Prisoner Of Pride

When it began to rain, the people playing at the dinner table had switched out the Scrabble game for Monopoly. Prince Michael had quit the game and was splitting his attention between the game and his phone.

Lucia rolled the dice and got doubles. The table burst into laughter.

"Go to jail!" Leroy and Caroline shouted in unison.

Lucia grinned sheepishly and put her piece, the shoe in the jail box.

"Your turn, Lee," she said with a grin.

"Yeah, Yeah," Leroy sang as he picked up the dice.

He shook the little cube pieces in his hands and blew on them for luck.

"Don't do that!" Caroline screwed up her face in mock disgust.

"We don't want to play with your spit!"

Lucia giggled and Leroy defiantly blew on the dice again before tossing them onto the board. He got a six and a five. Lucia burst into laughter. He was landing on her property.

"You're paying my bail and then some," she told him between giggles.

"Don't be so happy about it," Leroy muttered as he moved his piece.

He counted his money and separated some bills then raised them in her direction.

"Thank you very much," Lucia said as she snatched the money from his hand.

"It's my turn," Caroline said as she picked up the dice.

She shook them vigorously and then tossed them on the board. She scowled as she saw the numbers she got. A two and a three. She was not moving as quickly as she liked. And she had landed on Leroy's property.

"Family discount?" she batted her eyes at him.

"Sorry sis," Leroy said with a wide grin, "I need the money."

She counted what she thought she owed him and tossed the bills in his direction.

Leroy laughed as he snatched at the faux money and then counted it.

"You cheat!" he accused immediately with a laugh, "You owe me twenty bucks!"

Caroline did not fight the charges but gave him the last of her money.

Lucia held in the laugh that wanted to spill out. Caroline glared at her in warning and she shook her head at her sister and looked away from her to hide her smile. When she did that, she realised her head was facing Prince Michael. Her eyes rolled up to his face and he was grinning at her. She grinned back at him her eyes twinkling with humour.

She turned her head towards the table again when she heard the plastic dice bounce against the surface of the board game. Prince Alexander had managed to get himself a one and a one. Doubles. He moved two spaces and threw the dice again. He got a four and a six. He moved his piece and landed on go. He grinned as he collected four hundred dollars.

"Any chance you will share with me?" Caroline pouted in his direction.

He tapped his lips for a kiss and Caroline grinned wolfishly before she pressed her lips to his while reaching for the money. She grasped it and tugged it free from his grasp. Then drew back from the kiss and shot a triumphant look to her brother.

"Looks like I need to raise the rent on my properties," Leroy said with disgust.

Lucia laughed as she put down the fifty dollars for the bail and then picked up the dice. She threw the dice and whooped. She was landing on one of her properties.

Leroy picked up the dice again and shook it vigorously. He whispered something to the pieces of plastic in his hand before he tossed them on the board. They rolled onto doubles. Two sixes. He triumphantly moved out of Lucia's zone of properties and into his own. He rolled the dice again and got a two and a four. He was safely on his property.

"Your turn Line," he said with a smile.

This game was not going well for her. She had sold whatever property she owned and was relying on the little she got from passing go. She rolled the dice and ended up on the "pick a card" lot. She picked a card and groaned.

"This game is rigged!" she cried.

She had to move the same number of squares she'd moved to get here. That was putting her in one of Lucia's exorbitantly priced lots. She threw the money at Lucia.

"I'm out!" she decided, "You win."

"No, she does not!" Leroy protested, "I have a chance!"

"Have a little faith in me babes," Prince Alexander smiled as he picked up the dice.

"Clean her clock," Caroline responded to her future husband before getting up.

"Where are you going?" Prince Alex asked her.

"Dela is in the living room," Caroline told him, "I need a sister's hug."

Her fiancé nodded and threw the dice.

Caroline walked out of the dining room and into the living room, where Adela was just staring at her laptop.

"Why didn't you just join us?" Caroline asked her older sister.

"I am busy," Adela responded as she closed the lid of her laptop.

"Uh-huh," there was no missing the sarcasm in Caroline's voice, "You are so busy you have done nothing but stare at the screen of that laptop for an hour at most."

Adela glared at her younger sister but said nothing. Caroline was right. She was not busy. She was a prisoner of pride.

"Is it because of Lucy?" Caroline asked with her voice low.

"It's nothing," Adela responded.

"What happened was three years ago, Dela," Lucy told her sister, "And it was not Lucy's fault either. She was just a child caught up in things she did not care about."

Adela refused to answer that. The memory still hurt. She had tried everything to get Prince Michael's attention but he had never looked her way. He had never picked a dance partner who was not a cousin for the first dance of the Christmas ball before. When his cousin had not been in attendance Adela had thought her chance had come. How wrong she had been. She had been so sure. Everyone had thought it would be between her and the lady Ivanna. The prince had surprised her and the whole country by picking Lucia of all people.

That was the night she had realised how her own sister had betrayed her for years. Every time she had sneaked off to be in the shadows had finally made sense. Lucia was not asking their mother to be lenient on Adela because she loved her. She was doing it so that she could swoop in and be the crown princess. She had been slowly working her way into his heart. Probably laughing at her whenever she made a fool of herself.

The concern she showed whenever she ran to her room crying after every ball was probably fake too.

Everyone said that Lucia did not win the prince's heart deliberately. Adela found that hard to believe. If it had not been deliberate, why had she not warned Adela when she realised that the crown prince liked her? Maybe the blow would have hurt less, but she had made it public. Adela had been humiliated. She would never trust her youngest sister again. In this war, she was an enemy.

"You have to forgive her at some point, Dela," Caroline begged her sister, "Lucy distanced herself from all of us for you. Surely that means something."

"There is nothing to forgive," Adela smiled reassuringly at Caroline.

Caroline who had gotten what they all wanted. A crown and a prince. She would never understand. How could she understand? She had never faced their mother's wrath as she had managed to get Prince Alexander wrapped around her little finger from the first day. She had never been betrayed by her own family. She could never understand; no one could understand.