The Kindness of Kings

by Chelsea Ballinger

  Mina calmed down and looked at her friend. “I guess I’m still waiting for him to actually come to his senses.”

  "Well if or until he comes to his senses, let’s go to your doctor and get an update on this kid of yours."

  Mina was eleven weeks pregnant. She was starting to show, so she wore bigger sweaters. It was winter and snow was starting to fall. Mina was going to hear her baby’s heartbeat for the first time.

  "Before we leave, I want to see Bartleby and Louie real quick,” Cristina continued. “Speaking of Louie, why is he still here?”

  “I have no idea,” Mina said, grabbing her coat and jacket. “He was supposed to go traveling, but you know Louie, he doesn’t really commit to anything.”

  +

  As the girls entered the kitchen through the side door, Mina started thinking about Sedgwick. She couldn’t help but still love him, even after what he had done.

  The ladies were greeted by Jezebel, who had given Mina a key to come into the house through the kitchen so she could avoid the King when she came over, which was rarely; it wasn’t like she was going to visit Louie.

  “Hey, Christina! Glad you’re back,” Jezebel said, hugging her.

  “Thanks Jezebel. So where are the idiots?”

  “Oh they’re in the game room.”

  The girls could hear the music blasting from downstairs. They walked in to find Bartleby counting cash. They also saw the Danini brothers. They were the sons of Raheal Danini who owned almost every casino in Serenity. They were tall, hair down to their backs, and their family originally hailed from India.

  “Mina! Christina! Hey! How was the Caribbean?” Bartleby greeted the girls with a hug.

  “The usual. Hot. Full of fine, sexy, islanders.”

  Mina laughed. “Bartleby, what’s going on?”

  “Oh well, me and Louie just beat out the Danini brothers for twenty Gs.”

  “Hey tell Louie we want a rematch soon,” said one of the brothers. They grabbed their jackets and Jezebel escorted them out.

  “Where is Louie?’ Christina asked.

  “Oh, he's back here.”

  Bartleby led the girls to the rec room where Louie was putting up the pool sticks. Mina hadn’t seen him in weeks. When she did see him, he was nice to her, which always shocked her. Louie turned around and saw them. He was excited to see Christina, but nervous to see Mina because he still didn’t know what to say to her half the time.

  “Hey Christina!” Louie picked up Christina, embracing her in a hug.

  “Hey…It’s been like three months and you still look hot. I was hoping your bad boy looks would die down by now.”

  “So do you.” Louie laughed, turning to Mina. “Hey Mina,” he said with a smile. “How have you been?”

  Mina was shocked that Louie was concerned.

  “Um...I’m fine. I'm actually going to hear the baby’s heartbeat tonight.”

  “Really? That’s cool,” Bartleby said.

  “You guys want to come?” Christina insisted. Mina gave her a “what the hell are you doing” look.

  “Well, um, I don’t know,” Louie said, knowing it would be weird for him to be there.

  “I’ll go,” Bartleby said, as Louie gave him the same look Mina gave Christina.

  “Come on, Louie, why not?” Christina asked.

  “Okay,” Louie spoke before he could think. A part of him wanted to go.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Mina said furious as they waited in the foyer for the boys.

  “Listen, as much as I dislike Sedgwick now since he ran away like the little engine that could, I want you to be happy. So if Louie comes, you know he's going to tell Sedgwick how he heard the baby’s heartbeat and maybe, I don’t know, maybe he will come riding in like a knight in shining armor or whatever and apologize...preferably while groveling.”

  Mina giggled. “I guess you do kind of have a point.”

  “I know. I’m always right, duh.”

  “I missed you, you know that?”

  “Aww, you’re too much.” Mina and Christina laughed as Sedgwick and Louie retuned with their coats on.

  "We’re taking my car. Louie, keep your head down. Can’t have the people noticing the Prince at a clinic."

  +

  The gang waited in the private waiting room. The room where no one from the outside, the press mostly would know who was in there, namely the rich and famous. Bartleby observed the little blocks for the kids. Christina read fashion magazine while Mina sat there shaking her left leg frantically and biting her thumb. She always did this when she was nervous, and Louie was always the one to notice.

  “Nervous, huh?” Louie asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re shaking your leg.”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess I am.”

  “Don’t worry…everything will be okay.”

  Mina gave Louie a look. “Okay not to be rude…but what is up with you?”

  Louie scrunched his brow, acting like he didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’ve been Mr. Nice Guy and I don’t get why. Did Sedgwick put you up to this?”

  “What? I mean he told me to check up on you from time to time before I left.”

  “Which you haven’t done, by the way; you’re still here.”

  “Yes. I…” Louie sighed and Mina could tell that he was thinking hard about something. “I just decided to stay and see what I needed to do with my life. I don’t know, some bullshit like that. And even though I have always been a complete asshole to you, I always saw you as a friend and part of the family, Mina. And besides, that’s my nephew or niece in there and…what kind of person would I be if I did not treat their mother the way she deserved to be treated?”

  Mina gaped at Louie. It was if she had seen a ghost, but a ghost that was unfamiliar to her. “Wow….Thank you.”

  Louie gave her a faint smile. “No problem.”

  Mina hesitated to ask Louie this, but she was dying to know. “Have you talked to him today?”

  “No. Do you want me to text him? Tell him what’s going on?”

  “Ms. Farron?” the nurse called before Mina could answer. “We’re ready.”

  Mina lay on the hospital bed while her friends circled around, with Christina holding her hand. Louie was on the other side of her sitting in the chair. Bartleby, being nosy, touched tools on the doctor’s tray.

  “Bartleby don’t touch anything,” Louie said to him.

  “I’m just looking. So Mina, how were you able to hide your pregnancy? You know with being the ex-girlfriend of the Prince and everything.”

  “The King is paying for everything. Even to keep the people working for this clinic quiet.”

  “Yeah, but what are you going to do when you really start to get big as a house? I mean, I know you guys weren’t out in public about it in front of the royal court and stuff, but they’re not that stupid.”

  “Bartleby is there any way to shut you up?” Christina snapped at him.

  “No, it’s fine. I don’t really know. I haven’t thought ahead. Bryan told me the King would pay for me to leave the country so the media doesn’t get a hold of it. Could you imagine? Once they see me and my baby. “King has illegitimate grandchild.”

  “Don’t worry about that right now. It will all come together,” Louie said calmly.

  “Okay yeah, I’m with Mina. You are acting really strange,” Christina said, eying him curiously.

  Louie dropped his smile and scoffed. “Can I for once just be nice?”

  “NO.” They all answered in unison. The group laughed as the doctor walked in.

  “Okay, Mina. Let’s see how your baby is doing,” the doctor said, staring at the chart in her hand. When she looked up, she was flabbergasted by the sight of the Prince. “Your Highness,” she said, quickly bowing to him. “I did not know you were the father. I thought the Crown Prince was.”

  “No, he’s not…the father,” Mina said, staring at her hands. Louie was furiou
s with the doctor and her lack of sincerity.

  “No, I’m not. And as a matter fact, I don’t think the name of the father is of any importance to you. This is a classified case, correct? You don’t even know yourself who the father is. Am I clear on that?” Louie glared at the doctor.

  “Yes, Sir. It is classified and you are very clear.” She looked at Mina. “I am very sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Mina said. The doctor flashed a smile to ease the tension in the room.

  “Well, let’s see if we can hear your baby’s heartbeat, okay?” Mina smiled and nodded. The doctor rubbed cool gel on Mina’s stomach, then started moving the Doppler around her belly, trying to detect the baby’s heartbeat. Suddenly a small and tiny object appeared on the screen.

  “Is that it?” Mina smiled.

  “Yes, that’s your baby. “

  “Big head,” Bartleby said, and Christina smacked him on the shoulder.

  “The way it’s positioned, I can’t really tell the sex, but…” she suddenly stopped the Doppler and a slow pitter patter beat came through the speakers.

  “And that’s your baby’s heartbeat.” Mina smiled widely and her eyes teared up. Louie felt something in his heart stir as he heard the heartbeat of his future niece or nephew. The smile from Mina’s face caused him for the first time to genuinely smile from ear to ear.

  “That’s my baby.” For the first time since he had left, Mina did not think of Sedgwick. She thought of the living being inside her stomach. She thought of her amazing future with this child. To her, she had finally found a purpose.

  +

  After the good news that the baby was safe, Christina dropped Mina, Louie, and Bartleby back at Serenity Castle.

  “Mina, I can drop you off at home,” Christina told her friend.

  “No, I want to walk.” For the first time in a while, Mina felt good about what was to come.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Louie asked her as Bartleby went inside. Mina eyed him curiously, hearing the tenderness in Louie’s voice.

  “I’m good.” Louie nodded his head and headed inside. “Hey Louie? she stopped him. “Thank you… for coming.”

  “No problem… I enjoyed it.” Mina started walking back to the cottage. “Hey Mina?” Mina turned back around. “I‘m here… I’m here if you need anything. I’ll make sure to tell Sedgwick about the heartbeat.”

  Mina watched Louie as he walked away in his long black trench coat. She didn’t know why but she felt a certain respect for the bad boy Prince rising inside of her.

  Louie headed inside the castle and was greeted by Oscar, the head butler.

  “Greetings Your Highness,” he bowed and removed Louie’s coat.

  “Hey, Oscar.”

  “How is Ms. Mina doing?” Oscar whispered to Louie, as he threw the coat over his arm. “She’s good. Everything is good.”

  “That is good to hear Sir.”

  “Yes, it is.” Louie patted Oscar on the back and walked through the long foyer to the grand staircase that led to the second floor ballrooms where royal events were held. Louie wanted to continue walking to his room, but he found himself as always wanting to test the heart of his father. He wanted to see if his father could get any lower than before.

  “Tomorrow we will be visiting Senator Rasen of Gilles City. He will be discussing the increase of the inmates in the prison system.”

  “Why?” Caius asked his assistant, Bryan.

  “Well, Sir, he is worried about the overcapacity and the inmates he insists are locked up for a long amount of time for petty crimes.”

  “That is not our problem.”

  “I agree Sir.” Louie rolled his eyes at the sound of his father’s personal kiss ass. “But we have to show the people that we do care. The poll as a well-liked King is going down each year amongst the lower class. They claim you do not care for them and also you have letters from the families of the exiled Serenians.”

  “The day they are exiled they are no longer considered Serenians, Bryan. They are merely forgotten people.”

  “Well, obviously they’re not forgotten by the people who care for them.” The King and Bryan turned their heads toward the door and saw Louie.

  “Bryan, remind me why I haven’t exiled my son, yet.”

  “Because he hasn’t broken any laws, Sir.”

  “Neither did the people that were exiled,” Louie said. “They just pissed off the King.”

  “That is not true,” Bryan quickly defended.

  “It’s okay Bryan. He has his right to free speech,” Caius said, smirking at Louie.

  “You sure about that Father? Remember cousin Theodore? Didn’t he run his mouth about missing money from the Serenity treasury? Then that same month, he’s exiled for his scandalous behavior with a prostitute and cocaine.”

  “Louie, Louie, always so imaginative.”

  “A great trait I get from my mother.”

  Caius sneered at Louie. “Be careful boy. What do you want?”

  “I just thought I should tell you that I had the pleasure of listening to your future grandchild’s heartbeat. Good news pop! It has a perfectly good heart… unlike its grandfather.” Louie spoke in happy sarcasm.

  Caius stood and stared at Louie for a moment before smirking and shaking his head. “It really is a shame.”

  “What is?”

  “I always thought Mina was smart. She could rise in society with my recommendations, but instead she chooses to defy me.”

  “Defy you? You talk as if she is property.”

  “She lives on my property. Everyone in this Kingdom Son… no everything and everyone of Serenity from the roots beneath the cold ground to the clouds that surround the tallest skyscraper in this country, I own every last one of them. Serenity is my country, my soul, my legacy. Anyone be damned who dares to defy my natural-born right.”

  Louie glared at his father. “Must you be so misguided in your argumentations of what a King is that you are blinded by the possibilities of something other than power? You do remember the definition of Serenity, don’t you? Or should I remind you like Mom always did?”

  “Get out.”

  Louie raised his hands in surrender and walked furiously away. His father’s personality got to him as always. It was hard to know someone with so much negativity inside of them, but it was even either harder for someone in your own family to display this foulness that easily plagued him.

  +

  Mina awoke from her sleep with a sharp pain in her stomach. She didn’t know what it was. As she removed the covers, she saw blood all over her bed.

  “Jezebel!” Mina called out.

  “Mina?” Jezebel entered Mina’s room and was horrified by the blood in Mina’s bed. “Hold on, I’ll call Wesley.”

  After Jezebel contacted Wesley and the hospital, she knew Louie would want to be notified of Mina’s emergency.

  “Louie!” Louie woke to the sound of Jezebel’s voice and banging on his door. He rose and walked to the door, opening it.

  “Yeah?” he asked tiredly.

  “It’s Mina! We need to go to the hospital.” Her name woke him up.

  “What?!”

  “Wesley and Garrett are with her now. We have to get her to the royal clinic. We are going to take the back way quietly in case any press are outside the gates. I knew you would want to come.”

  “Okay, I’m coming.”

  That night Louie went with them to the clinic he didn’t even blink an eye while hearing screams of pain from a woman confused about what was happening.

  “What is happening to my baby?!”

  Louie wanted nothing but to cure the pain of Mina’s heart. He wanted to save her, protect her from the reasons why he had lost faith in a higher power. Since his mother’s death, he had never been scared, but Mina scared him. And he realized that she had scared him in every way. To love someone with so much intensity, he could almost relate to his father’s obsession with power. Louie’s obsession with Mina’s happiness had
peaked. He knew if Mina did not survive this, he would not either. He knew from the moment he saw the blood in her bed. He knew what the doctors would tell her. He knew that the life created by her and his brother, growing inside the womb, had fallen before a kingdom could. The baby was lost, gone without ever being able to experience life. Gone before Mina could tell how much she loved them.

  Chapter 7

  A Shift

  Three weeks had passed and still no call from Sedgwick, Louie thought to himself. He had told his brother what had happened and all Sedgwick could say was, “I’ll call you back.” Louie was furious that he hadn’t come back. All he could do was wonder what he could do. How could he possibly make this right?

  But while he struggled with solutions, Mina’s aunt added to her problems.

  "I told you it wouldn’t end well. He is the Crown Prince," her aunt stated while sipping on her drink. "They do nothing but use you, Mina. They use you... and then they drop you."

  "Shut up," Mina quietly said to herself.

  "That is what the King does... that is what the Prince will do. Nothing is a fairytale."

  "Shut up," Mina repeated again to herself and again, but her aunt, oblivious to her niece's need for comfort, kept talking.

  "They are all dogs. Filthy fucking dogs."

  "Shut up!" Mina pushed out of her seat and slammed her fists on the kitchen table.

  "Can you for once just shut up?! Just continue drinking your life away and keep your comments about my damn life to yourself! Got it?"

  Mina left without giving her aunt a chance to respond, but Denise would never respond. She knew she had never really been a parent to Mina, but she also knew the truth of men of royalty. She had found out while Queen Serene was sick.

  Denise wasn’t always sad, but while the Queen was dying, Caius, deep in his heartache over Serene's abandonment of him, sought comfort in secretaries and maids. Denise found the King handsome and charming, but never wanted to betray the Queen who had been so kind to her and Mina. But one night, her desires got the best of her.