The SUV hopped a bump as they sped toward the hotel.
The other hotel’s concierge was supposed to be waiting for them in the parking garage below to guide them up.
Dieter had only minutes left to speak privately to Wulfram.
He cleared his throat, wishing that he hadn’t ever thought of what he had to say next. “So, one last operation for old time’s sake, Durchlaucht?”
Wulf flickered his blond eyebrows just a bit. “You could say that.”
“And this time, you will stay to the rear and come in only after we have secured the premises?”
Wulf’s lips tightened. “I heard her crying.”
“But this time?” Dieter pressed.
“I’ll stay back. I can’t believe that we’re doing this again, but it was folly to believe that my father would give in so easily.”
Entry Team
Flicka von Hannover
I am nothing but rubbish,
just worthless, discarded trash.
Flicka’s hands balled into fists around the crisp manila envelope when she heard a swish through the card reader outside the hotel room’s door.
The calvary.
Flicka tensed to jump toward them. She crammed the thin envelope in the purse hanging on her wrist and snapped the purse closed. Her mouth still tasted like the whiskey her father’s butler had handed her.
The front door slammed open.
Dieter and Friedhelm leapt inside, guns drawn.
Flicka sprinted for Dieter, grabbing him around the neck as she crashed into him.
Dieter grasped her around her waist and whipped her behind him, aiming his gun at the few older security men in the room and her father.
She plastered herself to his back, trying to stop crying, but the world had crashed around her. The only solid point in the ground that trembled under her feet was Dieter, always Dieter, and she clung to him.
Dieter asked, “Did he hurt you? Did that asshole hurt you?”
“No,” she hiccuped, trying to control her voice and failing utterly. “He didn’t hurt me. I’m all right.”
His arm tightened around her as he held her against his back. The heavy muscles under his suit shifted. “I swear to God if they hurt you—”
“They didn’t hurt me. Just, please, get me out of here. I can’t stand another minute.”
She looked over his shoulder and glared at her father, who was smiling, that jackass. His other security guys laid their weapons on the floor and raised their hands.
Dieter announced through his jawbone mic, “Clear!”
Wulf walked into the room, flanked by more of his men.
Flicka couldn’t even look at her brother. Had he known about Pierre? Probably not. He would have told her. Wulf wouldn’t have let her marry him if he had known.
Flicka pressed her face to Dieter’s back, trying to not look like such a damn mess. His arm shielded her while he aimed his gun at the men.
Her mind swirled and flipped and screamed in rage and despair.
Everything she had accepted about Pierre had been a lie, all a lie.
And Flicka couldn’t cope with the ramifications.
Her father’s last remaining security guy stood with his hands in the air and stared at the ceiling.
Wulf held up his hand. “Everyone out.”
Flicka could feel the rumble in Dieter’s body when he said to Wulf, “You’re not staying in here alone.”
“Everyone out,” Wulf repeated. He said to Dieter, “Take Flicka back to the hotel. Leave a few men outside the door for my transport.”
Dieter paused, watching her father’s one remaining security guy who was making sure that he looked like absolutely no threat, standing with his hands raised. He whispered, “Durchlauchtig, come with me.”
Flicka nodded. Her forehead rubbed against Dieter’s shoulder. The light wool of his dark suit was smooth against her face.
Gutted.
Maybe that was the word.
She was gutted.
She was torn apart and thrown away, an empty piece of rubbish no one wanted.
Dieter whispered, “Move.”
They edged out of the room with Dieter still shielding Flicka with his body, as he was contractually obligated to do. Most of the other security guys fell into formation around Dieter and Flicka.
She held onto his waist, even though she knew that he was just doing his job.
But she was so very glad it was him.
As they passed the entry table, Flicka grabbed her phone where Dennis Moritz had tossed it after they had arrived at the hotel.
Friedhelm escorted the last of Phillipp’s security men out with them at gunpoint.
Wulf watched them until they walked through the door.
Flicka didn’t let Wulf catch her eyes as Dieter shuffled her out.
Horror ran through her veins at what she had seen.
Wulf would see her anguish. He would know.
And she would be forever diminished in his eyes because she had been so stupid, so easily fooled.
As they entered the hallway, Dieter turned and caught her elbow, hustling her to the stairwells that led to the garage. The light taps of her sandals on the concrete stairs were lost in the thunder of the men’s combat boots stomping around her as they ran for the cars.
In the underground garage, Dieter shoved Flicka into the middle seat of the SUV and clambered in after her. The driver pulled the car away from the curb before they were even settled and raced to get out of the parking garage.
Dieter fell against her during the sudden acceleration.
She almost wrapped her arms around his strong body and buried her face in his shoulder. She wanted to crawl into his arms and cry, but she couldn’t.
Flicka clutched her phone and squeezed it to power it on. Hot tears ran down her face. She rubbed her cheek on her shoulder.
Dieter offered her his handkerchief.
“Thanks,” she muttered, wiping the mascara smudges from under her eyes and down her cheeks. She wiped black smears off her hands and palms, too. God, she was such a mess.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Flicka texted something illegible because her fingers were shaking so hard. “I just need to touch base with the event coordinators. I’m sure everything is fine.”
Dieter grabbed her hand, gently. He asked in an intense tone that insisted on an answer, “Are you all right?”
She looked up at him, and she turned her hand over in his and held on.
Falling apart would have to wait. Nothing had changed except her perception of the problem.
The problem had always been there.
Even before Pierre had danced with her for the first time at her Shooting Star debutante cotillion two years before.
She clung to Dieter’s hand, gripping it like he might be able to pull her out of the ocean she was drowning in.
Later, all this rage and pain would vomit out of her heart, but for now, she had to shove it all down and snap her shiny suit of armor shut.
Damn it, this was Wulfie’s wedding.
She said, slowly, looking straight into Dieter’s worried, gray eyes, “I have to plan this wedding. Everything has to be perfect. Right now, I have to think about that and nothing else.”
Dieter’s eyes were wider than usual, and his deep breathing might have been sympathy or repressing homicidal impulses. “What did he tell you?”
“Nothing,” Flicka said, shaking off his hand and sitting back. “I have a wedding to pull off.” She needed to be angry, not gutted. Anger would give her the energy to get through the day. “Help me concentrate on this wedding.”
“You know that he has lied to Wulfram and many others, trying to create chaos and ruin this wedding and their lives together, right? Anything that he said to you might have been a ploy to cause conflict at Wulfram’s wedding.”
No, it wasn’t. There were photos. There were documents. The chances of everything being faked and photoshopped were infi
nitesimal.
Indeed, with this new information, so many contradictions about Pierre made sense.
Her father hadn’t lied to her, but he had smirked when he handed over the papers that had torn her life apart.
But it was true that her father might have chosen today to kidnap her and hand over this fresh Hell in an envelope because he wanted to screw with Flicka’s head and damage or cancel Wulfram’s wedding.
She told Dieter, “Yes.”
“Wulfram deserves a perfect wedding,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, breathing more easily.
“How can I help?”
I just have to get through it.
Flicka said, “When we get to the hotel, get his clothes, and we’ll go straight to the church. They’re in a garment bag in his closet, pressed and ready to go. Everything is in there, like a kit. Just grab the bag.”
“I will,” Dieter said. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”
Flicka grabbed his hand again and held on. She couldn’t force any more words through her aching throat, so she clung to Dieter’s fingers and texted stupid napkin suppliers with her other hand.
Dressing The Bride
Flicka von Hannover
Twelve hours.
I have to survive twelve hours.
I have to confront Pierre here, in Switzerland,
not in the fortress of the Prince’s Palace in Monaco.
It has to be done in Montreux.
After being rescued, clutching Dieter’s hand so tightly that she was worried about his fingers afterward, and regaining her composure in the car, Flicka got to work.
She was hiding out with Rae and her friend, Lizzy, down in the bride’s dressing room in the church’s basement.
Old incense fumes clung to the couch where she sat perfectly still so she wouldn’t wrinkle her white bridesmaid’s dress. The mint she was sucking slowly overwhelmed the whiskey on her tongue, but she wanted another drink, badly. She was alternately talking and texting and swiping on her phone so fast that her fingers burned and skipped on the glass.
The wedding hummed around her. People streamed into the church upstairs, their footfalls simmering on the ceiling above their heads.
A text popped up on her phone that Wulfie and Mrs. Keller were finally leaving the damned hotel and en route to the church.
Late.
Flicka glanced over at Dieter, who was sitting in a chair against the far wall, watching the door.
As they’d come back to the church, he’d mentioned that his teams were in position around the church and ready along the route back to the hotel. Over a hundred people, he said. Snipers, spotters, surveillance, plain clothes, motorcyclists, drivers, and shotguns. A wire curled from his collar to his ear, and he tilted his head, listening to them. The tension never left his body, like he was always ready to leap, grapple, and protect her.
Flicka relaxed.
Whenever she saw Dieter’s broad shoulders and strong body out of the corner of her eye, when she caught a glimmer of sunlight on his ash blond hair, when she saw his storm-cloud gray eyes restlessly scanning, watching, those were the only times Flicka felt safe.
She didn’t let herself think back to two years ago. Back then, when she’d been in his bed with his arms around her, that was the only time she’d felt loved.
Wulfie had made her feel loved as a father loves his daughter, of course, but those moments had been so fleeting. They’d had a few years together as a family, and then he’d been conscripted into the Swiss army when she was eleven. She’d gone back to the dorms at Le Rosey boarding school.
But Dieter, she’d had everything with him: the knowledge that he loved her, lying in his arms at night, and feeling perfectly safe with his huge form shadowing her. In the evenings, they’d been together. On weekends, they’d gone to the theater or museums or movies.
But it had been only for a year, and then it was over.
And then Pierre had been there, and she’d been so starved for love that she’d believed everything he’d told her.
She could not think about Pierre just then.
Shiny shell, snap shut.
Shut it all away.
Flicka shook her head and went back to texting the damn napkin supplier, promising hellfire and damnation if he didn’t come up with the cloth goods.
She liked Rae’s Western colloquialisms. They were so descriptive. And threatening.
Rae Stone was standing in front of a full-length mirror, not sitting so that she wouldn’t wrinkle her pale ivory wedding gown. She held her arms stiffly out from her sides, and her eyes were a little too big on her face.
The von Hannover wedding tiara had been woven into her rich, auburn hair, and Flicka particularly liked how it looked. The stylists she had been training for months had done a spectacular job. She should give them a bonus payment.
As Rae turned slightly to view the dress in the mirror, one couldn’t particularly tell that Rae was four months’ pregnant, which was excellent. Flicka had conferred with the designer and tailor to construct an optical illusion that made her look slim and curvy, though there was just no disguising her great boobs.
Flicka wished she had great boobs, but every body is different.
“Is he here yet?” Rae asked Flicka.
She grunted and held up one finger while she finished the text with her other thumb. “There. I can’t believe that asshole kidnapped me for three whole hours. I am going to cut off someone’s head. The reception napkins are white. White. And polyester. We specified ivory, unbleached, raw silk months ago. I’ve been battling this guy for days.”
Rae’s college friend Lizzy had been fussing over Rae all afternoon, evidently taking over for Flicka in that department when Flicka had been kidnapped, but she was taking a break. Lizzy was tucked up into a tiny, blond ball in one corner of a loveseat, clicking on her phone.
Rae asked, “Is Wulf here yet?”
Flicka shook her head. “Julian pinged that Wulfie and Mrs. Keller just left the hotel for the church, and he still isn’t dressed. His clothes are here. We’re already delayed by fifteen minutes. It’s going to be an hour. The delay is going to be an hour.”
Rae smiled. “It’ll be okay. We have four hours built in before we’re supposed to make the entrance at the reception. It’ll be fine. I wish Georgie were here.”
Flicka glanced up at Rae, paused, and then reached up and stroked Rae’s arm. As crazed as Flicka was about this wedding, she wasn’t the one getting married. Of course, Rae wanted her other bestie here. “If she can come, I’m sure she will.”
“You haven’t gotten any more texts?”
“Not since the exceedingly tardy RSVP yesterday,” Flicka told her.
“Do you think that she’s okay?”
Flicka was staring at the excuses from the napkin supplier and ready to choke the man. “She keeps saying that she’s going to disappear, to escape everyone who’s after her, everyone who has been hounding her. It must be nice to think that you are so inconsequential that you can just run away like that.”
“But she’s not inconsequential,” Rae said. “She has people who love her.”
“Maybe it’s the best option for her.”
Flicka didn’t think. The pain poured out of her. Her phone in her hands blurred. “Maybe she’s afraid that the people who are after her will kill her friends if the bullets miss her. They have been hunting her for her whole life, ever since her father swindled those criminals, anyway.”
Flicka couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see.
Somehow, she kept her voice light and a little irritated as she blurted, “Maybe her life is so miserable and shallow and wrong and imprisoning that she wants to die but just can’t bring herself to do it, so she keeps running away instead.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Flicka saw that Dieter had turned and was watching her. His gray eyes didn’t waver.
“Did she say that to you?” Rae asked Flicka, reaching over to touch Flicka’s arm. �
��Did Georgie say that she was thinking about harming herself?”
Rae thought they were still talking about Georgie.
Flicka said, “No, I’m just playing armchair shrink. Indeed, I’ve barely talked to her or anyone for months except for wedding planners and caterers and florists and designers, and now I’ve lost three whole damn hours. I’ve got to get these napkins right, or people will talk. Good God, Rae. White, polyester napkins! What would people say?”
Rae blinked for a moment, probably thinking that Flicka had lost her mind over the napkins. “You’ve done a brilliant job, Flicka,” is what she said. “I appreciate everything that you’ve done, and it’s beautiful and it’s perfect.”
Flicka tried to stick some anger on her face to cover up the fact that she was just about to roll off the couch and sob on her knees.
“Really!” Rae told her. “I mean it. I am stunned by how much you’ve done. Everything is absolutely beautiful and perfect. You have done a wonderful job with this. Thank you, and I mean every word.”
Flicka blinked, her lips sucking inward to control it all. “Okay. Thanks. I’m glad that you like it. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I have to make sure that my fashion-challenged brother puts on the right suit because if there are two suits in the garment bag, he will choose the wrong one, and then I have a table designer to disembowel if he doesn’t produce three thousand unbleached silk napkins in the next three hours.”
“Four hours,” Rae said.
“Three,” Flicka replied. “I need an hour to whip all the waitstaff into folding some of them into two thousand perfect little goddamn swans.”
She breezed out of the dressing room.
When she looked back, a dark shadow moved in the hallway behind her, a very tall, muscular man, blocking out the sharp sunlight and protecting her from everything.
Flicka rushed off before Dieter could ask her what the hell was going on.
The Wedding of Rae and Wulf
Once Upon a Time: Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka Page 19
