I wasn’t Kostya’s parent. I knew I wasn’t his parent. I hadn’t been a parent to him because I’d been only fourteen myself when we’d been orphaned, but I was probably the only person in the world who worried about him.
If anything had happened to me, Konstantin would become very important for the wrong reasons. Our uncle Michel, our second cousin Boris, and sundry other relatives would suddenly develop an interest in the college student who would be slated to inherit the vast amounts of money we’d married over the past several generations.
Not to mention certain inherited titles.
Ahead of our SUV, the point security vehicle nudged along the traffic and cleared a spot at the curb.
As always, I didn’t leap out of the car but waited for instructions.
Our combined security forces swarmed from the vehicles around us, forming a human cordon between the car and the front door of the black-glassed building rising like an obsidian obelisk from between the lower concrete structures around it.
The driver stole a quick glance at me. “Harry and Meghan go in first.”
From behind my seat, Harry laughed. “Sure. I’m used to being cannon fodder.”
Meghan tried to be helpful. “But shouldn’t Nicolai get inside the building first, where it’s safer, before we attract attention? He’s the one with professionals after him.”
The driver shrugged. “That’s how the coordinator wants to do it.”
All of us principals stopped arguing. We were not the experts here, and we knew it. Doing what we were told kept everybody alive.
A personal security consultant had once told me that principals who thought they knew better than their bodyguards were nicknamed “victims.”
Harry held Meghan’s fingers as she alighted from the car onto the sidewalk like Prince Charming steadying Cinderella.
All of us were so courtly in public, coldly retracing dance steps that had kept our ancestors alive when kings had become paranoid and murderous, even if those kings were our fathers. Whereas common people soothed themselves in troubled times by planting a garden as their ancestors had, we felt the need to display exquisite manners and extraordinary wealth like twitching an iridescent peacock tail. Such a costly display felt like proof we were too loyal and important to persecute.
Outside the car where Harry and Meghan crossed the sidewalk, camera flashes turned the night to noon.
Unease crawled into my shoes. “Everybody’s looking at them.”
The driver’s nod was tight, like his neck was stiff. “They’re relatively safe. This bachelor party trip was impromptu. Security was so tight on the front end that we could’ve let them stroll through the lobby of a major casino, which was their first choice. The chance that one of their amateur haters managed to get it all together and figure out that they were staying at this nondescript club is approximately nil. So,theycan cross the sidewalk.”
“They take a lot of chances,” I mused.
He nodded again. “They have PR needs. You would be an easier principal, were it not for the political situation.”
Yes, my living body was a political situation. “What’s my mark?”
The driver touched his ear where the coordinator running the show was giving instructions. “In just a few seconds. Get ready. Three, two, one.Go.”
The vehicle’s door opened, metal scraping metal, and I stepped out of the SUV. Looking around for anyone aiming a weapon or even watching me too closely, like they were examining my face to identify a target, was a habit I shouldn’t break.
Bodyguards had formed human chains leading to the door of the Sanctuary club.
My job was merely to saunter behind Meghan and Harry to the door that was already opening to admit them.
Nevertheless, I watched for them as much as they were surely watching for me.
Desert air scalded my sinuses with my first breath, such an assault when compared to the mild air of Europe.
As I moved, my practiced smile was pleasant but not approachable.
The swarm outside the bodyguard cordon was a usual American scrum, mostly brunette white people, a few blondes though not as many as my eyes were used to after spending school holidays in Sweden my whole life, and a respectable number of brown and Black people, especially as Las Vegas was in the southwestern part of the US.
I kept my head up, watching over the heads of the crowd. At six feet four, my eyes were above the tops of most crowds. My height made spotting assassins and being targeted by assassins easier.
A streetlight on the corner showered glare over the shops and people strolling on the sidewalk. More light glowed from the shop windows.
