Page 4 of Royally Romanov
The detective nodded and buttoned his coat.
Maxim closed his eyes and feigned sleep until the echo of retreating footsteps faded into nothingness. He dragged his eyes open, ignoring the ache in his skull, and pulled the tray closer.
He rested the palm of his hand on the journal’s smooth brown cover, hoping for some sense of muscle memory to kick in. The brandy-colored leather beneath his fingertips was aged. Worn. He’d obviously been carrying this thing around for a while.
The beeps on his heart monitor sped up as he turned to the first page. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find. An autobiography would have been nice.
The page was covered in some kind of family tree. Interconnected rectangles stretched from margin to margin. The names within the boxes seemed as if they were from another time and place.
Natalia Narychkina. Eudoxie Lopoukhine. Anne Leopoldovna.
They meant nothing to him. Yet for some reason, he’d been carrying these strangers around with him in the middle of the night.
The ache in his head blossomed. His vision began to blur around the edges. Trying to read while recovering from a concussion was about as effective as a dog chasing its tail.
Concentrate.
He blinked a few times and looked at the chart again. Then he noticed that someone—himself, he presumed—had written a title across the top of the page.
Les monarques de la dynastie Romanov.
The monarchs of the Romanov dynasty.
Well that explained why none of the names looked familiar. These were historical figures. Royalty. None of these people had anything to do with his real life.
Then why are their names meticulously documented in your handy dandy notebook, genius?
Good question.
He turned the page. The next double-page spread contained an even more detailed family tree. More names. More dates. More Romanovs. What the hell? He’d turned into some sort of Russian history nerd.
He could live with that. It was a strange thing to be into, but it was better than the less appealing options he’d considered after he’d woken up without a memory, beaten to a pulp.
But it still didn’t explain why he’d been at Point Zero in the middle of the night.
Maybe he’d had some kind of urgent nerd emergency. The lines on his handwritten charts were razor-straight. He’d lost his ruler and gone out for a new one. Or possibly another journal since this one seemed full.
He flipped through the rest of the pages, but found nothing new. Just more charts documenting the Romanov Empire and pages upon pages of notes about the royal family.
What the hell was he looking at? He wasn’t just a history nerd. He was obsessed.
His head ached. His gut churned.
As he sat pondering what was beginning to look like his own unhealthy fascination with a Russian dynasty that had died out almost a century ago, a card fell from the notebook into his lap. He picked it up.
Julian Durand, Détective
Préfecture de police de Paris
The detective’s phone number was listed below his name and title. Maxim stared at it until the numbers blurred. His reality, however, remained crystal clear.
This wasn’t a game. This was his life, and he no longer remembered a thing about it.
What the hell am I going to do?
He didn’t have much of a choice, did he? As soon as he was well enough to leave the hospital, he’d find out as much as he could about himself. One way or another, he’d put the pieces of his life back together.
He already knew far more than he had an hour ago. He knew his first name. He knew where he lived. He knew he’d developed some weird, hyperspecific form of OCD.
