Just as he got to the hard part in the note where he would have to explain why he was leaving, Roxanne rolled over and squinted in the darkness at him. “What’s up?”
“I have to leave for a day or two.”
“You’re leaving meherein thepalacewithyour sister, Her Nefarious Majesty Anastasia,who will want to take me shopping in the downtown of The Hagueagain?I don’t think so, mister.”
“It’s probably only going to be for one day. Maxence seems to be missing.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Grimaldi? That Max?”
“Yep, that one.”
“The hot one.”
“Yes, I know he’s the hot one. Do you have to rate all my friends?”
“Just him and Arthur. And it’s not me. It’s the whole office because Max and Arthur keep ‘just dropping by’ for pick-up basketball. You know that Wren uses a double-headed coin so that you guys will always be ‘skins,’ right?”
“No.Why don’t you stop her?”
“Because I like my friends. And I like them more than I like your friends.”
“Whether you like them or not—”
“Although I like Max better than Arthur,” she muttered.
“—That was Arthur on the line. Max’s security team called him. Max is gone, and they can’t find him.”
Rox flopped back onto the pillow and pulled up the duvet. “Max always throws his security. It’s traditional. He’s probably off playing Robin Hood or Galahad somewhere, or maybe he’s just on another global bender. Come back to bed.”
Casimir sighed. “Max was in Monaco when he went missing.”
She flipped around in the bed and ogled him with one very serious brown eye above the bedcovers. “Is he alive?”
“As far as Arthur knows.”
“Where’s Pierre?”
Pierre was Max’s older brother. “In Monaco.”
She grimaced. “Anybody else gone missing?”
“Arthur doesn’t know. I’m sure he’ll start calling in favors.”
Roxanne threw back the covers and slithered out of the bed, landing on the floor with athump.“I’ll pack.”
“I’m not packing. I’m leaving right now.” He sniffed an undershirt he picked up from the floor, found it a bit musty, and traded it for a clean one in the drawer. “Go back to bed. I’ll be back soon.”
“Is Gen going?
“Arthur won’t let her go with him. Ifanyoneknows about the dangerous stuff that Max might have gotten into, it’s Arthur. He wouldn’t let her near any danger.”
“You keep saying things like that about Arthur,” she said and yawned, stretching her arms to the side. “Like he knows stuff about stuff.”
Casimir wanted to nibble on her arms as he marveled at the way her white tee-shirt stretched across her breasts. “You’re not going.”
“Gen says she’s going,” Roxanne said, reading a text on her phone, “so I’m going, too. I’ll go get Juliana and pack a toy bag for her.”
“Just leave her with my sister and her cousins. Juliana won’t even notice we’re missing. She wouldn’t even come over and hug me today when I visited the nursery because she was having too much fun.” Their two-year-old was a bundle of gregarious lightning who loved playing with other kids. Casimir liked to think she took after him.
