"Is there anything else that you need while I am here?" He asked as he looked between the princess and Samuel who was watching them interact.

"Not for now. I'll call you later if anything changes. For now you should go take your lunch since you're done." Lena replied as she watched him bid farewell and leave the office.

​​

"Wouldn't it have been fine to introduce me to him while he was here?" Samuel asked uncertain as to the reason behind why she said it could happen later.

"Because although he isn't a person who tends to be loose with words. The less information that gets out before the engagement is official, the better." The princess replied as she stood up from her chair.

"We should be more focused on eating lunch right now though. We'll probably be home late for dinner with everything that needs to be done still."

"You could always ask Jeff to bring it to us?" he suggested, but the little queen shook her head as she grabbed the packed lunch bag from the rack where she had hung it.

"I don't make it a habit to eat dinner here. Plus, knowing him he'd probably be twice as late if I asked him to bring dinner and then come back later to pick us up. It's better to eat at home." Her reasoning sounded a bit odd to him, but he didn't argue since she knew Jeff far better than he did.

Taking a seat in the chair opposite of where Samuel was sitting at the sofa she began to unpack the lunch. It was a light lunch made up of sandwiches, sausage rolls and pasta salad.

"What will happen when you found out who's behind the mismatched financial numbers?" He asked after they had began to eat their lunch.

"It will depend on the reason behind why it happened. Simply mistakes as you pointed out from computer problems or people having the wrong or different numbers are something that can be forgiven. Mistakes can happen. If there is a purposeful reason behind, there'll be consequences of course. Legal ones of course." She clarified at the end.

"You don't really let the two different worlds mix that much?" He then asked as he began to eat one of the sandwiches.

"Hmm. It's not so much that we don't let them mix as much as there isn't any reason for them to. Because the underground world can be an inconsistent place, it's good to have a hand in the legal side of work as well to handle any type of situation that may occur." She explained, taking a pause in eating as she spoke.

"Certainly some chose to do it because they want to make ties in the legal side of the world that will benefit them if any of their less legal activities end up coming to light. A safety net so to speak. Others do it because they know eventually they will have to step out of the underground because they aren't successful and they need something to turn to that will sustain them regardless if they don't have a clean record or not."

"That would include the media as well?" She, nodded head in response to this question.

"Of course it would. Though technology and social media allow for more independent media to be run. Paparazzi and the bigger media still has an impact with what they publish. Thus it's important to keep on their good side or keep them willing to turn their heads away if something is at risk of being leaked. Connections can either be earned or bought depending on the reason that they are needed." She finished speaking before she went back to eating again.

Samuel hardly had any of his questions answered, but it gave him at least a little more insight into how much work went into managing everything to keep the legal and illegal sides separate and to do image management as well. He could only assume that Zane did a very good job handling their image management and that as why hardly anything had ever been leaked out about the group.

Once lunch was finished, they both got back to work though Samuel had a harder time focusing on what was in front of him than Lena did. He didn't mind going through all of the finances that needed to be taken care of, that didn't bother him. It was more that since he had started asking questions it felt like he was getting closer to open the door to Pandora's box and there were still a number of other things that he wanted to know.

It wouldn't change his decision to get engaged and potential marry Lena, that was something that had already been set. He just wanted to know more about what really went on with her family since he would be marrying into whatever they were a part of.

Lena had already told him that it would be up to Zane to decide what he could or not know prior to them getting married, but he wasn't sure how to approach such a question with the other man. He always seemed kind enough to him, but Samuel could also feel that there was a intimidating aura about him that always boiling just below the surface that made it hard to speak to him plainly.

"If you can't focus on that, you can always do something else until it's time to leave. We'll still be here for quite a while." Lena suddenly speaking broke him out of his thoughts.

"Oh, I don't mind working on it. There are just a lot of questions I want to ask, but I don't know what kind of answer I will get in response to them."

"Probably none right now." She answered honestly.

"I don't mind because I am working. I mean because there's nothing that should be told before we're official engaged. Things change and since it's a few weeks off it is better to keep things as they are until after we're official engaged."

"But what happens if there's something I have a problem with once we're actually engaged and I don't want to be a part of all this after that?" He countered with answer questions. Lena stopped what she was doing to look at him with a very hard stare.

"That's the problem here little chickadee. There isn't really any 'leaving' once we're officially engaged and you get answers to the questions you want to ask. The more you know, the harder it is to step out because people outside of our circle will eventually find out that you know too much and that wouldn't be a safe thing to have happen." She replied.

"And understand, there's a difference between honesty and a threat. I'm not threatening you in anything that I am saying right now. I am just being honest with you. The more you know, the more dangerous it is. In your case you could say it's unfortunate because you've been put into this type of position without much of a say because of both your parents and my father. Perhaps you come to resent them for that later on if there are things that you don't agree with that are going, but it's life." Samuel listened to what Lena said he wanted to respond, but he could tell that she wasn't done speaking yet.

"I'm not saying that's impossible for you to step out of all this right now if that is what you wanted to do, but with the pieces that are already being put into place and the fact that we've agreed to go ahead with the engagement and neither of us or more importantly, you didn't speak out against it before you eighteen birthday means that window of stepping out from everything has been getting smaller with each passing day."

"Once the engagement becomes official more people than you can imagine or will be even invited to the event will know whom I am engaged to as the successor of the Red Scorpions which is why at the point it will no longer matter what you do or don't know about we're involved in. Until that point though, there is a twenty percent chance that if you decide that you want to step away and not go through with this, what that means for your family would be a discussion with my father, but there's a twenty percent chance you could step out without anything happening later on in life. So as long as that twenty percent chance is there, none of the questions you have related to the unground side of our activities will be answered."

"But basically you're saying that I am already stuck here even if I changed my mind?" He clarified as he tried to process everything that she just said to him. He knew what he was getting into as he got older after learning about the arranged marriage, but hearing all of it said out loud somehow made it weigh more heavily to him.

"If that's how you want to view it, yes. Now, this conversation can be continued later, but it's more important to get work done right now." With that Lena ended the conversation and got back to focusing on all the work she had in front of her.