Page 42 of At Midnight

“I’m not one for cotillions and balls. Valerian is. I think he scheduled important meetings that one of us had to attend for those dates, and I leapedat the opportunity to escape the pomp.”

Flicka bit her lip. “You didn’t attend either of your daughters’ coming-outs.”

“No, but I attended all their graduations and the vast majority of their hockey games, hundreds of them. I don’t do well in a room full of ball gowns and jewels. I want everyone to put their diamonds back in their safety deposit boxes, and I worry whether those baubles are properlyinsured. I lament the negative ROI of dresses and tuxes purchased for one event.”

Flicka was chuckling as he finished his banker’s list. “My Shooting Star cotillions always turned a healthy profit for my charities. They had a return on investment that you could be proud of.”

“Ah, but I worry about the opportunity costs. If you hadn’t thrown those balls but instead invested that money in nice,low-risk funds and then utilized your time in more advantageous ways—”

“Like getting a job?”

“One suitable for a princess, of course.”

“So, not waiting tables. I must say I’m disappointed.” The banter lifted her spirits a bit.

“Perhaps as an investment advisor.”

“Oh, so you are trying to recruit me for Geneva Trust. I should have known you had an ulterior motive.”

He laughed and turned onthe couch. “We could use a bit more royal charm around Geneva Trust and fewer oblique threats, but I wasn’t being so self-serving. I’m just saying that you seemed to run the bar at the Silver Horseshoe with impressive efficiency. You should put that to use, someday.”

“You’ve never told me why you were at the Monaco and the Silver Horseshoe in the first place,” she said.

“It’s a long story.”

“Raphael told me you’d been looking for him.”

Bastien scooted around on the cushions like sitting was uncomfortable for him. He even rose up on his arms as he was turning, and one of his hands slipped between the couch cushions while he fidgeted. “Raphael disappeared when he was seventeen. His father was desperate to find him and have him back. Friends saw the video where he proposed on the planeand recognized him.”

Flicka fretted, “I knew that stunt was a bad idea.”

“It drew a lot of attention to you both.”

“Yeah, but we almost made it, if not for that.”

“He used his passport. It was being tracked. We would have found him within another few days or so.”

“So, it was because of me. I needed to travel but didn’t have my passport, and so we had to use the ones for Raphael and Gretchen.”

Bastien frowned. “You don’t have your passport?”

“I have nothing. I don’t have a driver’s license, a passport, or even my birth certificate.”

Bastien stood as if the thought had made him jump backward. “That’s not optimal at all.”

“It’s the way it is.”

“You traveled on the bank’s plane on a fake passport? You gave a counterfeit passport to passport control when we came in?”

Flicka shrugged.“Passport control didn’t board the plane in Geneva. Besides, it wasn’t really a fake. It just has someone else’s name on it.”

“That’s absurd. We’ll have to rectify that as soon as you get your own passport returned to you. We can’t have the bank implicated in immigration irregularities.”

Flicka laughed. “Bastien, they’re holding me here against my will. This is kidnapping, and they’re holdingme hostage. Surely you’re not more concerned aboutpaperworkthan that.”

Bastien shushed her and glanced at the Russian guards placidly standing by the exit to the foyer.

Flicka said, “Oh, they know.”