There hadn’t been an exact moment when Maxence had decided to propose to Dree Clark. The tears she was blinking back made his heart ache. Her words sliced the lies that he had been telling himself all his life, and they fell into shreds at his feet.
As she told him that she wanted just those few moments with him, the weight of his grandmother’s engagement ring in his pocket pulled on his tuxedo jacket and his cross around her neck caught the light, and that was when his miracle occurred.
He had been praying for a miracle to tell him to be a priest, but his miracle had been right in front of him for months. The kindness in her soul could be nothing less than miraculous.
Lowering himself to one knee in front of Dree Clark felt more right than prostrating himself on the floor in St. Peter’s Basilica.
When those words left his mouth, Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife, the love in his soul expanded through the room, drawing a collective sigh from everyone around them.
Beside Dree’s shoulder, Nico stood where he had been dancing with Marie-Therese. They’d turned to watch with the rest of the crowd. Max saw out of the corner of his vision that Nico was grinning at them with his eyebrows raised, nearly grinding his teeth in excitement. His hands clenched, and he looked like he was holding himself back from running over and hugging them.
Beside Nico, Marie-Therese watched them with calculation in her eyes.
Dree blinked at Maxence, her china-blue eyes batting open and closed.
From where he kneeled, he leaned slightly toward her. “Breathe.”
That startled little gasp must have been her beginning to breathe again. “Are—are you sure?”
“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life,” he told her.
He’d been so intensely focused on Dree because he was proposing to the woman he loved, a woman who had changed his life so completely in just slightly more than two months that he did not recognize himself, that he hadn’t noticed his ring of bodyguards had melted away.
A sharp crack slapped his ears.
And then another.
And another.
Dree had already ducked, one hand up to ward off the bullets. “Who the hell is shooting?”
Maxence snatched Dree’s arm, dragging her down and underneath himself as he crouched over her. He shoved the jewelry box holding his grandmother’s engagement ring into her hands as he tried to shield her.
More gunshots snapped and broke the air.
The crowd ducked.
Screeches expanded, filling the air of the Grimaldi Forum and then intensifying, wails becoming shrieks.
The fog of screaming thickened.
Maxence looked around, trying to figure out where the shots were coming from.
Nico was hunched over and trying to drag Marie-Therese under his chest to protect her, but she pulled away from him.
Half a dozen strong hands lifted Maxence from the floor, leaving Dree twisting to look around. No blood.
Quentin Sault said, “Your Highness, we have a helicopter on the roof.”
Max said, “Not without her.”
Sault scowled and told the men surrounding Max, “Take him and the girl.”
The security men began to hustle Max toward a staircase in the rear of the ballroom.
Max grabbed Quentin Sault and pointed. “Get my cousin Nico. He’s right there.”
Michael Rossi appeared behind Nico, who was stumbling toward where Marie-Therese had fled into the crowd. Rossi grabbed Nico and pressed a small handgun to the base of his skull. Blood poured down the side of Nico’s neck as he crumpled to the floor.
Maxence stumbled, disbelieving.
His throat wouldn’t work.
Nico.
Rossi turned to where the bodyguards were shuffling Max and Dree out of the room.
Maxence stepped between the assassin and Dree, shielding her.
Instead of raising his gun and taking a shot at Max, Michael Rossi raised his fist with his arm at a right angle, signaling. His gaze tracked slightly to Maxence’s left.
Rossi was looking right at Quentin Sault.
Betrayal.
Maxence snatched his phone out of his pocket and thumbed an app on the home screen. He pressed the phone into Dree’s hand and with every bit of strength he could put into his arms, shoved her away from himself and into a thick knot of people. “Run.”
Dree flew a short distance from him and then stumbled, but she looked back at him.
Maxence yelled at her, “Run!”