The Prodigal Prince - vanish into fiction

Her teeth clacked together. The blood ran cold, and the fear traced the blue veins along her neck. It was a terror etched deep into her very cells.

Enze’s father, a big shot in the underworld, was connected to multiple violent organizations.

Outwardly, he ran a small loan company called Freund, managing only a few underlings. But in truth, he had countless gangs at his disposal. He was a central figure in a world where money reigned supreme. He held the power to be utterly cruel, capable of acts so monstrous they would make even the Devil weep.

Enze recalled the women who had come and gone as her father’s wives—her mother, her stepmother, and yet another stepmother. All of them had passed away long ago.

What haunted her most was the final memory of her own mother. The sight of a chunk of flesh—like a bomb fragment—bursting from the back of her mother’s head, drenched in vivid red blood, had seared itself onto her retina. She saw it again and again.

Though the case had been closed as a spontaneous incident caused by a dispute over dowry, Enze, the sole witness, had known the truth. Her father had enjoyed the kill.

The trauma of watching her mother brutally murdered would never fade. The dark red trail left by her corpse as it was dragged across the blue marble floor was grotesque, like a path opening straight into hell.

Her own life, too, had always been hanging by a thread. She had fought desperately to survive, but now, she was reaching her limit.

The people her father would send were nothing like soldiers. They would not go easy on her. Their methods of pursuit would be far rougher. These men wouldn’t knock politely at the castle gates—they might break in without warning. They were the kind of people who might kill just to fulfill her father’s command to retrieve her. The fact that a missing person ad had been published meant her father was now tightening the noose.

‘Should I continue to hide, or should I leave now?’

Trusting her life to the prince’s uncertain kindness was foolish and reckless. If a vicious gang burst in, they might give her up without hesitation to avoid chaos. Even having stayed here for a few days had already been an undeserved luxury.

Running away wasn’t a guarantee of safety either. The odds of being captured were high. Comparing her own desperate, amateur plans to seasoned gangsters used to tracking and catching fugitives was like comparing heaven and earth.

Would she just sit here and let it happen—or try something, anything?

Realizing her desperate escape was gradually falling apart, Enze’s thin body swayed. She had known from the beginning that being chased from both sides wouldn’t be easy, but seeing the missing person notice felt like having a knife pressed to her throat.

She made a request to Anya, who had come to ask what she wanted for lunch—could she see His Highness?

“I’m afraid His Highness is away at the moment.”

The polite refusal felt like an impenetrable wall.

“When will he be back?”

“I’m not sure. Shall I tell him you’d like to meet?”

“No, it’s fine for now.”

‘I guess we won’t be able to meet like this. I wanted to at least say hello before I leave.’

After spending a few days here, Enze had realized she’d been mistaken. She had thought Louis was interested in her as a woman, but that wasn’t the case at all. He hadn’t made a single inappropriate move—hadn’t even shown himself.

She felt a little embarrassed about her misunderstanding, and all the more grateful that the prince had taken her in as a guest without expecting anything.

Wearing a simple coat and dress for going out, she slung her bag over her shoulder. She borrowed a carriage from the castle, using the excuse that she had errands in the city. No one questioned the sudden outing or tried to stop her.

Enze had no idea how many pairs of eyes were quietly tracking her every move.

***

That same morning, a ball rolled across the billiard table in the guest drawing room. It had been rolled by hand, hitting the rail at a geometric angle and spinning in a circle.

Louis exhaled a web of cigar smoke, then placed a fine Taino cigar into a crystal ashtray. His mind was spinning from reviewing important documents, but bored with his daily routine, he’d distracted himself by rolling balls across the table. A striped ball sank into a pocket after hitting the cue ball. He didn’t even have time for a proper game, but he was bored to the point of yawning.

After all the colored balls were pocketed, he placed the white cue ball back in the center of the table and took another draw from his cigar.

The page he turned to was packed with a chart only differing in numbers from the previous one. It was a production plan for RC Oil, the company he headed.

They had just begun extracting crude oil, and the entire operations team was busy. Since oil drilling was fraught with variables, they had to secure capital and equipment in advance, and proactively control foreseeable risks. Though it was assumed the reserve was massive, no one knew how much was truly buried underground, and the uncertainty gave him constant headaches.

There was no reason to pop champagne just yet. RC had ongoing development projects in multiple regions, and results from other wells were due soon. Building even one oil field was as logistically taxing as constructing an entire city. Coordinating simultaneous projects meant Louis was stretched beyond capacity.

Confidentiality had to be maintained as well. His father, King Gehrt, was the very image of aristocratic refinement and refused to associate with a son who was “greased in oil.” And yet, he had no qualms about sucking every drop of benefit from it.

Still, there were advantages. Louis was granted considerable freedom and could protect the company’s secrets.

King Gehrt, enchanted by steam locomotives that billowed clouds of vapor, was one of those nobles who strongly supported steam power over black, oily combustion engines.

Even when the king proudly showcased outdated knowledge that no longer aligned with the times, Louis did not correct him. The fact that the pipes stuck into the desert were worth astronomical sums worked in Louis’s favor—the longer it stayed hidden, the better.

To limit exposure, he didn’t commute to the company headquarters. Instead, he handled operations from within the castle. After instructing his team to submit revisions to several project checkpoints by the next day, he lit another cigar.