Prince: Royal Romantic Suspense (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5) by Blair Babylon (best ereader for comics .TXT) 📗

across the street is open until seven-thirty. It’s the one where we shop at, not the ‘billionaire shopping center.’”

“I don’t have any money,” Dree admitted.

“I’ll get a petty-cash credit card. His Highness said you were to be ‘professionally attired.’ That’s practically a purchase order. My name is Chiara Diallo. You have precisely ten minutes to shower, and then we will leave.”

Twenty minutes later, they were standing in the Centre commercial de Fontvieille, in a dark, narrow corridor lined with small stores. Christmas trees and potted poinsettias overflowed the edges of the hallway.

Dree stared at a storefront full of denim and red bandanas. “We’re in the middle of Monaco, in the French Riviera, in Europe, across the street from a medieval palace, and there’s a store here called Texas.”

“Yes, certainly,” Chiara said blandly. “Monaco caters to many tastes.”

Dree tilted her head, because surely, she wasn’t seeing what she was seeing. “The denim jackets have red plastic arm fringe. This is an abomination of dude culture.”

Chiara was thumbing a text into her phone. Even when she was emergency-shopping, she stood with her feet together and her elbows near her sides, and her red lipstick was perfect.

Dree needed to learn how to do that.

Chiara said, “Nothing in that store would qualify as ‘professional attire.’ We’ll be shopping at Camaïeu Femme for tonight. Surely, I can throw together something for you. We will get shoes at Minelli. Tomorrow, after His Highness dismisses you, I will take you to my little shops for proper clothes. But for tonight, we will make do.” She looked over the top of her phone at Dree and lowered her perfectly groomed eyebrows. “My hairdresser has responded. He is holding his shop open for us tonight, and you have an appointment at eight-thirty for a cut, facial, cosmetics consult, and manicure. I am sorry to say this, but your hair looks like someone chopped it off with a machete.”

Dree nodded. “Surgical scissors. I did it myself about a month ago.”

Chiara’s brown eyes welled with tears, and she blinked. “You poor thing. You poor, poor thing. You don’t worry about it anymore. I will take care of you. I will make you presentable for the palace for tomorrow.”

That night, after Chiara had thoroughly reinvented Dree and she was alone in her dorm-sized room, Dree found the wrinkled napkin in the bottom of her backpack and smoothed it out on the small desk.

She found the list of all the places she was supposed to visit, countries around the world that she’d only heard rumors of, and drew precise lines through the word Monaco, which was directly above the crossed-out words Visit Nepal.

Chapter Three

Prayer

Maxence

Maxence Grimaldi picked up the nail. It was not a slender pin made of galvanized steel, but a black, iron antique.

Then, he picked up a hammer.

The hammer was sleek and silver, delivered by the palace’s maintenance department only half an hour before.

Maxence held the nail to the thousand-year-old plaster of the medieval castle and drove the iron spike into the wall. When the metal was firmly embedded, he returned to his duffel bag from Nepal and poked around in the bottom until he found a silk bag.

From inside, he removed a crucifix, a memorial of the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross. It was rough-hewn from hardwood, scarred in some places, soiled with black soot in others. Max hung it on the wall with a leather loop over the nail and retreated three steps.

The crucifix had traveled with him for over a decade. Before that, it had been held by priests for centuries. Max was its guardian, not its owner.

He stared at it for a long time, trying to compose his thoughts. Peace wouldn’t come. Tranquility wouldn’t come.

Maxence fell to his knees.

He began to pray with his hands pressed against each other in front of his chest, his palms flattened against each other as he poured his heart out in one long stream of anguish to God.

Why am I like this? Why do I sin? I cannot fathom I could lead a better life. I can only clutch at the momentary pleasure because there is no peace I could otherwise attain.

The crucifix was two dark slashes against the white wall.

Monaco is a siren calling me to dash myself against the rocks. Dree Clark is every temptation I’ve ever had rolled up in one beautiful woman. It’s not her fault that I am willing to damn my soul to touch her. She is a beautiful spirit. If only I were not who I am, if only I were not what I am, I could be with her.

Tell me what to do.

Tell me who to be.

Max’s arms unfurled to mimic the shape of the crucifix above as he bared his chest and his heart in a desperate attempt to reconcile himself with God and his heart with his passion.

I have dedicated myself to You and Your work. I have given you my soul and my body. I fight every day, but I feel like I’m clinging onto the face of the cliff while my faith crumbles around me. I fall every day. I fall every minute.

But I want to fall.

It feels like flying.

Chapter Four

Nicostrato Grimaldi

Maxence

Maxence started his day in the royal business office in the Prince’s Palace.

The room was hardly wider than the admittedly large desk placed in front of the wide window, but it was probably five times as long as it was wide. The walk from the door to sit in front of the desk left supplicants a lot of time to think about what they were going to say or why they had been summoned, as intended by the medieval architect.

The high ceiling above was designed to make petitioners feel small as they begged the sovereign’s grace. Also, it had allowed smoke from pitch torches to rise and thus not choke the prince.

Black bunting swags mourning Pierre’s suicide graced the upper bookcase shelves, and