Prince: Royal Romantic Suspense (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5) Blair Babylon (ebook reader screen txt) 📖

the money they think I owe them. It’s only been a month. I’m not sure I can ever go back there.”

Maxence sat in the large manager’s chair behind the desk and spread his palms on the rich wood. “You could go to Paris.”

“I don’t speak French.”

“You could go somewhere else in the United States.”

She scrunched her red, succulent mouth to the side. “You sure are trying to get rid of me.”

“You could lose yourself in the crowds of New York or hide out in a small town in the Midwest. Nurses are needed everywhere.”

Dree hesitated before she spoke, her lips pressed firmly together. “It seemed like the police officer I talked to may have been part of the problem. If that’s the case, it would be easy for him to put an alert on my passport. He’d know when I entered the country and where I went. Those official databases are connected. They would know where I was within days.”

Maxence nodded, trying to appear wise but stalling for time. “With my bodyguards and the Monegasque police, the palace might be safer than Phoenix, but that might not be the only problem.”

“Yeah, murderous Uncle Jules.”

“To start with, yes.”

“Are you sure you’re not blowing things out of proportion? Everybody here has been so nice.”

“Laying aside the fact that people who grow up very wealthy tend to view other human beings as disposable because they never had to develop empathy, there is a great amount of money at stake. Whoever is elected to be the Prince of Monaco will control well over a billion dollars, probably closer to $1.2 billion.”

“That’s a lot of money,” she said and then rolled her eyes. “I mean, obviously. I’m not stating the obvious or anything. Ugh.”

Maxence told her, “It’s more than enough money to push people to murder. It’s happened before. During the election when my uncle, Rainier IV, was elected, well before I was born and in gentler times, a high-caliber bullet smashed through a window and buried itself in the wall beside his head. Luckily, in those days, telescopic sights had not yet been perfected, and targeting computers that can correct an assassin’s aim for the distance, wind, temperature, and humidity hadn’t been invented. The more ruthless candidates for the current position are probably quite confident that it would be immediately hushed up if an assassination occurred now. Monaco could not afford to let the world know that our princely election had turned deadly.”

Dree asked, “Who did it?”

Maxence’s tone turned grim. “The assassin shot himself before he could be arrested. It must be noted that after my uncle Rainier, my father was next in line for the throne, had the most to gain, and was certainly capable of it.”

Dree winced. “And now, here you are.”

“I won’t stand for election, and I won’t accept if they elect me.”

“Oh, that’s why. Because your dad might’ve tried to have your uncle killed for it. That makes sense.”

He shook his head. “I am temperamentally unsuited to be a sovereign of any country.”

Dree’s quick frown was sweet. “I don’t think you’re ‘unsuitable.’”

“While Monaco is a tiny country, its influence is larger than one would expect. We are a celebrity among nations. Everyone wants to be seen at James Bond’s baccarat table. Everyone wants to befriend one of the few sovereigns left in the world with absolute power. Everyone wants to attend royal galas. That kind of power is—heady.”

“Ah. Power corrupts—”

“And absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I am absolutely corruptible.” His voice had lowered.

“Is that what you’re afraid of? Becoming corrupted?”

Maxence straightened a few papers and pens on his desk so that they were parallel to the edges. “I’m already corrupted. That is painfully clear from our time in Paris and Nepal.”

“I don’t think so.” Dree was staring him straight in the eyes, her gaze level and serious.

Maxence looked away. “It’s kind of you to say that, but the problem is that there is going to be a fight for the throne like there has not been for a generation. The world is more brutal now. The usual rules of civility and tradition no longer apply. Politicking for votes will no longer be subtle promises of privilege. It’s going to become threats, blackmail, and violence.”

“They don’t scare me,” she said.

“I don’t want you here. I can’t have anyone around who might be used as leverage. My job now is to make sure that Monaco is in the hands of someone responsible and moral.”

“So, not like your Uncle Jules.”

“Precisely.”

“I can’t believe that jolly little elf we saw is the racist, manipulative guy you described.”

“Psychopaths are good at hiding what they are. Their personalities are nothing but a singularity of rage, and Jules isn’t the only psychopath in line for the throne.”

“Do you think Prince Jules is evil?” she asked, still examining him like a specimen under a microscope that the nurse was identifying.

Max flipped his fingers at the ceiling, indicating the impossibility of an answer. “Ah, the problem of evil.”

“You have a Ph.D. in theology, in theodicy, the study of evil,” she said. “You should be able to figure out whether he’s evil or not.”

Maxence could have discoursed for hours about the definition of evil and sin and the problem of the existence of either of them. His doctoral thesis had run over four hundred pages.

Instead, Maxence said, “Jules Grimaldi is a selfish asshole and will always lust after more and more money and power. Being the Prince of Monaco and controlling forty thousand people and over a billion euros in wealth would satisfy him for a week. Then, it would not fill the gaping hole of fury in his heart, and he would want more. He would seek out and sign treaties with other countries that would give him more power and money with no regard for how it affected Monaco’s citizens. Indeed, he would enjoy making them more miserable, more helpless, with less money and power, more like medieval serfs than citizens, because it would demonstrate his power over them.