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

you imagine my father at one of these receptions? He doesn’t suffer fools at all, let alone gladly. If anyone made the wrong political comment, he would dump his scotch and soda over their heads and demand satisfaction.”

Maxence chuckled. “I didn’t ever see my father at an event like this.”

“I’m sorry,” Nico muttered.

Maxence turned back to him. “It was just a statement of fact. I don’t remember him much at all. I was sent away to boarding school as soon as I turned five years old.”

Nico had attended a day school in Monaco, not Le Rosey boarding school in Switzerland like Maxence and most of his friends had. “You Le Rosey kids missed a lot.”

Max shrugged. “We formed a different kind of bond.”

“But do you ever see your friends from school? You must be scattered all over the world.”

“Relatively often. I saw two of them just before Uncle Rainier died. I missed Christmas with them this year because I was in Nepal, but we usually spend the holidays together.”

Nico turned to Max and cocked his head to the side a little. “I’m glad. I was always worried about you and Marie-Therese and the others who were shuttled off to Le Rosey. You’d come home for Christmas and the summer, but then we would blink, and you’d be gone again. My mom worried about you, you know?”

“Your mother is nice. She and Marie-Therese’s mother scooped up all us boarding school kids during the vacations. I still remember when we went to Nice to go to McDonald’s that one time.”

Nico laughed under his breath. “It was the first time you’d ever eaten a chicken nugget.”

“I still crave them.”

“That was the summer when you weren’t around much, and then you were back for barely a few days before you went back to school.”

Maxence didn’t blink or flinch. “Yes.”

“Did they feed you enough at that school? You were skinny sometimes.”

Nico was conflating times when Max had merely returned from school, having grown, with the time he’d been kidnapped. He’d been emaciated when he’d returned, and for security reasons, unable to explain why. “The food was fine and in adequate quantities. I went through stages of being a picky eater.”

The agreed-upon lie lay sour on his tongue.

“You know a lot of people from Le Rosey. Like, for example, when the Butorins held those events a couple of years ago so their construction company could bid on some of the land reclamation projects, you already knew Dima and Tatiana. I had no idea who they were.”

Maxence checked who was standing near them in the crowd, but it was mostly strangers and Quentin Sault standing off to the side, on duty and surveying the situation. “You don’t need to know who Dima and Tatiana Butorin are anymore. They both died within the last few years.”

Nico blinked. “Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry. Maybe we should talk about other candidates because I keep sticking my foot in my mouth.”

“You’ll get the hang of it. Besides, they weren’t friends of mine. Tatiana and I had an adversaries-with-benefits thing going on for a little while, but when the Butorins bid on the reclamation project, I made sure they didn’t get it.”

Nico glanced at him, startled. “That’s cold.”

Maxence shook his head. “Like many of the nouveau riche Russians who’ve applied for Monegasque citizenship in the past few decades, they ran a criminal organization. The Butorins were involved in drugs and protection rackets, mostly. The Sokolovs, however,” Maxence pointed to his Great Uncle Louis and the group of people standing with him over by the bar, “are almost all narco-terrorists.”

Nico looked at their uncle, back to Maxence, and again at their uncle. “We have drug dealers living in Monaco?”

Nico needed to become a lot less naïve very quickly if he was going to take the throne. “Even more certainly than we have counterfeit art hanging in the national museum.”

“No way. Who are those guys?”

“It’s been over a decade since I graduated from Le Rosey and went off to university, but Lady Valentina pointed out Matryona Sokolov as Uncle Louis’s primary drug dealer. I’m pretty sure that’s her brother Kir standing with her and Uncle Louis.”

Nico turned his back to the Russians and their uncle and lowered his voice. “Should we throw them all out? Isn’t that the point of having an absolute monarchy is that you can get rid of criminals like that?”

Maxence allowed himself to grimace just enough that Nico would be able to see it, just a tightening of his eyes and lips with a negative shake of his head. “First, there’s the old concept that you hold your friends close and your enemies closer, but also, we don’t want to antagonize them even though we don’t get into bed with them. Also, their money funds reclamation projects just as well as anyone else’s.”

Nico nodded, his eyes drifting as he absorbed the idea that his country tolerated Russian mafia criminals among its citizens. “Who else do we make accommodations like that to?”

Maxence inclined his head as he considered what he should tell Nico while they were standing in the middle of several hundred people, even if the string quartet over in the corner was also playing through the speakers over the crowd. “We should probably discuss more in private.”

“Should we start a spreadsheet or something? Can’t tell the mafia players without a scorecard?”

Maxence smiled at him. “You’ll get to know everyone within the first few months. Everyone will want to meet you.”

“We should consider other options. Someone in that position should know who’s the head of a Russian criminal organization and who isn’t.”

Maxence shook his head and smiled in a way he hoped was reassuring. “I will be at your right hand for at least six months, a year if you need me. I won’t let you make a mistake.” He leaned slightly toward his cousin. “And even if you did, no one would be able to say a word because you’d be the Prince of Monaco.”

Nico stepped back, nodding. “I guess