“Matryona! That was the woman in the car, his sister.”
Maxence instantly believed they were capable of it.
Dree looked down.“Oh.”She bit her lip.
“What’s the problem?”
“So, they’re your people. This is awkward.”
Maxence chuckled and tucked her more tightly against his chest. “It’s not ‘awkward.’ They’re not my people. They’re Russian mafia. I’ve always known what the Sokolovs were. They deal drugs here in Monaco. They kidnapped you and threatened to kill you. That’s a crime. It’s not going to be ‘awkward’ because they will go to prison for what they did.”
“I don’t want to come between you and your friends,” she muttered.
“The Sokolovs were never my friends. I don’t befriend criminals. Now tell me about the second time you escaped.”
“Almostescaped. I told Matryona I had to pee, and then I squeezed out the bathroom window and started running. And then some stupid delivery truck turned into the parking lot and saw stupid-mein a fluttery dress sprinting in high heels and yelled at them to catch me, and they did.”
“But that’s excellent! You outsmarted a Russian bratva twice!”
“No, if I’d have outsmarted them, I would’ve gotten away. Evidently, I suck at escaping. But what happened to you? You were being dragged away at the big dance, and then suddenly you were rescuing me. What the heck happened to you?”
Inexplicably, ice misted Maxence’s back and chest. His hands would’ve been shaking, but he curled them into fists. “Nothing.”
“Um, you were obviously fighting them when they were dragging you out, and you shoved me away so I wouldn’t be caught up in it. What was going on?”
Images flashed in his head. Quentin Sault and Michael Rossi’s blasted skull, and trying to throw himself into the sea to drown himself, and the fouldarknessof that room they’d thrown him in. “Kidnappers for ransom, as usual.”
“But it didn’t seem like that. They were killing people at the Sea Change Gala. How did you get away?”
“About like you did. They turned their backs for a minute, and I walked away. Luckily, my old school chums Casimir and Arthur were right there to pick me up.”
Dree’s pale eyebrows were lowered, and her skin knotted between her eyes. “Really?”
“I’ve known Casimir and Arthur practically all my life. Arthur and I met on our first day of kindergarten when our parents shipped us off to Le Rosey boarding school. Casimir joined us a year later in first grade.”
Dree shook her head, and Max was so glad to see that while her eyes were a bit red, they were dry. “I think it’s so weird, the way rich people just ship their kids off to boarding school when they’re five. I wouldnever.”
He leaned in and whispered, “We’ve had nicknames for each other since high school.”
Dree began to smile, just a little. “What were they?”
Chapter Fifteen
PRINCE MONSTER, THE EARL OF GIVESNOFUCKS, AND . . .
Maxence
Maxence whispered to emphasize the naughtiness of what he was telling Dree because her eyes were brightening with interest. “Arthur is an English lord, the Earl of Severn. When he inherited the earldom, it became evident to us that he cared far too much about what was happening on his estate and in the world. Hebroodedabout it like Heathcliff on the moors. His nickname became The Earl of Givesnofucks because that’s what we thought he should aspire to be, or at least lighten up a little. I suppose we could have called him Lord Givesnofucks.”
A bit of a sparkle returned to Dree’s eyes. “And Casimir?”
Maxence sighed at this. “Casimir named himself, I want to stress. He was in a car accident, you see, when he was very young. He wasn’t belted in quite right, and he went through the windscreen. There were—” he sighed,“facial injuries,bad ones, both to the bones of his face and his skin, in addition to sizable scars on one side of his body. He was shuffled off to Le Rosey because the paparazzi kept jumping out of bushes to startle him, which made his facial deformities all the more pronounced. Indeed, when he was surprised, it was quite horrific to see.”
Dree’s lips parted. “Oh no. But he looks fine. I mean, he looksgreat.”
“Plastic surgery, the best in the world, and it tookyears.”Maxence paused before he went on. “During school, though, kids can be cruel. In upper school, some of the girls were fantastically cruel. My cousin was one of the worst, no matter how many times I told her to lay off. She led him on the longest before they all laughed at him. We wanted to call him The Handsome Prince to lift his spirits, but he was not having it. He named himself Prince Monster.”
Dree winced. “Which cousin?”
