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

fundraising, and she is who she is. Nobody can deny Flicka anything when she decides she wants something.”

Nico shook his head. “Pierre shouldn’t have been under so much pressure to marry a European royal.”

Maxence bit his lip on one side. Pierre’s suicide had been an act of aggression meant to inflict pain on others, especially Flicka, not a desperate attempt to end his own suffering. Pierre never suffered from anything.

At the end of the office, Quentin Sault stood at parade rest and hadn’t flinched.

Pierre had probably meant to hurt Sault, too, one last desperate insult to his loyal security man to show Sault he was worthless. That kind of targeted torment was utterly in keeping with Pierre’s personality. He’d never missed a chance for a quiet, vicious stab in the back.

The number of times Pierre had said something like, “Those pirates should have starved you to death,” to Max when they were teenagers were incalculable. In their twenties, Pierre had become more subtle but no less sadistic.

Nico laid his fork down and leaned back in his chair. “It still seems overwhelming. I can’t imagine walking in and taking on the responsibility for forty thousand people and the economy of a country.”

Maxence nodded. “And that’s why we’re having problems finding someone who will do it.”

“It’s daunting. Again, anyone who thinks they’d be great at it is probably a megalomaniac and a narcissist.”

“How about this: if you were to take on the role and if we could get you elected, which are two different problems, I would stay in Monaco at the palace for six months and walk you through it. You could learn everything you’d need to about being a sovereign in six months.”

Nico smirked. “Royal on-the-job training, so to speak.”

“Exactly.”

He leaned his head against the back of his chair and squinted at the ceiling. “And if I’m still hopelessly floundering in six months?”

“Either I’ll stay for another six months, or you could abdicate,” Maxence assured him. “Surely, with six more months to observe people, we could find an excellent replacement if you decided it wasn’t for you.”

Nico’s eyebrows and mouth tugged up in the middle, a bit of grudging acceptance. “I’ll think about it, but I insist we don’t discuss this with anyone else.”

“Of course not.”

“I prefer my head firmly attached to my neck, and I have plenty of lead in my bloodstream from eating paint chips as a kid. I don’t need any additional lead introduced into my body.”

Maxence chuckled. “I want to argue with you that surely Jules wouldn’t murder someone who stood between him and the throne, but we both know I’d be lying.”

Maxence leaned sideways to look past Nico’s shoulder at Dree, who was finishing her salad. “Taking notes?”

Dree nodded and went back to her tablet, scribbling notes with her stylus.

Max flipped over his cell phone again and tapped the top red dot a few times, and then he pressed both of them, holding them down, longer, harder.

Beyond Nico, Dree’s body went rigid, and her knuckles clenching the stylist turned white as the tiny vibrator he had inserted inside her and nestled inside her folds buzzed from the remotely operated app on his phone.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Death by Tiny Toddler Stomping

Dree

Even though it was only a few weeks after Christmas, Monaco was lovely and sunny and absolutely delicious.

In the palace during work hours, Dree sat in her little admin chair and scribbled notes that had nothing to do with what Maxence was talking about in the meetings.

Some people, Max worked hard to convince with logic.

Others, Maxence smiled and spoke like he was reading Scripture to them, and Dree forgot to write down fake notes for ten or twenty minutes at a time. She wasn’t sure what to call that thing he did, whether it was charm or charisma or an angel speaking through him.

But it was something.

Sometimes during their lunch hour, she and Maxence ducked out of the palace. They often had to sprint to dodge palace security and the astonishing number of video cameras installed on Monaco’s buildings and streetlights as they made their way to the convent where Sisters Ndaya and Disanka, plus the little girls Majambu and Mpata, were staying.

Maxence had been trying to make arrangements to send them home ever since they’d arrived a little over a week earlier, but they were fatigued from the long flight to Monaco, over twenty-four hours of traveling, and the religious sisters were not eager to get back on an airplane with two little girls barely older than toddlers for another trip like that.

“Why don’t you just put them on that fancy private plane that we took to Nepal?” Dree asked him as they caught a rideshare car to the convent when they were just over the French border. “Surely it has the range to get them to the DRC.”

He’d answered in a low voice, “I don’t know who to trust. Palace security may have been infiltrated by people who might want to use them as leverage during the election. They’re safer in the convent than surrounded by possibly compromised security personnel.”

“But you don’t want to be the sovereign prince.”

“A significant number of people will vote with me. If someone took them and threatened to harm them, I would do whatever they wanted, absolutely anything.”

Dree asked, “Are we talking about Jules again?”

“Yes, we’re talking about Jules again.”

They tried to see the sisters and children every other day, usually for lunch or dinner. Maxence had taken the mother superior of the convent aside and explained the situation, adding that he was glad that they were staying at the convent with people he could trust. The mother superior assured him that the convent was safe for two little girls and two religious sisters. Besides, there was a nursery school and other little girls for Majambu and Mpata to play with. It was a nice vacation for them.

Maxence was the little girls’ favorite person to play with, of course. The minute he arrived, they