Page 3 of Royally Romanov
Tourists often tossed coins in the octagonal center of the marker for good luck. The middle of the octagon dipped into the shape of a sun, and the marker itself sat just opposite the main entry of Notre Dame Cathedral.
He could remember his grandmother taking him there when he was a boy, decades ago. What he’d been doing there at three in the morning just two nights ago was a mystery he couldn’t begin to fathom.
“I don’t remember.” He knew what thedétectivewas thinking. It was written all over his face. “I wasn’t buying drugs. There were no drugs in my body when the ambulance brought me in. The doctors can verify that.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve already checked.”
He balled the bedsheets in his fists. Why did he feel like the criminal all of a sudden rather than the victim?
“We’re doing everything we can to locate the person who did this to you, Maxim. But we’ve got very little to go on, as you can see.”
He took a sharp inhale.
Maxim.
Was that his name? It didn’t sound familiar at all. Nor could he attach it to any sort of last name in his mind. That couldn’t be normal, could it?
Nothing about this situation is normal.
“The entire city is distressed over what happened to you. Notre Dame is one of Paris’s biggest tourist attractions, and now those tourists are afraid to go there after dark.” The detective sighed.
Merde.As if Maxim didn’t have enough to deal with at the moment, now the Parisian tourism industry rested on his shoulders.
“Do you understand that the investigation can’t proceed without more information?” The officer looked at him expectantly. Waited for him to say something.
He had the sudden urge to scream. Why was this happening? How was it possible to wake up in the hospital with an identity he knew nothing about?
“I understand,” he said quietly.
He knew precious little about his own life, but he understood plenty. The police thought he’d been involved in a drug deal gone wrong or something equally nefarious. He was almost inclined to agree. Wasn’t there a saying about nothing good ever happening after 2:00 a.m.?
He didn’t want to believe it. But he also couldn’t figure out why he’d been at Point Zero when he should have been sleeping, or why someone felt the need to beat him within an inch of his life.
The policeman flipped his notebook closed and shoved it in the inside pocket of his jacket. “We’re still searching for witnesses who may have been present at the time of your attack. I’ll be in contact if anything turns up. Once you leave here I’m assuming you’ll return to your address in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.”
This stranger knew more about him than he knew about himself. “Saint-Germain-des-Prés?”
He’d moved up in the world. Maybe hewasa drug dealer. Or maybe he lived with his grandmother now. She’d lived in a spacious flat on Boulevard Saint-Germain since before his parents had died. He’d grown up there.
Either he’d turned to a life of crime or he was a grown man living with hisgrand-mère—neither seemed like an ideal option. But as he took in the detective’s dubious gaze, he pinned all his hopes on the second one.
The officer cleared his throat and reached for the brown leather notebook that had been resting in his lap. “The handwriting in this journal matches the penmanship on the forms you filled out for the hospital, and the journal was the only piece of evidence recovered from the crime scene. It’s undoubtedly yours, but I’m gathering you have no memory of it either.”
The detective flipped it open. A phone number that failed to spark even the slightest memory was written in the front cover. Just below it was an address on Boulevard Saint-Germain.
His grandmother’s.
His sigh of relief was audible. “May I have it?”
“Oui.My office has already made a thorough photocopy.” The officer stood and set the journal down on the small plastic tray attached to the hospital bed.
Maxim stared at it, suddenly wary of opening it.
“Call me if you remember anything else. Anything at all.” He nodded in the direction of the leather notebook. “My card is inside.”
The detective lingered for a moment. Clearly he wished to see Maxim open the notebook, either out of some perverse curiosity or to gauge his reaction to its contents. Maxim wasn’t sure which, but he wasn’t inclined to give him the pleasure.
“Je vais.”I will. He meant it. He needed to know what had happened to him and why. Sooner rather than later. How could he walk out of the hospital and charge headlong into the future when so much of the past and present was a mystery? “Merci.”
