Reign: A Royal Romantic Suspense Novel (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5)

by Blair Babylon

  Maxence nodded as the information organized itself in his head with the other, previous information. The entire Secret Service wasn’t trying to kill him, just Quentin Sault and a few brainwashed accomplices. “Do you have a recommendation for a new head of security?”

  Magnus tapped the report again. “We’ve recommended three candidates. Also, after an evaluation of your training and practices, we recommend a thorough, top-down reorganization and re-training of your Secret Service, military forces, and police. Rogue Security can provide this restructuring, or we can recommend reputable consultants.”

  Maxence nodded. “Flicka always said our security was shit.”

  Magnus nodded, and Maxence had the distinct impression he was choosing his words exquisitely carefully. “Princess Friederike von Hannover is knowledgeable about security operations.”

  Maxence chuckled. “Yes, she is. All right, Monaco would like to retain Rogue Security to reorganize our security services. Please submit estimates and a contract to my office, personally.”

  Magnus closed his computer bag and asked the dark computer screen, “Anything else to add, Blaise?”

  “No other salient points,” the shadowy form on the computer screen said in that throaty, oddly familiar voice.

  Maxence asked the man on the computer, “Have we met?”

  The screen popped and went blank as the computer turned itself off.

  Magnus shrugged. “Looks like it ran out of juice. It must need a new battery.” He stood to leave.

  Maxence asked him, “Any word on Kir Sokolov’s location?”

  Magnus Jensen grimaced. “We’re working on it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  She Is Not A Tattoo Artist

  Dree

  After Rogue Security ferreted out the bad apples from Monaco’s Secret Service, they were given a severance package to relocate, and surveillance confirmed that they had indeed relocated.

  The palace breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  That storm, at least, had passed.

  Dree could walk around outside the palace walls with friends as they explored shops nearby and looked for wedding ideas with only one or two Rogue Security guys standing guard over her.

  She usually went on these excursions with Chiara or other admins she’d poached from the palace staff pool on Chiara’s recommendation. Chiara was the lead wedding manager.

  Dree tried not to hyperventilate at the thought of how fast it was approaching.

  When they shopped, Chiara meticulously examined fabrics and took cross-referenced notes at Monaco’s haute couture designers’ studios, which were hidden in the upper reaches of the Metropole shopping center or tucked away on back roads with inconspicuous signs. Her explanations about why a particular fabric or clothing cut or bauble were preferred were incoherent gibberish in Dree’s ears, but she was trying.

  If Dree was going to be the Princess of Monaco, she was going to need to understand crap like that. People were going to be taking her picture.

  The first time they walked into the Metropole shopping center, Dree was convinced they had accidentally walked into a five-star hotel or maybe some other palace. Golden and mahogany marble formed the floors and walls. Crystal chandeliers blazed above the sweeping grand staircase that led to the upper floors.

  Everything in that shopping center was drastically overpriced to a little farm girl from New Mexico, so she decided to believe the numbers on the price tags were in pesos.

  There was a shop called Billionaire in that shopping center. It was obvious who they were marketing to.

  They were, of course, marketing to the upper-middle class tourists who were blowing their vacation budgets. Real billionaires shopped by appointment in designer boutiques or at the private, members-only store at the Monaco Yacht Club.

  But Chiara and Dree were shopping in some of the upper-end stores because the princely family of Monaco supported local businesses.

  As usual, Dree was fussing over things that she had no control over and didn’t understand. At that moment, the fussed-over thing was yet another type of high-end silk for the bunting that would swag between the private boxes for foreign royalty up front near the altar.

  “But surely we can’t afford hundreds of yards of this fabric,” she said to Chiara.

  Chiara’s low voice was soothing. “Have you seen the budget for your wedding?”

  “No! If I had, I might be able to make better decisions.”

  Chiara uttered a completely incomprehensible number.

  Dree dropped the raw ivory silk. “Are you serious?”

  “And that doesn’t include security, the budget for which is nearly ten times the budget for the actual wedding.”

  Dree’s heart fibrillated in her chest, and she grabbed the edge of the elegant table they were standing over to steady herself. “What is it all going for?”

  Chiara whipped out her oversized computer tablet and swiped open files. “While Monaco has a small army, police force, and Secret Service, we will also be utilizing military from France and Rogue Security. The courtyard of the palace will be arranged thusly, with these security checkpoints for people arriving from the outside and lighter security for people emerging from the palace.”

  Dree took the tablet from Chiara’s hands. “There are a whole lot of chairs on this.”

  Chiara nodded. “The number we agreed on.”

  Dree scrutinized the schematic line drawing. The altar would be placed where the two curving staircases from the upper parapet converged at ground level. Kneelers for her and Maxence would stand in front of it. The priests had enough space to move around back there.

  The courtyard around them was sectioned into six roughly equal wedges. A choir and an orchestra were placed in the seats that would have an obstructed view of the wedding because they were partially behind the staircases. The middle four sections were to be filled with chairs and red carpets.

  Red circles designated sniper positions.

  Black boxes indicated military checkpoints.

  Dree asked Chiara, “Where’s the first-aid station?”

  Chiara blinked her perfectly mascaraed eyes. “The wedding will last approximately an hour. Surely, we don’t need more than an ambulance on-site?”

  Dree frowned at the schematic. “We really should have a first-aid station somewhere. There’s all this space back here on the first floor under the parapets where people are staging for the wedding, like where the photographers sit between the important points. We can have a small area back here with some tables, a cot or two, and basic medical supplies like bandages, splints, a defibrillator, a few EpiPens, and other basic emergency supplies that somebody might need immediately.”

  Chiara smiled tightly. “That’s right. You’re a nurse. I suppose we could have a small area as a tribute to your nursing background.”

  Dree raised an eyebrow. “We need basic first-aid supplies at any large gathering. We’re going to put them right here.” She stabbed the blueprint on the tablet with a finger. “I’ll give you a list tomorrow of supplies that need to be purchased. Is there a first-aid station for Maxence’s coronation?”

  “Enthronement, not coronation.” Chiara paused before continuing. “It has not been traditional to have a first-aid station at royal ceremonies. We always have an ambulance waiting outside, should anyone require it.”

  Dree said, “Well, we need to make sure there’s a first-aid station. It’s going to be right here.” She tapped the tablet showing the drawing of the palace’s courtyard again. “I will seriously give you a list tomorrow. We need to make sure everything that is on my list is there.”

  Around lunchtime, they were just walking out of the Metropole shopping center to find somewhere less ostentatious for lunch, when Dree noted a familiar face in the crowd.

  Again, Mairearad was wearing an unrelieved black tee shirt and trousers, her ebony hair slicked back into a sleek chignon, and dramatic red lipstick. It was kind of weird to see a vampire walking a
round in the sunlight. The sun didn’t glow on her alabaster skin so much as reflect like a mirror.

  Dree said to Chiara, “Oh, she works with Maxence at his charity, and she’s from Phoenix. We should ask her out for lunch. I talked to her once and told her about the Thai chicken salad over at Patrick’s.”

  Chiara consulted her phone with a precise head tilt before she looked back to Dree. “I have dry-cleaning to pick up and a few other errands. If you want to ask her to lunch, I’ll beg off for an hour or so. We can resume shopping afterward.”

  “I didn’t mean to impose if you have things you need to do,” Dree said, genuinely distressed.

  Chiara’s mouth curved slightly in a shy smile, and she folded her hands in front of her and bowed her head. “My job is now shopping for a royal wedding. I assure you, I love my job, but I need clean clothes to wear to it. I will return directly after I finish these two errands. You may enjoy some time without me.”

  Dree laughed at her and waggled her new phone. “Okay, I’ll keep in touch.”

  Chiara disappeared into the throng of tourists.

  Dree’s bodyguard was the ginger-haired Scot today. They picked their way through the tourists and citizens walking between the slick marble wall of the shopping center and the cement barricade protecting them from the street. Lamborghinis and Bugattis screamed a few yards before they screeched to a halt at the stoplight on the corner.

  Mairearad wove through the crowd ahead of Dree, a dark silhouette among the tourists’ pastel and floral clothes.

  Dree wasn’t going to give the poor woman the third degree about herself and Maxence and whatever had gone on between them. That was old news and none of her business.

  However, if Mairearad was the tattoo artist who had inked Arthur’s design of shredded demon wings onto Maxence’s back, Dree wanted more information. A tattoo shouldn’t be a permanent reminder of your deepest, darkest fear about your soul, however unfounded it was.

  Dree popped up out of the crowd beside her. “Hey, you’re Mairearad, who works over at Maxence’s charity, right?”

  Mairearad’s smile was quick and frozen. “Yes, I work for His Highness’s international charity, Second Sun. It’s nice to see you again, Ms. Clark.”

  “I was just going to lunch after a rough morning of shopping,” Dree told her, laughing at herself. “I was planning to head over to that Irish pub with the phenomenal Thai chicken salad I told you about. Can I take you to lunch?”

  “I don’t have very long for lunch,” Mairearad said.

  “The service is speedy. I think it’s a scheme to get people back to shopping faster. Come on, my treat. I would say that I could count it as a charitable donation and take it off my taxes, but we’re in Monaco. So, you know, no taxes.”

  Mairearad chuckled at that. “That’s why everybody in the office jumped at the chance to move from Rome to Monaco. First, Deacon Father Maxence paid for everybody to move here, and then we all immediately got Monegasque permanent residency. We’re making Roman salaries and paying Monegasque taxes, plus we’re getting the citizens’ rent and cost-of-living subsidies. This is awesome.”

  Dree laughed at her. “It’s a short walk. Let’s go.”

  They started walking vaguely northward and then turned inland on a street blocked off with large cement pylons to reserve it for pedestrian traffic.

  Mairearad looked behind them and whispered to Dree, “I think we’re being followed. That redheaded guy back there has been watching and keeping pace with us for the last three blocks.”

  Dree glanced back to make sure Mairearad wasn’t talking about somebody else and then said, “He’s fine. That’s Aiden, my security guy. He’s subtle.”

  “He’s not that subtle. I don’t think any guy that tall could ever be accused of being subtle.”

  At Patrick’s Irish Pub, they sat outside in the garden area. The window boxes topping the fence around the restaurant’s patio held greenery this time of year. Even though it was February, the sunlight on the top of Dree’s head felt like home.

  Aiden sat a few tables away from them.

  They perused the menus, and Dree plotted her interrogation.

  “You said the Thai chicken salad was good?” Mairearad asked her.

  “Everything is good, but the Thai chicken salad is great.”

  The waiter took their order for two salads and two glasses of pinot grigio, and then Dree pointed out other restaurants on that street which were also good, as well as telling Mairearad about some others that she had to try. She also spilled the beans on all of Chiara’s best clothing boutiques.

  By the time their salads came, Mairearad nodded along and looked Dree directly in the eyes again, which was a relief. Alienating the one other person from Phoenix who happened to be in Monaco would have been weird.

  Dree asked her, “So, what do you do at Second Sun?”

  Mairearad forked her salad, mixing the greens, chicken, and sauces. “Logistics, mainly. And I also get out in the field and do some work. I just returned from a month in Paris, helping people sign up for social services who needed it.” She took a bite. “Oh, my God.”

  “Right? And wow, that’s great about Paris. How’d you get all the way to Rome from Arizona?”

  “Everyone at Second Sun is someone Max knew from somewhere else, and then he poached them to come work for him. I knew Max from the job I had while I was getting my master’s.”

  “Poached, heh. That’s what he said when I raided the palace staff to help me with wedding plans.”

  Mairearad chuckled. “Right, that’s his word, poached. Evidently, that’s how he finds people to work for him. He said he stole a chef-slash-barista from the local café to be his cook when he lived in Rome full-time. Our IT gal was the computer science college student who installed the diocese’s computers when he was on a mission in Lagos. Half of the doctors on our staff are from one medical school hospital in Kinshasa where the orphanage he worked at brought their kids. And then he found me, of course.”

  She must be referring to the tattoo parlor where Mairearad had worked in Arizona.

  Dree nodded. “Oh, so Maxence, Arthur, and Casimir were patrons of the parlor where you worked in Phoenix.”

  “Yeah, we had a varied clientele. I don’t work there anymore though. Obviously.”

  “I worked so many jobs while I was in school.” Dree sipped her wine. “I was a waitress, a home health care aide, of course, and a bartender. There were a few times I thought I was going to have to dance on tables to make rent.”

  Mairearad snorted into her wine glass. “Tell me about it.”

  “What was the name of the place where you worked?”

  “The Devilhouse,” Mairearad muttered, fiddling with the stem on her wine glass.

  That was a cool name for a tattoo parlor. “That’s a great name. Did you do all three guys or just Maxence?”

  Mairearad grumbled, “I really can’t talk about any of that. We’re covered by HIPAA.”

  Oh, yeah. It made sense that HIPAA covered tattoo artists.

  Dree waved her hands. “I’m a nurse practitioner. I understand all about HIPAA. You don’t even need to say any more.”

  Mairearad’s sigh sounded like relief. “Thanks. A lot of people just don’t get it, and then I have to skirt around the issues and make things up.”

  “Oh, I know all about what you did with Maxence anyway,” Dree said. “He and I were stuck in a tent together in Nepal for a month, so that was the first time I saw your work and asked him about it. And now, you know, we’re engaged, so I see him naked all the time. I don’t know how I could miss it.”

  Mairearad nodded, her chin barely moving as she moved her head. “I did a lot of work on him.”

  “I can tell. I mean, it’s all over his back and even goes down past his waistband and onto his butt.”

  Mairearad nodded again, though her eyebrows drifted upward as she stared into her wine. “I’m not saying anything about Maxence in particular, but some client
s want a lot of work.”

  “I think Maxence is happy with it. I mean, it’s beautiful. Why wouldn’t he be?”

  Mairearad raised her eyebrows a lot. “Again, I’m not talking about Maxence or anybody in particular, but sometimes people get swept up in the process and don’t think about the end result. I’m glad he doesn’t regret it.”

  “Oh, I don’t think Maxence regrets it at all. I think he’d have his whole body done if people wouldn’t talk.”

  Mairearad blinked hard but didn’t say anything. She resumed eating her salad.

  Dree said, “It’s really extensive. It must’ve taken a long time.”

  Mairearad nodded again while toying with her fork. “Years.”

  It was time to ask a pointed question. “Where’d you get the inspiration for it?”

  Mairearad rolled her eyes up at the sky like she was thinking about how to phrase the answer. “All our inspiration comes from our clients. We never do anything except at the direction of clients.”

  “Well, of course. I mean, you couldn’t do anything else, right?”

  She nodded. “Right. It’s amazing how many people don’t think about consent in my line of work.”

  “Why would that be? I imagine there’s all kinds of paperwork. Don’t you have a contract you have to sign?”

  Mairearad rolled her eyes. “There are certainly liability waivers. The Devilhouse has boilerplate legal forms of course. Extensive stuff like Maxence wanted requires extra forms and signatures. Maxence never wanted to do a contract, though. That’s not his thing. He’s—you know.”

  “Oh, I know!” Dree laughed.

  Mairearad bit her lip as she laughed softly. “Yeah, I’ll bet you do. And again, I’m not saying anything about any particular client, but I don’t know how you handle a personal relationship with someone like Maxence. Obviously, I’m not the right person for that. If I had a relationship with someone like him, it would be a constant battle for dominance. We’d be like two tomcats in a house, eternally squabbling over who gets to be the alpha. I have nothing but respect for subs.”