Page 3 of Mercenary Princess

Tiffany spun around in excitement, jolting Sophia for a split second. The woman was saying something, though, honestly, Sophia couldn’t hear most of it. It had something to do with the show. She grinned and nodded. Relieved when that appeared to be the right response, Sophia forced her breathing to slow and her tense shoulders to relax.

Her mask of amused composure set firmly back in place, she edged closer to the other girls as they danced in front of the iron railing overlooking the stage and suspended walkways linking the balconies. Flashes of camera phones flickered in the distance.

After more dancing and another glass of champagne, she felt Viktor’s eyes again. Only this time, she was in the right headspace to prevent the attention from getting to her. It was too close to showtime for her to continue acting like a teenager.

A few moments later, Jen cast her a pointed look. Only Jen knew Sophia’s real agenda for the night, and she relayed the silent message with practiced ease.

Her prey had arrived.

An instinctive calm settled over Sophia, and she welcomed the sensation.

She turned in time to see Jean Luc Richelieu, France’s slick-dressed minister of foreign affairs. The way his interested gaze swept over her sent a familiar shiver up her spine. His presence was her reason for being in Paris, and she wanted him to approach, but staying in character was imperative. She and her friends had intel that he was meeting with France’s president very late that evening but was coming to the club first to meet a Belgian diplomat.

Her guards allowed the minister to step into her space. He was on her mother’s approved list, as Jean Luc was from a very old family with a great deal of wealth beyond his political ties.

She leaned toward him, accepting his kisses on her cheeks while stifling the instinct to recoil from his touch. His cool palms settled on her arms above the gloves her friend Riot had designed to match the delicate straps of her designer heels. The gloves looked to be made of thin straps that crisscrossed her arms, with sheer, nearly invisible fabric in between. They weren’t any more comfortable than her four-inch heels, mainly because the gloves had an added feature. They were lined with clear latex meant to keep fingerprints and any hint of DNA from transferring to the technology concealed on the inside of her index finger.

“Your Royal Highness.” The dark glint of interest in Jean Luc’s icy gray eyes was unmistakable. She would be treading a dangerous line with him tonight. In the last two years, she’d artfully rebuffed several of his advances and seen his interest morph into something darker each time, a shadow of something sadistic hidden just beneath the political charm. “It is always a pleasure to have you in our fair city.” He was her height in heels, putting him at about five feet nine inches, with a lean bicycle-enthusiast’s frame and perfectly styled brown hair.

He’d be attractive to anyone who didn’t know he was a snake in a fifty-thousand-dollar suit. At best, he was a murderer, protected by those even higher in power. At worst, he was a serial killer, protected by the elite for some unknown reason. She and her friends had spent months trying to uncover the full extent of his crimes and who exactly was protecting him, with very little success. His home had proven clean, aside from a hidden room containing a cache of illegally acquired artifacts. His staff turned over often enough that they didn’t know much about the man. And all that her people had discovered was the fact that at least two of his ex-employees had gone missing around the time they were let go from his staff.

She pushed her dark thoughts aside to focus on the man before her. Flashing a royal smile, she responded, “I love it when my schedule brings me to Paris. I had no idea you would be here this evening.” Polite small talk was a skill honed from birth, but tonight she made sure her words were a fraction slower, her smile just a fraction brighter than usual, as if she were slightly inebriated.

His gaze seemed to flash with something she couldn’t put a name to. Calculating… Yet he’d never made the top of her mark list. Until now.

When his body angled closer to her, she held her breath, praying she wouldn’t have to withstand his touch again. This was where her “prim” persona came in handy. Most people maintained a respectable demeanor when in her presence. That was the one situation in which having an ultraconservative brother worked to her advantage.

Before he moved too close to her, her companions closed in around Jean Luc, vying for his attention. Sophia had to force back the desire to yank them away, but she needed to play her part. Which meant she appeared completely ignorant about his sadistic side. He’d been extremely cautious in his darker dealings over the years, to the extent that he actually had a near flawless reputation, as far as politicians went—a red flag if she’d ever seen one.

To high-ranking society, Jean Luc was an attractive thirty-eight-year-old man with a prominent pedigree, wealth, and a political standing that afforded a great deal of influence and clout in their world. That her social friends were flocking around him made that point very clear, and she didn’t like that she was the one dragging them into his scope.

People had a tendency to go missing around him. Sophia’s group had been monitoring the Frenchman’s dealings, so when one of his business associates went missing, her operatives had delved deeper. The missing man’s last actions were to sell Jean Luc a prime property that, by all accounts, the man hadn’t wanted to sell. A team had been sent to investigate. They’d found no mention of Jean Luc having even been questioned in any police reports, and the family had clammed up.

The whole thing was far more blatant than any of the other disappearances they’d linked him to, which only added to her unease. Was he becoming more brash in his activities because he was sure of those protecting him?

How many elite members of society were even shielding him, and why?

To take a man like Jean Luc down, they would need as much information as they could get.

All signs indicated that the Frenchman was being shielded by high-ranking officials, possibly all the way up to the president of France. His untouchable status wasn’t coming from family ties. He was the last of his line, considering his father and uncles were conveniently dead. But again, they’d yet to find any solid evidence that he’d had anything to do with those. Deaths due to heart attack and cancer were not ruled as suspicious.

Even as he charmed the others, his eyes kept trailing back to Sophia with a dark kind of intensity that made bile rise in her throat. He’d always made her uncomfortable, just not this uncomfortable. It made her wonder if they’d made a big mistake all these years. Perhaps he should have been higher on their mark list.

They needed to find out what exactly they were up against. Quickly.

Precision was key to her current task, so she forced her body to relax. The next few moments seemed to move in slow motion. She signaled Jen to her side. The guard whispered in her ear before retreating out of the way. Sophia’s next movements were choreographed based on Jen’s instructions so that, when she turned, she stumbled directly against Jean Luc.

With a practiced movement, Sophia trailed her gloved fingers inside his lapel, sliding the short pin of the nearly invisible piece of technology into the expensive material. Then she retreated, a wide-eyed look plastered on her face. She kept her other hand on her nearly empty glass, allowing it to splash haphazardly. In less than a second, Jen was there to help extricate her from Jean Luc’s almost biting hold.

It took all her skills not to flinch at the look in Jean Luc’s eyes. It was icy and calculating for a fleeting second before it turned to something far scarier. Sophia’d seen lust before, but that look was some twisted perversion of lust that made her crave a bath. The other women didn’t seem to notice. Tiffany was smiling and taking Sophia’s glass. The gesture was kindly meant.

Sophia smoothed the material of her black dress as if embarrassed. “I have to blame my clumsiness on your incredible champagne. I believe I have had my limit tonight.” She was grateful that her male guards had turned at the exchange and were widening the gap between her and the minister.

“Everything is fine,” she informed the guards, smiling even as she fought back the anxiety tightening her chest. She would likely hear about her uncharacteristic overindulgence when she returned to the palace, but receiving a lecture about propriety was well worth having completed her task.

No one else in her organization could have planted the bug as easily as she had. Jean Luc rarely allowed anyone close to his person, and his own guards saw that people kept their distance unless the minister initiated contact himself. The guards in question had been eyeing Tiffany and the other women and had stiffened to act the moment Sophia bumped into the minister, but they hadn’t stepped in. Royalty were allowed leeway others were not afforded, though she knew the Frenchman likely also allowed her touch because of his interest.

She was relieved when Jean Luc’s attention diverted toward the stairs. With a glance in that direction, she noted a squat man with thinning black hair. The Belgian diplomat and a couple of men, likely security, ascended the stairs to their tier of balcony sections, and Sophia had never been more grateful for a distraction.

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