Page 115 of Prince

An extraordinarily tall, gaunt man stood beside her. “Hello, Dree Clark. Francis Senft said you have the money he owes us.”

His accent was Russian.

Dree darted to the side, trying to get away, but a large man was already standing there and grabbed her.

She said, “I’m not Dree Clark. You have the wrong person.”

The cadaverous man smiled, revealing straight white teeth. “There were photos of you on his phone, and I saw them. I am Kir Sokolov.”

“He never gave me any money,” Dree insisted. “He spent all the money on cocaine and other stupid things, and he never gave me any of it!I don’t have any of his money!”

Kir Sokolov’s smile wrinkled his fleshless cheeks and pointed to his sharp cheekbones. “And yet here you are at a charity ball in Monaco, where the tickets were ten thousand dollars or more, wearing couture and shoes worth more than your old car in Phoenix. It certainly looks like you have our money.”

“I don’t!I’m just a secretary, and my friends in the palace staff got me all this to wear tonight!”

Kir Sokolov chuckled as he tucked Max’s phone into the breast pocket of his jacket. “I’ve never heard that excuse before. I’ll have to tell my wife for her to use it the next time she’s in trouble for spending money on frivolous things.”

“It’s true!I don’t have your money!Francis spent it all.”

Kir Sokolov looked over her head to the man who was holding her elbows behind her back. “Bring her. We’ll get the money out of her one way or another.”

He strode through the crowd toward one of the escalators to the main floor.

The man holding Dree forced her to follow.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Dark

Maxence

Maxence did not know why they hadn’t shot him in the middle of the Sea Change Gala like they’d killed Nico.

It didn’t make sense.

He fought them all the way to the helicopter, but even as strong and tall as he was and with his rusty Krav Maga training, four trained and skilled men subdued him. Woozy from the blows to the head and gut that he’d taken, he still struggled as the helicopter was lifting off the roof of the Grimaldi Forum until they were speeding over the water.

They could’ve dropped him into the sea at night. No one would’ve found him.

But they didn’t.

The zip ties cut the skin on his ankles and wrists as he tried to writhe his way free.

He twisted his hands, wedging his finger between the steel watch he wore and his wrist, and he pressed the button set into the back of the watch with his fingernail.

Warm blood dripped into his shoes and down his hands, becoming sticky as the helicopter flew through the night.

Quentin Sault sat in the front seat of the chopper. The hearing protection earphones they’d clamped over Max’s ears weren’t turned on, so he couldn’t talk to anybody. The scream of the engine and chop of the helicopter rotors echoed in his head. Still, it was better than silence.

The Mediterranean Sea was a pit of blackness underneath them except for an occasional luminescent streak on the waves.

Far ahead, a row of lights expanded and then spread over the water, and soon, the helicopter landed on a large ship.

Quentin Sault and the other kidnappers dragged Maxence out of the helicopter, the sharp rust of the deck below him ripping his tuxedo as they hauled him toward the ship’s main structure. He fought, but with his hands tied behind his back, he had little chance and knew it.

The deck pitched under his feet. The fresh salt scent of the sea occasionally brushed the inside of his nose, but the smell of oil and rotting garbage overpowered it.

The kidnappers threw him in a room with a metal floor and no light. Quentin Sault started to close the door.