Max flexed his knees and dangled his hands in front of himself, ready to leap at the nearest mercenary when Marie-Therese gave the order to fire.
The Act of Contrition began playing through his mind because there was nothing else he could do. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee—
Marie-Therese raised her arm to point at Maxence. “Guards, shoot—”
Her head snapped back.
Marie-Therese shrieked, “Stop it!” as she flailed her arms and fell backward.
Her dark hair and red dress sank into the crowd.
Angry feminine grunts gurgled, and people began to stumble away from the fight.
Dree’s hoarse shout echoed to the high ceiling. “Now!”
The towering double doors exploded inward and crashed to the floor.
Chapter Four
A Good Ol’-Fashioned, Hair-Pullin’ Ass-Whuppin’
Dree
Dree clenched her fists around handfuls of Marie-Therese’s raven-black tresses as she fell backward, dragging Marie-Therese down to the floor with her. Yeah, we’ll see who looks Instagram-ready now, bitch.
Blast waves collided with her ears when Rogue Security blew the doors.
Screaming shattered the air.
Marie-Therese writhed, clawing and striking at Dree behind her head.
Dree wrapped her legs around Marie-Therese’s torso and wrenched her head back with her hair.
Marie-Therese shrieked again, her red lipstick smearing on her bared teeth.
A few shots blasted in the air.
Boots stomped the marble floor all around her.
Marie-Therese dug her nails into Dree’s arm, leaving red trenches.
Dree jammed her foot into Marie-Therese’s solar plexus with a strong heel-strike. Marie-Therese screamed and cried, but she let go of Dree’s arm.
Wussy little noble lady, Dree thought as she wrestled Marie-Therese around. She’s probably never been in a proper playground fistfight, let alone a good ol’-fashioned, hair-pullin’ ass-whuppin’ with several siblings. Marie-Therese tried to bite her, so Dree yanked her hair again.
Marie-Therese flailed and half-managed to roll over, so Dree pushed her over onto her stomach and straddled her, shoving her face down on the cold marble floor.
Dree yelled at her, “Call them off! Call your goons off!”
“No! Guards, shoot nnn—”
Dree pulled Marie-Therese’s hair, lifting her head, and then slammed her face back down on the hard marble. “I said call them off!”
“Not my face! Not my face!” Marie-Therese screamed. “Fine! Back off! Stand down!”
The fighting quieted.
Dree had fistfuls of Marie-Therese’s hair snarled around her fingers, but she could see out of the corners of her eyes that the Rogue Security guys were standing over her, pointing their guns outward at the crowd and the other mercenaries.
Maxence shoved people aside and reached her. “Dree!” He grabbed her around her waist, picking her up, and she shook Marie-Therese’s hair out of her fingers as the other woman squalled. “Are you all right? Jesus, are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Dree told him, and then something went wrong with her lungs or her throat because she couldn’t breathe.
Her sundress was still pristine-white. She hadn’t been shot.
She was entirely fine except for some scratches that would need to be irrigated because human fingernails were filthy.
And yet—
Choking.
She pointed to her throat.
Maxence checked her over briskly with an efficiency that would make a nurse proud. “I can’t find any wounds. Show me.”
Dree tried to suck in air, but her throat seemed to collapse further.
Max said, “Oh! Calm, calm.” His arms tightened under her legs and behind her shoulders. He pressed his lips to her temple, her cheek, and her lips.
Dree’s throat opened, and she gasped air.
And then she yelled at him, “Did you see those jerks? What the hell was going on here? Marie-Therese tried to kill you and me and everyone in this room, and dammit, that’s crazy!”
Maxence laughed and cradled her to his chest. “Yes. Dammit, it’s crazy.”
His heart was fibrillating a million miles an hour next to Dree’s ear, and she pressed her face against his shoulder.
He whispered to her, “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “You? Did those asswipes hurt you?”
“I’m fine,” Maxence said. “But if you hadn’t climbed Marie-Therese and dragged her down by her hair right that very second, some of them might have decided to follow her instructions.”
Some semblance of sanity returned to Dree’s head, and she realized she was a nurse in the middle of a near-mass shooting where several gunshots had gone off. “Is anybody hurt? Does anybody need medical attention? Put me down. I have to help.”
“I think everyone’s fine,” Max said.
Dree looked around from her perch in Maxence’s arms.
White plaster dust floated in the air, reflecting light from the enormous chandeliers hanging from the ceiling far above.
The Rogue Security guys she recognized were pointing handguns, mostly Berettas, at Marie-Therese’s mercenaries, who were kneeling with their hands behind their heads.
Dree approved of their use of handguns. Pistols were a much better weapon in close quarters than HK416 assault rifles, and Berettas were always a solid choice.
The nobles were sitting on the floor in groups, holding onto each other.
Casimir was unwinding himself from a guy he’d pinned to the wall while a Rogue Security operator pointed a handgun at him. Arthur was covering two terrorists lying on the floor with an assault rifle that he’d evidently taken away from one of them.
Over in a corner, Alexandre was holding Duchess Georgie under one arm and his sister, Christine, under his other and was rocking them back and forth. Georgie’s eyes were huge and dry as she surveyed the scene. Christine was sobbing on his shoulder. Alex wasn’t blinking quite enough as he surveyed the room.
Lady Valentina was scowling while her French friend was patting her arm.
Magnus Jensen and the guy with military-short black hair and a beard, Aaron Savoie, stood with their weapons pointed at Marie-Therese, who kneeled in the middle of the floor with her fingers interlaced behind her head. She glared at Dree through narrowed eyes like she would’ve shot Dree with laser beams if she could have.
The blond Irish guy from Rogue Security, Eian Summerhays, stood evenly balanced and held his weapon pointed at Marie-Therese’s father, Jules Grimaldi, where he sat cross-legged on the floor with his hands also behind his head.
Magnus Jensen didn’t look away from Marie-Therese when he said, “I have been informed by my liaison with the Directorate of Public Safety that police officers should arrive within moments to arrest and take custody of the prisoners.”
Maxence said, “Thank you, Mr. Jensen.”
Magnus Jensen growled, “My pleasure, sir.”
Maxence sat down on the edge of the dais with Dree still cradled in his arms. She handed his phone back to him, and he held her more tightly.
Within minutes, the police arrived and arrested Marie-Therese, Jules, and the mercenaries on Maxence’s instructions. They took quick notes from the shell-shocked nobles and handed out reminder cards for appointments later in the evening to make more complete statements.
Dree watched the sunlight refracting through the enormous diamond on her engagement ring while Maxence informed the police what had happened and in what order. She disagreed with his estimation of, “Miss Andrea Clark subdued Marie-Therese Grimaldi and thwarted the attempted coup and likely mass murder.”
That was overstating it.
Shivers ran up and down her arms.
She managed to mutter to the officer, “Prince Maxence kept them busy by talking to them and got them to lower their guns so I could make my way over to Marie-Therese. If he hadn
’t kept his head and made them doubt they should be here, anything I did wouldn’t have mattered. One of them would have pulled me off of her and shot me. Maxence won their minds.”
An hour later, the police left, and the throne room was clear except for the nobles again, minus a few palace coup plotters.
Dree had slid off of Maxence’s lap and huddled against his side as they sat on the edge of the dais.
Alexandre appeared in front of Max. “Are we going to finish this?”
“I beg your pardon?” Maxence asked, squinting up at him.
“Fine. I’ll do it.” Alexandre climbed onto the dais and stood behind them.
Dree turned, still shocky. People were moving, but she couldn’t anticipate where they were going or why.
Alexandre announced to the room, “I, Duc Alexandre de Valentinois, am calling this meeting of the Council of Nobles to order, again. Miss Clark, could you resume taking notes?”
Dree watched her legs straighten as she stood, and she stumbled back to her chair to gather the pen and paper that had scattered on the floor.
Alexandre sighed and raised his left arm, where a black cast wrapped his hand. “I nominate Prince Maxence Grimaldi, heir apparent to Prince Rainier IV, to be the next Sovereign Prince of Monaco. All in favor?”
Chapter Five
For Life
Maxence
The room resounded with a chorus of “Aye,” some answers strong and eager to be done with it, other voices still wavering.
Maxence sat on the edge of the dais with his back to the throne, listening to the nobles decide his path for the rest of his life.
“Any opposed?” Alexandre asked the room.
Silence.
“The motion is carried,” Alexandre said. “Isn’t that how I’m supposed to say it? ‘The motion is carried?’ Ah, blast. We’re done here. Maxence, you’re the next sovereign prince. Dree, write it down so it’s official. Congratulations, and thank God this is over.” He shook Max’s hand and walked back to where his wife and sister were standing and hugged them to his sides.
Dree picked her way back over and snuggled up beside Maxence.
He sighed and hugged her more closely. “This is not how I pictured this moment.”
She slipped her arms around his waist, and Maxence closed his eyes.
Arthur and Casimir made their way over to him, picking a path between the nobles still sitting on the marble floor in shock.
Max looked up at where they stood. “I’m sorry I got you two into this.”
Casimir shrugged, and Arthur said, “Don’t be. It’s the most fun I’ve had in months. Don’t tell the girls, though.”
His pocket emitted the low tone of a cell phone vibrating.
“Ah, too late. She has better intelligence sources than I do.” Arthur moved away to take the call.
Lady Valentina walked over and sat beside Maxence on the dais. She rested her elbows on her knees and said, “You’ll be a great prince, Maxence. This may seem like an inauspicious beginning, but the two of you saved Monaco. Every person in this room owes you their life and their loyalty. If Marie-Therese had machine-gunned us, France would have invoked their treaty rights and refused to recognize her, which means French tanks would’ve rolled through our streets. Or, more likely, French tax bills would have arrived in our mail.”
Maxence nodded.
Lady Valentina patted his knee, almost affectionately. “You’ll do splendidly. You already were. And just think, it’s only for the rest of your life.”
When she left, Maxence just sat beside Dree, blinking.
She squeezed her arms around his waist. “Are you okay?”
He shrugged. “It’s only for the rest of my life,” he repeated.
“You can tell them no,” she said, cuddling closer. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. We can still go to New York or Paris and live out our lives privately if you don’t want to be the sovereign.”
He shook his head. “I was born for this. Though my uncle didn’t teach me as much as he did Pierre, I’m one of the few people in the world who has been prepared to be a sovereign. I already have thirty years of plans whirling around in my head, land reclamation projects, social programs, and using our influence in the UN to combat global warming. I’ve never been accused of not thinking big enough. I used to press Pierre to be appointed as Monaco’s UN delegate so I could be a part of the world’s solutions, but Pierre wanted me out of the picture, one way or another.” Maxence turned, his heart refusing to beat. “Are you all right with it for the rest of your life?”
Dree’s pretty little frown would have been amusing at any other time. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because it’s the job that never ends. It’s a thousand years of history and a thousand years of the future resting on my shoulders.”
“Our shoulders,” Dree said. “Our shoulders, not yours.”
His face softened as he smiled at her, light from the chandelier glinting in the blue of her eyes. “Our shoulders, yes.”
Casimir and Arthur strolled back over to the dais, returning their phones to their pockets. Arthur sat beside Maxence, while Casimir sat on the other side of Dree.
Arthur leaned back on his arms. “From the moment Marie-Therese marched in here with mercenaries, I thought a massacre was inevitable. I thought there was no pathway to any of us walking out of this room alive.”
Maxence nodded. “I was just trying to delay the inevitable. I was hoping Dree or some other people might escape or hide.”
Casimir nodded. “Your cousin reminds me of my brother. I’ll tell Anastasia the Nefarious to raise the salary of her bodyguards and to double her security. We don’t want Willem taking tips from Marie-Therese about how to stage a coup.”
Dree shook her head. “You royal people are all crazy.”
Arthur leaned back to rest on his elbows, surveying the room casually. “Her primary mistake was walking in with them. Most dictators whip their supporters into a frenzy at an off-site location and then set them loose to do their dirty work. They don’t care what happens to the poor slobs who support them after they’ve used them. Dictators despise their followers and milk them for the power and money they can suck out of the masses.”
Maxence nodded. “Marie-Therese would’ve been a good Instagram princess, but she wasn’t a good dictator. She cared too much about the likes.”
Arthur chuckled. “Yes, none of the dictators I’ve installed cared about whether anyone liked their social media posts or not. None of the successful ones, anyway.”
Dree leaned around Maxence to stare at Arthur. “What did you say?”
Arthur didn’t even look back over at her. “Nothing, I’m sure.”
Maxence sighed again. “I suppose I should make a speech humbly accepting my ascendancy to being a God-King.”
Casimir chuckled. “Anastasia never has.”
“But she’s merely the crown princess,” Maxence observed. “She hasn’t ascended to being the queen and sovereign yet.”
Casimir shrugged. “Po-TAY-toes, po-TAH-toes. I prefer my taters mashed.”
The rustic American colloquialism spoken with Casimir’s arch British accent jolted Maxence, forcing him to feel himself in the present, and he laughed.
Dree asked Casimir, “Where’re y’all from again?”
Arthur leaned over Maxence. “His wife is a Georgia peach.”
“That explains it.”
Maxence asked the three of them, “I’d better get up there. What should I say?”
Casimir told him, “That you humbly accept the results of the election and will pray that God grants you His grace to be a good sovereign.”
Dree snuggled up to his side again. “That Monaco is your family and your home, and you will serve the people of Monaco to the best of your ability.”
Arthur muttered. “That you’re taking control of the media and military, effective immediately.”
Maxence laughed as Casimir grumbled about Arthur
knowing a little too much about military coups.
In the end, Maxence said a few words that incorporated Casimir’s and Dree’s suggestions but left out Arthur’s more pragmatic advice. “And as we move forward, may this day remind us that power should not be sought, and a sovereign is meant to serve the people of Monaco.”
Chapter Six
And They Say Monarchies Have Antiquated Habits
Maxence
The Rogue Security gentlemen were so vigilant about their duties as they returned Maxence and Dree to their palace apartment that they were practically twitchy.
As the proverbial storm was over, Maxence felt it would be unlikely there would be any additional attempt on their lives, and he was looking forward to going to bed and sleeping even though it was not even quite time for supper.
When they arrived at their door, three of Rogue Security’s operators entered and searched the apartment more thoroughly than usual. While four of the bodyguards took up stations outside the door, two more insisted that they would be taking up position inside the apartment for the foreseeable future.
Dree crowded close to Maxence and asked him, muttering, “They’re not going to want to come into the bathroom with me, are they?”
Maxence reassured her that some spaces were indeed private.
Arthur and Casimir had decided to walk with them to their apartment and then invited themselves in for a nightcap. Maxence poured them all a drink, making each of the glasses at least a double. He subtly offered Magnus Jensen a glass of scotch, but Magnus frowned and waved him off while scratching his ear.
Casimir and Arthur collapsed in the two chairs by the coffee table, and Maxence cuddled Dree up under his arm on the couch while they sipped the scotch on their empty stomachs. He should probably order some supper for the four of them.
Dree was rolling her hand from side to side in the fading sunlight from the window, throwing sparkles from the large diamond on her engagement ring on the walls.
Reign: A Royal Romantic Suspense Novel (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5) Page 2
