She’d grabbed the little black jewelry box that she’d carried in her bosom since Maxence had shoved it into her hands the night before and stuffed it into her bra again, arranging her girls so the jewelry box wasn’t poking her too much. A bruise was forming on her rib right near the bottom of her cleavage from that thing. The velvet did nothing to cushion it.
Considering the whole one-knee and proposal thing that Maxence had done at the gala the night before, there must be a ring in the box, right?
If the box had earrings in it, guys didn’t bend the knee and say romantic stuff like that. Dree’s heart swelled with the memory because it had been one of the only things keeping her going last night while she’d been lying on the floor of that closet.
But she wanted Max to do the whole reveal thing and show it to her. Then she could say yes, and he would put it on her finger for forever.
They should do it together.
She was only going to have one proposal in her life, assuming that was what was happening.
She might be wrong.
Sometimes people were wrong about really important things because—
—because she’d been so stupid when she’d pushed Francis to propose and hadn’t known what he was that she didn’t trust herself with Maxence.
Oh.
She almost stopped walking in the middle of the palace hallway, following Maxence and surrounded by mercenaries.
Yeah, she didn’t trust herself to know what was really going on with Maxence.
And she didn’t know how to deal with that.
Besides, from the worried scowl on Maxence’s face, he didn’t look like he had the headspace to deal with yet another thing, so she left the jewelry box between her boobs, poking her rib, and hoped she wasn’t an idiot.
At least she wasn’t going to lose the box with it snuggled up under her girls like that.
Dree was kind of aware that she was a little shocky from getting kidnapped and escaping and then boinking and then this, but she needed to soldier on.
Farm girls were tough.
She could do it.
She would be fine.
Surely, she would.
The Crown Council meeting was being held in the throne room of the Prince’s Palace, which was one floor down and over in a different wing of the palace.
It was a bit of a hike.
Dree had walked through the palace many times in the last few weeks, but the opulent chandeliers and layers upon layers of hand-carved chair rails and crown moulding and ceiling medallions still astonished her. Centuries of artisans had poured their lifetimes into this palace.
The mercenaries surrounding Dree and Maxence wore black fatigues with no patches or nametags, which she found unnerving.
Military soldiers were supposed to wear nametags and insignia according to some sort of war rules, right? She had enough cousins in the military that she should know that.
All six of these guys were very tall, very-very tall, as tall as Maxence, which truly made her feel like a shrub among the sequoias.
Maxence seemed to be marching, too, or at least walking more stiffly than usual. His dark eyes flicked left and right when they came to every hallway intersection.
He didn’t quite look nervous, not exactly.
The set of his strong jaw looked grim.
The military guys weren’t marching in formation, so their footsteps were a chaotic patter on the carpeted and tiled floors as they passed. Maxence was striding with them because his legs were long like theirs.
Dree struggled to keep up, skipping steps as she hurried. Busts carved from dark wood stood on pedestals in wall niches. She’d never really noticed them before because she’d always been rushing to Max’s office or hurrying and trying to find his apartment when he called for her.
Framed portraits and oil paintings hung on the walls. She wished she could stop and look at them and made a mental note to do that later. There were a lot of them, practically one every few feet, and she’d never really noticed them before.
She was noticing all the furnishings and art a lot.
Because she could actually see them.
Because there were no people in the way.
The palace—usually bustling with government office workers and dignitaries and people arriving to attend meetings like the main floors of a busy hotel—was deserted.
The opulent wall trimmings and busts of historically important people were visible because there were no people around.
Uh-oh.
Everyone must be at the Crown Council meeting.
Or holding their collective breaths in their offices.
But no one was walking the corridors except them.
Dree touched Max’s arm. “Doesn’t it seem a little weird—”
A gunshot blasted from a corridor to their right.
The military men splashed aside.
Maxence’s arm pulled Dree against his chest, his arms around her, just as two of their large men grabbed and shoved him aside.
They fell to the floor, rolling over and over as the mercenaries snapped into action. Some of the men took up positions around the entrance to the hallway where the gunshots had rung out, while the redheaded guy checked Dree and Maxence to make sure they were all right before scouring their position for an avenue of escape.
Maxence scowled. “What the—” and sprang up from the ground to standing.
The ginger merc dragged Dree to her feet and placed his finger on his lips.
Dree nodded while shaking like an earthquake and wishing she’d changed her damn shoes. She couldn’t run in these high-heeled pumps. She couldn’t fight in them, and she might need to.
The redheaded guy made some hand signals to some of the other soldiers, and one of them broke off to stand beside Maxence. The redhead whispered to Max, “Nearest stairwell?”
Max pointed and led them to a door that looked like all the others, but once they were inside, stairs wound up and down from the concrete landing.
Dree and Max started down the stairs, but the redheaded guy said, “Nope, we’re going up.”
Maxence frowned. “We could travel on other floors, I suppose, but the throne room is a floor below us.”
The guy shook his head. “We’re aborting the mission. We’ll take you out via a helicopter on the roof.”
The mercenary had a thick Scottish accent, which Dree hadn’t expected, but she wasn’t really sure what she had expected from a mercenary. Maybe she’d assumed they’d all have Texas accents.
“Absolutely not,” Maxence told him. “This Crown Council meeting is of the utmost importance. I must attend.”
The Scottish guy squinted at him. “Can’t ye reschedule it?”
“If I reschedule it, they will probably go on without me, which means my uncle Jules will be elected the next sovereign, and Monaco will become an authoritarian state.”
The Scottish guy tilted his head and stared a little more intently at Maxence. “Monaco isn’t already an authoritarian state?”
Maxence frowned at him. “It’ll turn into a criminal one. And no, it’s not. We can discuss political philosophy later. I need to get to that meeting.”
The mercenary clicked a radio microphone hanging on his shoulder and relayed this to someone else. Dree and Maxence couldn’t hear the response because the guy was wearing an earpiece, but he rolled his blue eyes just barely and said, “Come along, then. On to the council meeting. But don’t take us straight there. Keep to the stairwells and back hallways as much as ye can.”
Maxence led them on a circuitous route—down a few floors and then through the servants’ quarters and the kitchens, earning them some startled glances from chefs and servers. They trotted through increasingly more opulent rooms with higher and higher ceilings, the mercenaries stopping them and checking each room before waving them inside until they reached a massive double door that was shut tight.
Inside, a conundrum of voices rumbled.
Dree had been worrying tha
t they’d evacuated the palace due to a bomb threat.
Max tried the door handles, but they didn’t move under his grip. Dree was trying to wish them to be unlocked with her mind, but it didn’t work.
He rattled them.
Still nothing.
“Dammit.”
Maxence glanced down at his phone. “Alexandre says that it already started, and he couldn’t hold them off any longer. That was ten minutes ago.” He thumbed something into his phone and then pounded on the huge wooden doors with ringing, echoing thumps. “Open up! As heir apparent, I demand entry!”
If this had been any other time, Dree would’ve giggled at how pompous that was. If Max had gotten any more archaic in his language, he would have sounded like he was reciting Beowulf.
But at that moment, nothing seemed particularly funny. She kept stealing glances behind them at the doors into the room, even though two soldiers were aiming their weapons at that door and alternating checks at other parts of the room.
Maxence pounded on the door with the side of his fist. “Open these doors! I demand entry!”
Finally, the door clicked as if being unlocked, and the mechanism and handle turned.
A pretty dark-haired girl, who Dree remembered was Maxence’s cousin Christine, Alexandre’s sister, stuck her head out and whispered, “Get in here quick before they have a fistfight. I unlocked these damned doors while they were spouting off about whether it was allowed or not.”
Maxence shoved the other door open so that he wouldn’t bump Christine and strode directly inside, walking toward the middle of the throne room.
Chapter Nineteen
Disaster
Maxence
The crowd of aristocrats parted in front of Prince Maxence Grimaldi as he strode into the throne room.
As they damn well should. Moving the meeting time up to sabotage him was tantamount to a coup.
Kidnapping him absolutely had been an attempt at a coup.
Maxence didn’t want the throne of course, but it was his duty to ensure Monaco’s future.
Somehow.
The mercenaries from Rogue Security fanned out around the room, two of them stationing themselves near Max, a sad necessity.
“No! No, there are no private security forces in the meeting!” Prince Jules announced, striding forward as quickly as his short legs would allow. “This declaration has already been passed!”
Maxence’s cousin Alexandre stood on the dais in front of the throne, his arms outstretched and his fingers spread. A black cast covered his left hand and part of his forearm, which Maxence had noticed when Alex and his wife had visited him in his office weeks before.
Alexandre pointed at Maxence and shouted, “Prince Maxence has arrived.”
Prince Jules called back. “He has private security personnel. If our private security personnel can’t be in the throne room, neither can his!”
Alexandre winced and touched his fingers to his temple. “The movement was passed by unanimous vote. No private security personnel are allowed in the throne room during deliberations.”
Maxence spoke to Aiden. “Wait outside.”
“Yes, sir.” They marched out, closing the doors behind them.
Prince Jules strode over to the doors, flipped the locks, and smirked at Maxence.
Max considered shoving Dree out the doors and telling her to run, but there were over a hundred other people in the throne room.
Surely, nothing would happen.
Alexandre raised his arms again. “Prince Maxence has arrived! We are starting the entire election again from the very beginning. Everything that has transpired is null and void.”
Interesting.
“The vote is not void!” Max’s great uncle Louis Grimaldi shouted in a voice with less strength than Maxence remembered. “The council has voted, and a new sovereign has been elected!”
That did not bode well.
Indeed, the way many of the Monegasque nobles weren’t meeting Max’s gaze boded very, very badly.
He needed to short-circuit whatever was going on right now.
Maxence announced, his voice ringing above the crowd’s muttering, “As the designated heir apparent, I declare this council meeting illegal. Notice of the date and time must be disseminated at least two weeks before the meeting.”
“You can’t,” a woman yelled from the side. Maxence didn’t see who had yelled. “There’s a new sovereign now. You have no standing.”
Maxence insisted, “I did not call this meeting of the Crown Council to order as is my right and my responsibility. As such, no quorum was established. No votes cast or decisions made are valid or binding. In addition, a new sovereign may not be elected unless and until I am disqualified.”
People began shouting at him and each other.
Alexandre jogged down the steps of the raised dais where the throne stood and began threading his way through the crowd toward Maxence.
Maxence was standing next to Lady Valentina Martini, whose mouth was pursed in a tight, angry line as she glared at the people around her. He asked, “What’s happened?”
Lady Valentina moved her lips when she spoke to him, but her teeth remained clenched together, and she spoke with an unnatural, rage-filled precision. “They have lost their minds, that’s what’s happened. They have cast aside all tradition and decorum, and they have made Monaco the laughingstock of the world and probably destroyed our sovereignty, too. We are going to end up as French citizens for this. I just know it.”
“The Council hasn’t adjourned yet,” he told her. “We can remedy this.”
Lady Valentina was already shaking her head no, the light from the chandeliers glimmering on her tightly wound silver bun.
Alexandre stepped out of the crowd and stood beside Maxence, reaching as he did so and grabbing Maxence’s shoulder. “Jesus Christ, Max. I don’t know what the hell happened. I knew I was losing some votes in my coalition, but I didn’t think it would come to this.”
Max’s pulse pounded in his ears. “Can I get an update?”
Alexandre gestured to the room in general. “They walked in and demanded I open the session because without you here, I was the next in line. I tried to stall. I tried everything I could think of, like a guy on a losing debate team quibbling about Robert’s Rules of Order. They had it rigged. That asshole Jules called for your disqualification on the grounds that you weren’t in attendance, and they voted on it immediately. I called for floor debate, but they wouldn’t stop. They were practically in lockstep, each one of them coming up right after the other, over and over again. I couldn’t stop them.”
Maxence clapped him on the shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”
“I’m not used to not being in control of a room!”
Max craned his neck, looking over the crowd to find his uncle so he could have him arrested for kidnapping. “Where did Jules go?”
“He’s here somewhere. He flits around under everyone’s armpits.”
Pain spiked near Max’s ear as he ground his teeth.
Alexandre said, “Jesus, Max. You just growled.”
“I need to talk to him.” Maxence clenched his fists, but he took a deep breath and shook off the righteous anger at Jules. Later. He turned back to Alex. “Now that I’m here, we can invalidate the vote.”
Alexandre shook his head. “The election’s already been held. Someone shouted the nomination, and a bunch of people yelled ‘Second.’ And then they shouted for the vote, and a bunch of people yelled ‘Aye’ again, and it was over.”
“Jesus, Alex, will you tell me who they elected? Was it Uncle Jules? Did Jules finally launch a coup?”
“No.” Alexandre was gritting his teeth. “They elected Marie-Therese.”
Shock coursed through Maxence. “No.”
Alexandre looked to the side, and a break in the crowd allowed Maxence to see Marie-Therese holding her hands over her heart as she smiled with an open mouth and bright eyes, even bending her knees in su
rprise. She looked like she’d just won a beauty pageant.
Four people around her held phones aloft, either recording or livestreaming for posterity.
Marie-Therese was thanking the people around her while she giggled and flirted with the phones.
Alexandre said, “She said her first priority as sovereign princess will be loosening the rules for Monaco residency that exclude people with criminal records if, and only if, the applicant has a fifty million euro ‘buy-in’ account. Plus, applicants with ‘buy-in’ accounts will take priority over immigrants with skills that Monaco needs.”
“She wants to sell Monegasque passports to organized crime heads,” Maxence said.
“She’s her father’s daughter.”
Maxence shook his head. “She’s bragged about that several times to me.”
“Disaster,” Alexandre said, shaking his head.
Maxence could not begin to describe the scale of the destruction he knew Marie-Therese would cause.
Chapter Twenty
Duchess Georgie
Dree
When Dree saw the clamoring crowd in the throne room, she thought, Oh, this is where everybody is.
The throne room of the Prince’s Palace in Monaco was towering and cavernous and intentionally designed to make supplicants wallow in their unworthiness.
The throne itself wasn’t a medieval-looking monstrosity made out of the swords of Monaco’s vanquished enemies, nor was it enormous and overwrought with curlicue swirls and glittering glass. Instead, the seat itself was an Empire-style throne chair, which meant that it was from the early 1800s, small, elegant, rather boxy, almost like a modern, minimalist dining room chair at the head of the table, rather than an imposing monolith. It rested on a small dais, just two shallow steps above the crowd. The refined good taste of it appeared distinctly French, rather than a demonstration of how much gold could be stacked on a chair before it started toppling off.
The red velvet canopy falling from an enormous crown nailed high up on the wall was impressive, though.
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