal suit and dark tie. Now he looked around and wondered if he was destined to the same fate as all of these men.

"Dr. Herceg, thank you for coming here today," the gray-haired man said, settling back into his chair and picking up a printed copy of what looked to be the paper Eliot had given to the director. "Your previous work in mathematics has been admirable, and I hope that we can continue to expect great things of you in the future. We have all been given copies of your current paper—"