Arranged Marriage To The Princess Of The Red Scorpions

Lena woke with a start when she realized that someone was shaking her shoulder. She hadn't even realized that she had fallen asleep the night before.

"I apologize for waking you so early Princess, but you have a guest here who said that it's urgent to see you." As soon as she recognized Clive's voice she relaxed slightly. She still wasn't sure where she was until she opened her eyes and tried to adjust to the dim light that had been turned on in the room.

She had forgotten that she had went to sleep in the sunroom because she had been having a hard time falling asleep in her own room. She had too much on her mind that was making it hard for her to fall asleep. The sunroom was one of the only rooms that could help her to relax when she was like that.

"What time is it and who is it?" She asked as she blinked a few times to clear the sleep from her eyes. Since she couldn't remember where her phone was, she figured that it would be easier to ask Clive than it would be to try and look for it. Most likely it had fallen between the Sofa cushions where she was sleeping.

"It's a little after eight Princess and the guest said that her name was Evalyn Foster and you were expecting her." Clive replied as she stepped back to give Lena space to sit up and collect herself. Indeed, she had been expecting Samuel's mother to come this morning, but not this early. Sitting up she rolled her shoulders in order to crack her neck and take away some of the tension in her back.

"Let her in and tell her to give me about ten minutes and I will be joining her." The princess replied with a sigh. She wasn't ready to deal with this yet so early in the morning. She still needed to tell her father about the unexpected turn of events but she hadn't heard from him since the morning before Evalyn had messaged her which most likely meant that he was too busy to read her texts even if she did message him.

"As you wish." Clive replied.

"Should I request that Ryan get both of you some coffee for this morning?" He asked as Lena stood up from the sofa. She ran a hand through her hair but stopped when she realized that it was too knotted to do much about without a brush.

"Yes and make sure that he knows to make mine extra strong." She replied as she put her shoes on. She needed the few extra minutes to change clothes and make herself more presentable. Her only guess as to why the other had shown up an hour earlier was because whatever she wanted to talk about really was that urgent. The question was what type of urgent though? The urgency on the level that Lena was used to dealing with in the world that she was from or the urgency of a daily life issue that felt more urgent than it was? For the sake of her sanity, she hoped that it was latter and not the former.

Evalyn was sitting at the dining room table looking rather nervous and didn't look much better than Lena felt. She hardly looked up at the princess before she looked away again. Nerves or was she guilty about something.

"Here some coffee for both of you." Clive came back into the room at the time and sit the coffee cups down on the opposite sides of the table. The princess thanked him and took the seat opposite of Evalyn.

"Can you fetch Samuel as well. I feel like this is a conversation that he should be part of." Lena told Clive watching the way that Evalyn's expression changed when she said this.

"I would prefer that he wasn't involved in this yet until I talk it over with you." She replied looking between the two of them, the nervous expression more apparent on her face.

"Why?" She asked as she motioned for Clive to do as she asked. She expected that Samuel was most likely still asleep in his room, but wouldn't be a problem for him to get ready to come out and talk with them.

"Because it's something that I thought that I could escape from and haven't told even talked with my husband about because I never thought that it would come up again." Evalyn confessed, grabbing the coffee cup and talking a small sip from the glass.

"Isn't this perfect chance for you to come clean to him as well while you're here then? Better to get it done all at once if it's something that serious." Lena reasoned though Evalyn didn't seem to be that convinced that she was right.

"What type of secret is it then that you don't think that it's something that he should know? Worse than telling him that in order to pay off debt he was pushed into an arranged marriage to the princess of a Mafia gang?" She asked trying to get a feel for what type of situation she was dealing since the other seemed more hesitant to speak up now that Lena had wanted to bring Samuel into the conversation.

"It's a complicated secret, and yes, it is in some ways worse than marrying off into your family." Evalyn replied as she bit her bottom lip.

"What then?" Lena pushed beginning to get annoyed by the way that the other was not wanting to just tell her what was going on. She really didn't have time to waste on such things.

"I lied about my family being dead. The truth is that I distanced them because of the type of people they were. I wanted nothing to do with it and because I was the daughter of the grandson of the fourth son of the family, I didn't think that it would ever come up again after I changed my name and left when I was sixteen." Evalyn began to explain.

She was cutoff from speaking further however when Clive entered the room looking far more serious than he had when he left.

"Samuel isn't in his room and I can't get in touch with Jeff either." He told the princess causing the bad feeling that had been lingering in the background to come back at full force.

"What do you mean you can't get in touch with him?" She asked turning her attention to the other, trying to keep her voice level and calm as she spoke.

"He isn't answering his phone when I call him. It goes straight to voicemail." Clive replied as he tried once again to call the other while he was there with the princess.

"I think that it's probably J." Evalyn spoke up suddenly causing both people to turn their heads to look at her.

"Clive go get my phone from the sunroom and you tell me who J is." Lena ordered realizing that she had left her phone in the other room. If something had happened, Jeff would have most likely messaged her, but where the hell would they have gone so early in the morning? Something must've been wrong.

"He's one of my second cousins?" Evalyn replied, pausing a second before she continued speaking.

"Not only that, but he also belongs to a mafia group that primarily resides on the opposite side of the state from here." Evalyn further explained. Lena's face became very cold when she heard the other tell her this.

"You mean to tell me that you belong to a mafia family but you never thought that it would be relevant to release this information prior to Samuel getting engaged to me?" She asked trying to keep her temper in check.

"I never thought that it was something that would need to come up. I left them for over twenty years now and they had never tried to get in touch with me before two months ago. If I had know that this was something that would become a problem, of course I would've said something sooner." Evalyn replied half being honest and half trying to defend her decision to keep quiet about it.

"Princess, I think that you need to see this." Clive said as he came back with her phone. The look on his face told him that it was going to be something that she didn't like. Reaching her hand out, she took the phone from Clive.

Not only had she missed a text from Jeff letting her know where he and Samuel were going, she had missed two distress calls and another call from her father. Most likely her father was trying to respond to it in order to find out what was going on. The calls had been done no more than ten minutes since she had left her phone. Something had just happened and she didn't like it one bit.