“What is the use of owningtwofucking jets if I can’t whisk you away to Verona to eat pasta in a shady grotto and kiss you on a staircase in Juliet’s House? We’ll call Billionaire Sanctuary and have our belongings packed so they meet us at the airport. We’ll go shopping for you in Italy while we’re there, since you need clothes anyway. Let’sgo.”
“But you’re in Vegas for your friend’s bachelor party. You don’t want to miss that. This is a once-in-a-lifetime party for him. Hopefully, I mean.”
“So we’ll be back in a few days before the thing wraps up. Those people probably won’t notice our absence.”
“Those people, meaning your lifelong friends.”
“Yes, they probably wouldn’t notice at all if I were missing, if I were gone.”
That was morbid.
“I’ll text Ryan to get us a room at the Billionaire Sanctuary in Verona. I think I remember them opening one there last year.”
“Surely, it’s booked up,” I said, stalling.
“Not for me. I have decades of blackmail material on Ryan von Prussian, one of the benefits of attending boarding school with him. He’ll make room.”
It was time to confess the real reason why I couldn’t go. “I don’t have a passport.”
I was embarrassed as heck at throwing a monkey wrench in his plans because I was so country that I’d never, ever gone anywhere that I’d needed a passport. His life seemed limitless.
Nicolai tilted his head and looked up at the stars, still holding my hand with my knuckles pressed against his shoulder. “What documents did you have with you for your wedding to the fool?”
“I have my birth certificate and my driver’s license, and we have that kind of unofficial copy of our marriage license. I overpacked on the documentation because I was paranoid something would go wrong.”
And I was right. It totally had gone wrong. Just not with my documents.
Nicolai blinked and thought for a moment. “Hang on.”
He tugged his phone out of his inside jacket pocket, scrolled through his contacts, and tapped before holding it up to his ear. “Jonathan! Sorry to call so late. I say, I need a small favor. My new lovely doesn’t have a passport, and I want to whisk her away to Italy. Could you call one of your minions to open up the Las Vegas passport office a few hours from now and provide us with one?”
He listened for a moment and then grinned at me. “Excellent. Yes, Las Vegas. Where else in your wretched country could such a thing happen? I’ll take you to dinner at La Viande next time you’re in Paris. Yes, I can get us in. No trouble.”
He tapped the phone and smiled at me. “Done. A clerk will meet us at midnight to make you a passport.”
My jaw dropped. “That’s crazy! Who the heck is Jonathan that he can do that?”
“Jonathan Lindell, your secretary of state.”
“For all of Nevada?”
“Of the United States. I knew him at uni, at Harvard. I’ll call Ueli to bring the car around right before midnight. I really should l make my apologies to John for leaving early, though. Trust me, if anyone would notice we’d left early, it’s John. He’ll take the opportunity to scold me. In the meantime, let’s put your new waltzing skills to use. I want to see you out there with all my snobby friends, waltzing like you were raised in a private Parisian academy.”
CHAPTER 18
traitor
NICOLAI
“John! I say, John! Can we speak for a moment?”
I ran after John Borbon, the man of the hour and groom in a month or so, as he glad-handed through the crowd. Everyone joked with him, and he joked back, as I could see from the too-wide grin on his face.
God, I hoped he wasn’t knackered already. The evening was young, but that meant nothing.
My school friend Nassim was blocking my way, arms spread. His shout of “Nico!” with a much thicker Lebanese accent than his usual was jubilant and drew laughs from his buddies.
“Fuck you, too!” I yelled back, grinning as I shook his hand all the way up his arm and promising to catch up with him later, and ran on.
