Page 62 of Prince

He shrugged.

“Good job, there, Max.” She snuggled closer to him. “If pirates kidnapped you now, you’d probably not only talk your way out of it, but you’d return in a month standing on the prow of the ship, with one foot braced on the pointy end, and invade Monaco as the Pirate King.”

He shifted and looked down at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Yeah,” Dree said, caught up in her fantasy. “If they gave you a month, you’d take over a pirate ship. You’d start talking, and a few speeches later, they’d beyourmerry band of pirates, ready to raid and pillage. You probably wouldn’t just invade Monaco. You’d probably have to conquer France, too.”

He was silent for a moment, then chuckled. “That’s funny.You’refunny.”

“No, seriously. You’ve been back in Monaco for only a few days. Before that, you traveled all over the world, like Africa and Nepal and places. You didn’t come back here.”

“No, but I don’t see—”

“And then, like, you walked back in andtook over.You literally strolled into the palace and announced the king had returned, and all the servants bowed down to you.”

“That’s hyperbole,” he said, dismissing it.

“Nuh-uh. You called people into meetings,and they came,and then you talked to them until they were ready to do anything you wanted. I watched it happen time after time because I didn’t have to take notes. I was just writing down whatever, so I’ve had plenty of time and brain capacity to watch what you were doing. When you talk, peoplelisten.”

“But I’m next in line. If I wanted to, I could just call the Crown Council and say, ‘Elect me,’ and they would. It would be mine if I wanted it.”

Dree flipped over and pushed herself up on her elbows. “Yeah,everythingis yours, if you want it. Whether it’s the throne of Monaco or a pirate ship, you walk in andtake command.”

Chapter Sixteen

Prayer II

Maxence

Maxence pressed his palms together, his shoulders and pectoral muscles straining.

Sweat dripped off his eyebrow in the shadowy closet.

He spent hours praying the Major Hours of the Liturgy every day.

Every Sunday and other days of holy obligation when he was at home in Monaco, Maxence and his security staff strolled from the palace to the Cathedral of Our Lady Immaculate, which was over a century old and held the bodies of Maxence’s ancestors, parents, and older brother. The ten-minute walk through the medieval town of Monaco-Ville on the headlands high above the harbor allowed Maxence a few moments to reflect before they entered the Cathedral and Maxence sat with the congregation outside of the altar rail. He did not attempt to assist during the Mass as he would have outside of Monaco. In this tiny city-state conquered by his ancestors, Maxence was just another soldier, not a priest.

No matter how he longed to stand above the altar and take the consecrated host from the priest.

They could tell him that he wasn’t a cleric when he was in Monaco, but they couldn’t take prayer away from him.

But that afternoon was different.

He’d dug into the back of his closet and found his duffel bag from Nepal. The musty, sweaty shirt he’d been wearing when Quentin Sault found him was crumpled into a ball in the bottom corner, and he’d put it on. The white square had been in a pocket of his toiletries bag, and he’d wedged it into the clerical collar, scraping his Adam’s apple in the process.

The shirt stank of grime and labor. The stench of an unwashed man had ripened into something genuinely foul.

He hated the smell of his unwashed body and his own filth, but wearing the shirt was the last time he’d felt close to the Divine.

So he endured it, his soul crying out to God in the small, dim closet.

Light from a small overhead lamp bathed the crucifix. The closed door behind him muffled any sound or vibration.

His consciousness shrank to the confines of the closet.

Maxence reached out his hand and slammed the switch above his head where he kneeled.

The light above the crucifix extinguished, and the darkness that snapped through the tiny, enclosed closet was absolute.