2. Christian

I always imagined sneakingout was something meant for children and rebellious teenagers, but I was well into my twenties and I hadn't been able to give it up yet. It was the curse of living with my parents and their security detail, I justified to myself every time I managed to give the lot of them the slip. It was also the byproduct of being a prince, but I was the third spare, which made me eleventh in line at the rate my older siblings were popping out kids of their own, and I didn't really see the need to keep such a tight rein on me.

My parents, of course, disagreed.

That was how I found myself at a ballet in New York City in the middle of October, when I should have been home hooking up with my best friend, Parrish. Parrish and I had practically grown up together, always under my father's foot since Parrish's father was my father's most trusted advisor. We'd gone to the same boarding schools, played the same sports, and both returned home after University.

Unfortunately, I was royalty and Parrish wasn't, which meant he was allowed to get his own apartment—in the city, no less—while I was forced to stay home. In hindsight, I probably would have been able to venture out more, but I'd been pushing boundaries my entire life, resulting in the leash getting drawn tighter on me than my siblings or their children.

Home was a sprawling castle estate and I had my own set of apartments that didn't even share a foundation, let alone a wall with my parents or any of my older siblings, but the security that came with being a royal was heavy-handed and far reaching. When Parrish and I were away at school together, we'd both perfected sneaking out of windows and climbing down trellises, skills I still employed at least once a week when we were home.

But I was in New York with my oldest brother, his wife, and their three children because I'd gotten caught on a cell phone camera with a cock in my mouth at a bar outside the city, and that hadn't gone over well. At all. Parrish's father, of course, managed to get the pictures scrubbed from the internet, but it had admittedly been a close call. It was careless of me, but we'd had an argument over my desire to move in with Parrish and tensions were higher than high by the time my parents dismissed me back to my apartments. The problem was every time they restricted me, it caused me to act out worse the next time. We'd found ourselves in an annoying cycle of tight restraints followed by more brash escapes, ad nauseam.

To be fair, though, living in a castle wasn't all shit. Neither was being a prince, but it made having a social life insufferably hard sometimes. There were about a thousand things Parrish had done that I'd only dreamed of, and about a hundred more I'd never even dared to imagine. And it wasn't like I lived under lock and key. I had my own car and I had the liberty to come and go mostly as I pleased, but always with security, and always after having my itinerary reviewed and cleared.

There was no spontaneity in being a prince, and that was beyond miserable. It was privileged to complain about the consistency of my life—I knew that. But I yearned for new experiences and new people. Parrish kept me stocked up with stories and pictures of his escapades, but as the divide between us deepened, I understood it was only a matter of time until our friendship was fully severed.

"Christian," my brother Philip whispered at me, his hand raised to shield his mouth.

I lifted my eyebrows, angling my head toward him while doing my best to keep my eyes on the performance. "Hmn?"

"You're not paying attention. People are watching."

I made a show of slowly and dramatically turning my head away from the stage, swiveling it a full ninety degrees to look him head on. "Aren't I?"

"You're a million miles away," he said.

"How would you know?" I asked under my breath. "Unless you're not watching the show either?"

Philip muttered something at me, and I stood up, quickly buttoning my jacket. One of my knees cracked, and I gave my brother a dismissive wave.

"Going to piss, you bothersome asshole," I said.

He rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the stage, even though I could tell by the glaze on his eyes he wasn't paying attention either. There wasn't anything wrong with ballet, or opera, or stage performance at all. It was just…we'd both seen them all. I'm certain that was an overstatement to some degree, but the sentiment rang true. To me, ballet was ballet, whether it was American or Russian or in any other country that felt like holding women to such an insane physical form was reasonable.

We didn't have a professional ballet company in our country.

Slipping out of the box, I stumbled right over Philip's head of security, who was standing far too close to the door of our box for anyone's comfort.

"Your Royal Highness."

"Bathroom," I said, a curt answer to his unspoken question.

He pointed to one of the other men standing guard, and my shoulders deflated at the assignment. Niko was new to the detail, and he was beyond diligent about our level of care. Part of me wondered if he'd been assigned specifically to keep an eye on me while we were abroad, but I also didn't want to take credit where it wasn't due.

"Did you want to come hold it for me, Niko?"

He pursed his lips. "No, thank you, Sir."

I brushed past him and down a flight of red velvet-carpeted stairs until I reached the mezzanine…and the bar. I did have to take a piss, I also needed to get away from Philip, and more urgently, ditch Niko, but first…

He was right on my tail, so I detoured to the bar and gave a little wave to the bartender, calling him over with the crook of my pointer finger.

"French 75," I ordered, turning to Niko. "You'll hold that for me at least, won't you?"

Before he could answer one way or the other, I slipped into the bathroom, letting out a tired breath when I saw an older man sitting just inside the door beside the impressive array of towels, mouthwash, and other various toiletries.

"A hundred dollars if you lock the door until I'm finished in here," I offered.

The corner of his mouth quirked and he angled his head toward the tip jar, which was overstuffed with far beyond a hundred dollars already.

"I'll double that," I tried, pointing at the jar.

He flipped the lock on the door and I braced myself against the counter. Letting my chin drop toward my chest, I tried to come up with a plan of attack. Or, rather, a plan for escape. The thing I hated the most about New York was the obscene lack of windows that actually opened because everything was built so close together. Not to mention how tall all the buildings were, so even if there had been a window that opened, escape would have been treacherous at best.

"Is there another way out of here besides that door?" I asked.

There had to be, if for no other reason that places like this tended to do everything they could to keep the help separate from their paying guests.

"There's an employee door, sir," he answered, gesturing over his shoulder to a cutout in the wall that I wouldn't have even noticed if he hadn't shown it to me.

Looking up at my reflection in the mirror, I picked at the edge of my royal order with my fingernail. I couldn't ditch all the ridiculous pageantry of my outfit without bringing hell down after the fact, which I did try to avoid, but it would make blending into a city of millions that much harder. I'd just have to make it out quick enough to get a decent head start before Niko realized he was babysitting a drink and not me. I loosened the knot on my bow tie and popped the top button of my shirt undone. Hopefully that would be enough to blend me in to put some distance between us.

The attendant watched me curiously, his eyes barely even widening when I fished my money clip out of my pants. The money—and my access to it—had been another knockdown, drag-out fight with my father, but one of few that I actually won. There was no need, he'd said, for me to have American dollars on the trip, as I wasn't meant to be without security or my brother at any given time. I assured him I had no plans on sleeping in bed between Philip and Liz, nor their three children, and thankfully my mother had calmed him down and brought him around to reason.

I had tucked ten hundred dollar bills while getting ready for the ballet, and I pulled out five of them. Making sure the attendant saw them all, I dropped the fold in the tip jar and pointed at the hidden door behind him.

"How do I get out of here?"

"Down and to the left there's a freight elevator. You can take it to the lobby or the garage."

"Where does the lobby let out?" I asked.

"The office."

"And the garage?"

"The garage," he confirmed. "But the code to get down is one-nine-three-two."

Returning my money clip to its home, I unpinned my royal order and folded it in on itself before tucking it into the inside pocket of my jacket.

"Down to the left," I repeated. "One-nine-three-two to the garage."

"You'll be right off Fifth Avenue."

"Your Royal Highness?" Niko's voice echoed through the closed bathroom door, the knob rattling against its lock, but not giving so much as a budge. "Is everything all right?"

"Quite, Niko," I called out. "Are you still holding that drink for me?"

"Please open the door, sir."

"I'm about to."

The attendant stepped out of the way, and I kept my word, opening the hidden door that led me into a brightly lit and industrial-looking hallway. It was more like a tunnel, but much like trellises and towers, tunnels I could do.

"Thank you," I mouthed, holding my hands together like a prayer before slipping into the hallway and pulling the door closed behind me. I heard Niko's frustration mount as the door refused to open, and then I was off in a sprint for the elevator.

He'd caught on a lot sooner than I'd expected because, while he was attentive, he was also one for protocol, which meant he hated to speak first and interfere. I stabbed the down button on the elevator panel, imagining the frustrated look that would flash across his face as soon as he realized I'd given him the slip.

I rubbed the pad of my thumb against my first and second fingertips, a nervous habit, but a quiet one, while I waited for the ancient elevator to reach my level. The car sounded like it was going to groan itself to death as it settled on the floor, and I wondered how everyone on the stage and in the audience didn't hear the grinding gears.

The door slid open, and three men stepped out, one of them dressed like the bathroom attendant and the other two like the theater's own security. I was quick to look down and cover my face, side-stepping past them into the elevator and madly pressing the button for the garage. The light wouldn't keep, and I remembered the code, which I quickly entered before giving the garage button one more try.

One of the guard's radios crackled to life, a calm woman's voice coming out of the speaker.

"We have a situation," she said.

God, this elevator was slow. The doors closed at a snail's pace, and I looked up just in time to lock eyes with the guard holding the radio.

"What's going on?" he asked.

He registered my clothes first, and I was thankful I'd taken the time to hide away my royal order, or he would've caught on to who I was far faster than he did. Out of instinct, I patted my pocket to check that it hadn't fallen out. There was maybe six inches left for the doors to close.

"Prince Christian is missing."

The guard's eyes flashed, and I gave him a quick smile as the doors finally slid closed. I knew it was going to be all downhill from there, and I would be lucky to make it out of the garage considering how slow the elevator moved. But when it reached the garage and opened up to emptiness, I knew I'd gotten lucky. I wasn't arrogant enough to think it would last, though, so I didn't hesitate to dart out as soon as the door opening was wide enough to accommodate my frame.

My footsteps echoed off the walls as I sprinted for the pedestrian exit onto Fifth Avenue. I heard Niko's voice from somewhere behind me, but I wasn't going to stop and double-check to make sure it was him. I did make a note that he was faster and more resourceful than I'd originally given him credit for, because it took me what felt like a year to get to the garage and he'd managed it in half the time.

"Christian!" He shouted my given name, which meant I was very much in trouble, but I shoved the heavy metal door open and sucked in a disgusting breath of city sewer air that tasted enough like freedom that I wasn't ready to give up.

The sidewalk was bustling with people going in every direction, and my first instinct was to go right, so instead I spun left and took off down the street, a wide and satisfied smile on my face.