Page 53 of Royal
Marie-Therese was thanking the people around her while she giggled and flirted with the phones.
Alexandre said, “She said her first priority as sovereign princess will be loosening the rules for Monaco residency that exclude people with criminal records if, and only if, the applicant has a fifty million euro ‘buy-in’ account. Plus, applicants with ‘buy-in’ accounts will take priority over immigrants with skills that Monaco needs.”
“She wants to sell Monegasque passports to organized crime heads,” Maxence said.
“She’s her father’s daughter.”
Maxence shook his head. “She’s bragged about that several times to me.”
“Disaster,” Alexandre said, shaking his head.
Maxence could not begin to describe the scale of the destruction he knew Marie-Therese would cause.
Chapter Twenty
DUCHESS GEORGIE
Dree
When Dree saw the clamoring crowd in the throne room, she thought,Oh, this is where everybody is.
The throne room of the Prince’s Palace in Monaco was towering and cavernous and intentionally designed to make supplicants wallow in their unworthiness.
The throne itself wasn’t a medieval-looking monstrosity made out of the swords of Monaco’s vanquished enemies, nor was it enormous and overwrought with curlicue swirls and glittering glass. Instead, the seat itself was an Empire-style throne chair, which meant that it was from the early 1800s, small, elegant, rather boxy, almost like a modern, minimalist dining room chair at the head of the table, rather than an imposing monolith. It rested on a small dais, just two shallow steps above the crowd. The refined good taste of it appeared distinctly French, rather than a demonstration of how much gold could be stacked on a chair before it started toppling off.
The red velvet canopy falling from an enormous crown nailed high up on the wall was impressive, though.
A piece of art formed into the Grimaldi coat of arms hung on the velvet curtains above the throne. Again, that red and white diamond checkerboard pattern filled a shield, just like the tattoo Maxence bore on his right forearm. Everywhere Dree went in the city-state, she wasn’t sure if Maxence had stamped his ownership on the country, or whether Monaco had claimed him by carving its symbol into his flesh.
While the throne room was beautiful and imposing, with an inlaid marble floor and enormous chandeliers hanging from the ceiling on velvet-wrapped chains, it wasn’t an expansive ballroom like one would find at a convention center.
It was a very large room for a medieval fortress that had been built in 1215.
Probably two hundred people were crowded into it, though, which meant the room waspacked.
The people in the throne room seemed to have sorted themselves into two separate groups.
Most of the people clustered near the throne dais were nobles Dree recognized from Max’s office. The rock star Xan Valentine—oops,His Grace Alexandre Grimaldi, Duc de Valentinois—was standing in front of the throne. Alexandre’s blond hair flowed behind his shoulders and contrasted with the black suit and tie he wore. His arms were raised as he was shouting, “Prince Maxence has arrived. Everything that has transpired isnullandvoid.”
With his arm in the air, Alex’s suit sleeve fell back, revealing a black cast on his left hand.
That was weird. She hadn’t noticed the cast when he’d been in Max’s office a few weeks ago, but he’d been sitting on the other side of his wife at the time with that arm on the far side.
From the center of the crowd, an older man yelled, “The vote is not void!”
Dree recognized him as Max’s great uncle Louis Grimaldi, one of the people Maxence had considered backing as the new sovereign.
Louis Grimaldi continued, “The Council has voted, and a new sovereign has been elected!”
The crowd rumbled, everyone seeming to disagree with the people standing next to them.
From the center, Maxence called out, “As the designated heir apparent, I declare this council meeting illegal. Notice of the dateand timemust be disseminated two weeks before the meeting.”
Like someone had turned up the heat under a boiling pot, the crowd’s arguing became louder, and their movements more erratic.
Other people, the ones pushed to the perimeter of the room, muttered among themselves. Over a hundred people stood around the walls or had commandeered the few red velvet chairs and couches on the edges of the room. An expanse of white marble floor inlaid with a blue-gray stone grid separated the onlookers from the electors.
Dree sneaked toward the back of the throne room, where she found a familiar face, Georgie Johnson, Alexandre/Xan Valentine’s wife, standing with her back to the wall and staring in horror at the chaos. Dree whispered, “I am so glad to see you.”