A butler preceded the four of them—Arthur, Gen, Casimir, and Roxanne—into Pierre Grimaldi’s apartment, if a lavish suite of fifteen rooms stuffed with velvet furniture, ornate rugs, gold and silver art, historical relics, and enormous paintings and tapestries stacked two or three in a column up to the twenty-foot ceilings could be called an “apartment.” It was like calling a four-hundred-foot mega-superyacht a “boat.”
Arthur didn’t bother to look around.
He owned better.
As they approached Pierre, Casimir was already in the lead, his long legs striding over the thick rug in seconds to where Pierre was standing. Casimir was barely inside the door before he shouted, “What the fuck have you done with Maxence?”
Arthur hung back, watching. He had already calculated how the first part of this encounter must proceed, since he was entering a confrontation with two dynamic lawyers and a spitfire paralegal. Pierre’s response was the only matter in question.
He was amused at how much living in California had changed Casimir, who had been so withdrawn when they were at school. It was good to see. Arthur liked the change very much.
Pierre turned toward them. Morning sunlight from the window dappled the strong lines of his face. He was as tall as Arthur and Casimir, his black suit tailored closely to his body, and nearly as handsome as his younger brother, Maxence, though no one dared make that comparison. Boating and sports had smoothly tanned his naturally light European skin, and his eyes and hair were nearly black. The Grimaldis had movie-star blood running through their veins and were shockingly attractive.
Indeed, shocking. They were almost unnatural, Arthur thought.
Arthur merely bore the blue blood of a millennium of English noblemen and younger-sibling royals, though Casimir was of finer stock.
But for all of Pierre’s physical splendor, he wasn’t quite as luminous as Maxence, which was probably why Casimir shouted at him from halfway across the room, “Pierre Grimaldi, you son of a bitch, what the fuck did you do with your brother?”
Casimir’s wife, the petite and fiery Roxanne, trotted to keep up with him. Arthur had the distinct impression that she was ready to shove damning notes into Casimir’s hand during a negotiation.
Arthur’s own wife, Gen, remained beside him with one hand resting on her pregnant stomach and observing the situation, as was he. Arthur was teaching his wife to be more British, as Gen had been born and partly raised in Texas.
She was learning.
He liked it best when she learned by sitting naked at his feet, eyes downcast, her wrists crossed behind her back and neck bent, but he shouldn’t be thinking such thoughts at that moment. Arthur needed to concentrate on interrogating Pierre.
Gen sipped from her large, to-go tumbler of Issouf’s special tea. Her color was better than it had been in months. He was heartened to see it.
Pierre frowned at Casimir, who was barreling toward him, and asked, “I beg your pardon?”
Casimir pointed an accusing finger at Pierre. “Maxence disappears clean off the face of the Earth in the middle of the night in Monaco, and all you have to say for yourself is, ‘I beg your pardon’? I will end you, Pierre.”
“I had nothing to do with it.”
“Did you get a note?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pierre said.
“A note!” Casimir yelled at him. “Did Maxence email or text you a goddamn suicide note? Is that how you knew he was missing and not just gallivanting around Europe again?”
“I told you I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Casimir turned. “Roxanne, the evidence?”
Roxanne, standing beside Casimir, drew herself up to her full height of not-very-much and announced, “First, your security called Arthur at your direction, as he confirmed when we landed in that death-trap you call a helicopter at the heliport.”
Pierre frowned, confused. “My helicopter has excellent maintenance.”
“And then,” Roxanne continued unabashed, “it was determined that you and Maxence had a fight that led to a physical altercation, and I can see the pancake makeup on your shiner from here, pretty boy.”
Pierre did not flinch. His voice was cold as he assured her, “My interactions with my brother are none of your business. Did you find him yet?”
“And then,” Roxanne continued, talking over Pierre, “you called us maybe minutes after Maxence went missing and had your staff lie and say he’d been gone for four hours. Why the hell would you call us to come and find him when he might have just slipped off for a cigarette on the terrace unless you knew something had happened to him?”
“What else are you hiding, Pierre?” Casimir demanded, the two of them tag-teaming their quarry as Arthur had expected. “What did you two talk about that led to a fight? What did you say that made him punch you?”
Pierre jerked his chin up and sniffed. “Immaterial, and none of your concern.”
“You called us here to find him, and you already knew he was missing after only a few minutes,” Casimir said. “How did you know he was missing so quickly, Pierre? Anyone else would assume he had hooked up with some woman and didn’t want to be interrupted by his phone.”
“He didn’t go back to his hotel,” Pierre explained, his chin raised and looking down his nose at Roxanne. “Ergo, he was missing.”
“That’s utter bullshit,” Roxanne told Pierre. “It’s horse hockey and hogwash.”
Interesting. Pierre’s people must have also questioned the hotel staff about whether Maxence had returned that night.
Arthur watched Pierre for any more slips.
He sensed Gen stiffen beside him, and she thrust her cup of tea at him. He grabbed her cup before she took off across the room.
Ah, this was going to be splendid.
The cup warmed his palm while he waited, biding his time.
Gen walked toward where Casimir and Roxanne had cornered Pierre. She stared down Pierre the entire time she paced across the wide room like the formidable litigating barrister she was. Her flowing black maternity dress even resembled her court robes fluttering in her wake.
Arthur tried not to smile.
Gen demanded, “How did you know he was missing? The hotel staff didn’t check his room until after we were already here this morning. He wasn’t ‘missing’ until then.”
“Of course, he was,” Pierre said. “Just because the hotel didn’t know—”
Gen passed Casimir and Roxanne and neared Pierre. “No one knew. No one could know. How did you know?”
Pierre backed up as Gen approached him. “That’s none of your business.”
His tone had become more worried.
As he should be. Countess Genevieve Finch-Hatten, Lady Severn, was an imposing woman, and Arthur loved watching her take someone down. It was most entertaining.
But Arthur was also watching for his opening. Pierre must be more distressed than he yet was. Arthur was sure his Gen, all the more impressive with her increased bulk due to his baby inside her, would take Pierre to where Arthur needed him to be. He waited while Gen attacked Pierre like an avenging fury.
“More importantly, your uncle is dying, and you want Maxence out of the way when he bites it, don’t you?” Gen snarled, nearly in Pierre’s face.
Pierre backed up until his butt hit an ebony desk strewn with papers. “That’s not—”
Gen advanced while Pierre bowed backward under her onslaught. “When Rainier bites it, you want to make sure you’re front and center, not Max. I think calling us here was a cover story. Where the hell did you put him, Pierre? Because I swear to God, after what that kid went through, if you’ve got him tied up on a ship somewhere with some tosser holding a gun to his head, I will rip you apart with my bare teeth.”
Gen nudged him with her baby bump, an amazingly aggressive move.
God, Arthur loved her more every damn minute he was around her.
Considering the sheer terror in Pierre’s eyes as he scrambled to get away from the scary pregnant lawyer lady, this was Arthur’s chance.
After all, Pierre was not a defendant to be cross-examined by the lawyers in the room.
He was an intelligence asset to be cultivated.
And that was Arthur’s specialty.
“Now, now,” Arthur said as he swanned across the room as smoothly as a rook gliding down an empty file of a chessboard to the back row. “We shouldn’t badger Pierre. He must be distraught. After all, his brother is missing.”
Casimir, Roxanne, and Gen stared at Arthur, and he shuttered one eyelid in the slightest wink at his wife as he slipped his arm around Pierre’s shoulders and led him away from the attacking barristers.
Closer, Arthur could see that Pierre did indeed have a rather plum-colored eye under his thick makeup. His eyelid was swollen half-closed, and a darker section of his lip suggested that he had been bleeding there, too. Maxence always went for the face when he fought.
“Pierre,” Arthur said, loading his voice with sympathy, “you must be in some distress, what with your brother missing and your uncle in hospital.”
“Yes!” Pierre exploded, and he glanced back.
When Arthur looked, Gen was leading the others on the legal team in glaring at Pierre and himself.
Beautiful.
“How are you doing?” Arthur asked him.
“This is terrible!” Pierre told him, sensing that he finally had a sympathetic ear. “My uncle is dying right before my eyes, which means the Council of Nobles will meet within a month after that.”
“Yes, the Council of Nobles,” Arthur agreed, nodding and commiserating. He still had no idea what that meant.
“I need Maxence here because I need his damn vote, not fucking off with Estebe Fournier’s wife!”
Funny, neither Arthur nor the others had mentioned Estebe Fournier or his wife, Simone Maina, yet.
Pierre had not only known that Maxence was missing, but also with whom.
Now, was it a collaboration or a competition to kidnap Maxence?
Also, Pierre seemed very assured of Maxence’s vote in whatever matter that was, so maybe Pierre hadn’t killed him.
Arthur wasn’t sure, though. He ventured, “It was like she made him disappear within the casino.”
“That’s what Jordan Defrancesco said.”
Arthur nodded and allowed a hint of a smile on his mouth. “Oh? Jordan Defrancesco saw it happen?”
“Yes.”
“How fortuitous that your man happened to be right there and saw them.”
Pierre flipped his fingers in the air, exasperated. “I had him following Maxence.”
“Is he reliable?”
“He’s a special forces operator.”
Pierre had commandos following Maxence that night, not merely bodyguards. Interesting. “It’s good that you had Maxence under surveillance last night.”
“I always have a team on him.”
That was true.
And yet—
Something was still not right.
Maxence always ditched his bodyguards. It wasn’t a game for him or mere petulance. Max eluded Pierre’s bodyguards because, in most situations, it was safer for Maxence to be on his own rather than under Pierre’s thumb.
Last night, Pierre’s security had been closing in on Max. As Arthur had seen in the surveillance footage at the casino, at least two bulky men had been encroaching on Maxence’s position between the two casino rooms before Simone Maina had bolted through the salon to Max.
And then he’d disappeared.
The question was, had Max evaded Pierre’s security as usual and disappeared on his own, or had Pierre or someone else taken him and Arthur hadn’t detected the snatch?
Yes, Pierre could have been working with Estebe Fournier to find Simone and, most likely, capture Maxence.
Both of them were just the type of psychopaths who would do it, too.
There had to be some way for Arthur to force Pierre to make a mistake.
Arthur said to Pierre, “Good foresight of you to have security on Maxence.”
“Of course, I do. I always do. If anything happens to me—” Pierre shook his head.
Arthur let his gaze drift away from Pierre as if he were bored, turning to look out of the windows and beyond to the sparkling, blue Mediterranean Sea that shaded to silver in the morning sunlight. His tone was careless. “Yes, yes. I’m sure you go to great lengths to protect your brother.”
“I do,” Pierre snapped.
“Especially with the impending Council of Nobles meeting.”
Pierre’s hand drifted up to his forehead, and his fingers combed through his hair, mussing it, a gesture of significant distress for him. “Yeah.”
“Is that why you had him taken to your yacht?” Arthur kept his tone thoroughly disinterested. “For his own safekeeping?”
“I didn’t have him taken anywhere,” Pierre said. “I told you, he slipped away from Defrancesco.”
“And yet,” Arthur still seemed to stare out the window, but he was watching Pierre with his peripheral vision, “your yacht is missing.”
“My yacht is missing?” Pierre stammered. “Which one?”
“The Last Toy. Were you on it last night?”
“I haven’t been on it in months. Ever since—” Pierre paused, and he turned to look out of the window and to the glittering sea beyond.
“Ever since what, Pierre?” Arthur prodded, knowing that Pierre meant since his wife had disappeared. Arthur wondered vaguely if the yacht had anything to do with her disappearance.
Pierre said, “Nothing. Immaterial. Fuck, he stole my yacht?”
That was interesting. Pierre’s exclamation and easy blame were predicated on his underlying belief that Maxence was still at liberty, or at least that Pierre didn’t have Maxence stashed away somewhere.
It seemed that Pierre did think that Max had gotten away and had not been taken by someone, not even his own men.
Arthur said, “I think ‘stole’ is a harsh word. Is it your personal yacht, or does your family trust own it?”
“That’s not relevant,” Pierre grumbled, his habitual response to any question he didn’t like.
Arthur continued, “The trust, then. Has Maxence officially given up his inheritance yet?”
Pierre frowned. “No.”
Ah, so Maxence hadn’t formally and legally relinquished his rights to his inheritance, and thus he was a threat to Pierre when Rainier Grimaldi died. Arthur had wondered when Rainier had allowed Maxence to sign those papers, and it appeared he hadn’t. “Perhaps we could ask the Navy to raise The Last Toy on the radio to see if he’s okay?”
As they left Pierre’s apartment, Arthur noticed that they’d picked up their tail again of two surveillance teams, now four men each. Again, they were clearly not coordinating their efforts and seemed to be unaware of each other.
Such an abject failure of tradecraft dismayed him.