My uncle Micheland his business acquaintances were no doubt waiting at Billionaire Sanctuary to slither over to me and hoping some royal cachet would rub off on them. Therefore, I took advantage of the opportunity and stayed at the Waldorf Astoria to sober up John with food, water, television, and yet more food until other friends of ours arrived at his suite around seven on that bright summer evening.
While John and I were eating middling-quality room service steaks in the dining room, the hallway door banged open in the other room.
I tensed, ready to throw the long, wooden dining table sideways to act as a barricade and drag John to the floor behind it, but the male voices shouting in the other room were all too familiar.
Magnus and Ryan barged into the hotel room, striding toward the dining room where John and I were eating.
“Nico, you slacker, nice of you to finally show up.” Magnus examined John’s plate and filched a steak fry, stuffing the wedge into his mouth and giving it one hard chew before swallowing. “We thought we were going to have to send out a search party.”
I rose to greet them and made a show of wiping my hands on my napkin, even though I would never have smears of food on my fingers. “Magnus, Ryan, good to see you both.”
Ryan glanced at my plate. “You’re not eating at the Sanctuary? Something wrong with the food there?”
“Not at all. The food there is excellent. John and I just ordered here tonight. Don’t worry, Ryan. It’sfine.”
Ryan von Prussian had recently acquired Billionaire Sanctuary, and it was his first turnaround job.
Magnus shook my hand, his palm firm and dry, and then leaned over my plate, noting the steak and salad. “Not carbo-loading before the big bash? You’re not the DD, my man. We have staff to do that for us.”
Magnus and Ryan had been in the same class at school as John and I were, though they both seemed younger in maturity somehow, perhaps from having older brothers who took on the family responsibilities.
I sat down to finish my supper. “I probably shouldn’t get hammered tonight. That uncle of mine insisted on coming to Las Vegas, which means he and his cronies will be writhing around my ankles the entire time I’m there. I don’t want to be coerced into signing away my life due to inebriation or hangover.”
“Oh, what could he really do, anyway?” Ryan asked the ceiling. “And as for hangovers, that’s why every hotel here has IV hydration and oxygen bars in the lobby. Takes the edge right off. Even the Sanctuary has them.”
Their rationales didn’t reassure me at all. My uncle was far more manipulative than these overgrown schoolboys gave him credit for.
Ryan snagged a roll from the breadbasket and ripped it in half before chewing a hunk off the end. He’d always been subtly violent, a common trait among the wealthy students at our boarding school. He swallowed like he was forcing down something he’d choked on. “Is Konstantin here yet?”
I slipped my phone out of my pocket for a second and checked my texts. “He boarded his plane in Boston this morning. He says he’ll meet us at Billionaire Sanctuary.”
Ryan raised an eyebrow. “You’re leaving him lying around where Michel can swoop in?”
I sawed a large bite off the end of the steak. “Good point. We’d better arrive at the Sanctuary before Kostya does.”
An hour later, we split up for the transfer.
Magnus, John, and Ryan were driven down the Las Vegas Strip in a limo with their scant security because no one in particular was trying to kill them.
My operators had combined forces with Harry and Meg’s to form a medium-sized mercenary force to escort us to the private club.
Eavesdropping on the former special forces soldiers was always interesting. Evidently, Harry and Meg were more high-profile than I was, but I was considered a higher-risk target. That morning, they’d received information that Russian intelligence operatives had been conducting surveillance on my Paris apartment and office the previous week.
I hadn’t been told.
From John’s suite, the security professionals ushered me through an unobtrusive rear exit to a private section of the parking garage and into the front passenger-side seat of a boxy SUV. Harry and Meg sat in the rear seat, which told me who had the larger security operation.
Of course, they did. There were more wackadoodles, as Meghan called them, in the world than FSB assassins. It waslike her to use a cutesy, disarming term to describe rabid racists, anti-monarchists, and lone jackals.
My security detail just called them targets.
As the black SUV rolled down the Strip, phalanxes of lights rose up the heavily tinted windshield, a view I wasn’t often treated to when riding in the rear seat. The view of the long hood of the SUV and wide-open nighttime street ahead felt almost like I was riding in a convertible, which I’d never done in my life, not even at school. While the British royals had an agreement with the paparazzi to leave their children alone, my family had never made that bargain with the assassins of the old Soviet Union or Putin’s Russian Federation. Even as a child, even as a rebellious teenager, my security cocoon had been snapped tight.
Though I was trying to watch the lights and allow the experience of riding in the front seat to wash over me, my own thinking closed in.
Kostya should have arrived at Billionaire Sanctuary already, but he hadn’t texted yet. He’d had a direct transport from the airport.
If I texted him, he would say that I was fussing over him like a mother hen. He’d been only seven when our father had died, and five for our mother.
