The tour of the palace afterward was both amusing and informative. The historian who led them around knew the origin and importance of every stick of furniture and rug on the floor, as well as all the stories about the Grimaldi princes and their reigns.
There were, of course, many pictures of stunningly beautiful Princess Grace, the California movie star turned Monegasque Princess.
Tristan elbowed her. “That’s Maxence’s grandmother.”
Colleen nodded. “It shows.”
Outside of the front gate in the courtyard, between the palace and the town of Monaco Ville on the headlands, the docent led them to a statue of an evil-looking monk holding a knife. He said, “May I present Il Malizia, the first Grimaldi ruler of Monaco.”
Colleen stared up at the statue, and she instinctively reached out and grabbed Tristan’s hand. He held on. “He looks kind of mad.”
The docent assured her, “He was not mad, this Italian Lord of Genoa, but he might’ve been a little crazy. His nickname, Il Malizia, means The Malicious One. On the evening of January 8, 1297, Francois Grimaldi disguised himself in the robes of a monk and begged the guards for shelter for the night at the fortress in Monaco. He finally convinced the unwitting guard that he was a poor, humble man of God, and the guard took pity on him and opened the gate.”
Colleen gestured at the statue. “He’s holding a knife.”
“Yes, indeed, and he slaughtered the guards and opened the gates of the fortress for his men, and that was how the Grimaldi conquered Monaco.”
“You always think of conquering as, like, riding into the glorious battle on a white horse.”
The docent chuckled. “Not like slitting the throat of an easily manipulated guard in the dead of night? He is as much a myth as he is a metaphor for Monaco. We are small and few, but we could conquer the world if we wanted to, for we are Il Malizia!”
In the afternoon, Tristan showed Colleen the small “old town” of Monaco Ville, where winding medieval streets were lined with terra-cotta and ochre rowhouses. A park ran around the edge of the cliff that overlooked the harbor.
He said, “You can see why the fortress’s position was so important. From right there,” he gestured back at the palace a few blocks away, “the fortress could use the canons we saw to defend the harbor from any ship that sailed into it. If you held that fortress, you could hold the harbor forever. You can see the gray stone parts of the original fortress that were integrated into the Italian palazzo-style castle they built around it.”
The warm sea breeze tossed Colleen’s hair around her face, and she tried to hold it back with both her hands. “This is all amazing. I’m having such a great time.”
He stepped closer to her and ran his hands down her upper arms. “I’m having a great time, too.”
“When people aren’t trying to kidnap our friends or us, you plan the most amazing dates.”
With that, Tristan grinned and even rolled his eyes so that he looked out on the ocean instead of at her. His grin seemed like more than just happiness, more like she’d given him a gift. “I’m so glad you think so.”
The breeze blew from the sapphire sea, over the rock parapet around the edge of the cliffs, and through the parks and towns where people were chattering and laughing. “This is all just amazing.”
“I have a proposal for you,” he said.
Even though she really liked him, and even though she much more than really liked him, she couldn’t fathom anything like that yet. “Um, Tristan, we’ve only known each other for twelve days.”
He chuckled. “Not that kind of a proposal. It’s more of a proposition.”
She laughed. “Oh, you know I already said yes to your proposition that Saturday night at the Devilhouse almost two weeks ago.”
“It’s more of a business proposition.”
Well, that was new. “I’m all ears.”
“After the dividend went out this morning, I seem to have purchased a rather large amount of GameShack stock.”
“Well, yeah. I’ll bet a bunch of people took you up on that offer.”
“Including my holdings, I now own sixty-three percent of all GameShack stock, which makes me the legal owner with the power to vote anybody I want in or out as the CEO or the board.”
“Okay, that’s cool.”
“You had a lot of good ideas about how to make GameShack a profitable company, and I trust you to implement them ethically rather than just slash and burn and pillage it for whatever profitable parts are left.”
“Well, of course.”
“I don’t know what your plans are, but you can’t start university classes for another six weeks or so for fall semester. Would you like to be the CEO of GameShack and set the company off on a good track? You can do it for just six weeks, or you can take a semester or a year more off from university and take the helm for as long as you want.”
Colleen blinked as her mind fluttered around, trying to process that. “You want me to be the CEO?”
He nodded. “With commensurate salary, stock options, a corporate jet, and golden parachute when you decide to go back to college.”
“Holy crap, Tristan.”
“Of course, you might decide not to finish your business degree, considering that you’re already the CEO of a Fortune 1000 company, but that’s up to you to decide which you want to do. And you can be a CEO for a year or more and then decide that it’s time to finish that degree. Whatever you want.”
Colleen found a stone bench near her and sat down because her legs were flopping. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes, if you want to.”
“Don’t you want to be the CEO since you own it?”
Tristan turned his head, looking out to the sea.
On the water that stretched to the horizon, sunlight sparkled on the rippling surface, almost blinding with its brilliance.
He said, “I have a lot of other parts of my business that I’m involved in. I don’t have the time to be the CEO of GameShack. If you don’t want it, I will hire someone else to be the CEO.”
“So you’re not just giving it to me, right? Because you already got me into bed. I don’t need any more bribery.” Colleen had checked her savings account that morning. After the two-thousand-dollar-per share dividend had been deposited, no one could ever bribe her again. She needed to avail herself of the new wealth managers sub-forum on the Sherwood Forest boards because her savings account had seven figures in it.
“I’m not giving you anything. You earned it.”
As the CEO of a vast company, Colleen could be involved in all the facets of the business and really do something great. Because she’d been a clerk, she understood the structural changes necessary to make the company succeed. “Were my ideas actually good, or are you just humoring me?”
“Tristan looked down at her, and his smile was gentle. “They are actually good ideas.”
“Can I hire consultants?”
“Of course, and I’ll still be around. We can always talk about it.”
“Okay,” she said to herself as she mulled over this idea that he’d sprung on her.
She could always quit if it turned out that she sucked at it.