The money might not have mattered to Sault, but it mattered to these guys. Sault must have promised them a flat fee to let him use their boat as a hideout and go along with a kidnapping. They must not have heard there wasmoneyinvolved.
In addition, Max recognized two more men in the crowd from Monaco’s security services. How much money had they been promised to commit treason?
“How much are you asking for, Sault, and who are you asking it from?”
Quentin spat, “It doesn’t matter who we’re asking for the money.”
“Why doesn’t it matter, Quentin? To some of the people here, it probably matters a lot. How many millions are you asking for? Fifty million? A hundred million? Five hundred?”
The crowd began to rumble more.
Maxence turned to the guy with the pirate flag tattooed across his chest. “Nobody’s going to pay a damn penny for me, alive or dead.”
The crowd muttered.
All of them frowned.
Michael Rossi rolled his eyes and turned his back like he was getting ready to walk away.
The guy with the pirate flag tattoo stepped forward. “I thought you were the king of that country.”
Maxence wasn’t going to quibble about the difference between a sovereign prince and a king, between a kingdom and a principality. “Yes, I am.”
The guy squinted at him, thick folds gathering in his leathery skin from years spent on the deck of a ship in the harsh sun. “Are you a bad king? Don’t your country want you back?”
“Acountrydoesn’t make decisions,” Maxence told him. “Peoplemake decisions.So, the question is,whowould pay to get the king back?”
The man still squinted at him, not comprehending.
“If the king dies,somebody elsegets to be the king,” Max explained. “Those people are in charge right now, the ones who would like to be thenextking. They would get millions of euros if I’m suddenly gone.”
“Ah!”The guy exclaimed, finally getting it.
A line of magnetism developed between them, as Pirate Flag Guy became Max’s co-conspirator.
Max clarified for the other guys who were listening, holding his hand out as he talked to them. “So, if I go back, those other people will lose any chance at being the king and getting the money.”
Pirate Flag Guy asked him, “Don’t your parents want you back?”
Max brushed it off. “My parents have been dead for years.”
The guy looked ashamed. “I am sorry for your loss.”
It had been so long since anyone had said anything like that to Maxence that he was thrown for a minute, but he accepted the man’s condolences with, “Thank you.”
The guy looked uncomfortable, but he asked, “Don’t you have a wife and kids?”
Max shook his head. “No.”
“No one?”
“No one will miss me if you kill me.”
The guy looked really uncomfortable with that. “You look too old not to have a wife and kids.”
Maxence laughed, throwing his head back as he cracked up. “Yes, you’re right. No parents, no wife, and no kids. My only brother died last month. I don’t have any family who would pay a ransom.”
Maxence was thirty years old and alone in the world, except for his two buddies from boarding school, Casimir and Arthur. They were the only two people on Earth who might come looking for him if he disappeared again.
