“Yes, and right now. If they’re real, I need to confront Pierre tonight, not after we go to Monaco.”
Dieter’s heart wrenched. He understood every nuance in her words: that she might not go back to Monaco at all, and that she was afraid to. “How many documents?”
“Five.”
“My computer is in my room. It’s set up for things like that.” He patted the pocket of his trousers. “I’ll get to it as soon as I can, but I’m running a war, here.”
She touched his hand, and his craving for her started all over again. “Thank you.”
“Anything, always, Durchlauchtig.”
The fear in Flicka’s eyes, even as tipsy as she was, worried Dieter.
He needed to talk to Wulfram, so he headed for the stairs.
On his way, a man touched his arm. “Raphael?”
Dieter dropped into guttural German, burying his lighter Swiss-Deutsch accent, “Nein,” and walked on.
Damn, nothing like that had happened for years.
But Dieter didn’t know anyone named Raphael at all.
The German accent was easy for him after hanging around the very German Wulfram von Hannover for so many years. Wulf thought he had perfect Swiss-Deutsch inflections, the funny guy.
The man who had touched him sounded confused enough that Dieter wasn’t too worried, and his accent had sounded Swiss, not Russian.
That would have been disastrous.
Not A Monarchy
Dieter Schwarz
I had to talk to Wulfram about it.
Dieter left the ballroom and found Wulfram and Rae waiting to be announced to the world as Mr. and Mrs., Prince and Princess von Hannover, or whatever it was, in the room near the top of the staircase. Voices from the packed reception below echoed up here, halfway to the high ceiling.
He pulled Wulf aside. “We need to talk about Flicka.”
Wulf strolled a few yards away from Rae, where an admin of some sort was touching up her hair for the entrance. Another was plucking invisible wrinkles out of her dress.
“I’m worried about her,” Dieter told Wulf. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Reagan.”
Wulf nodded. “Pierre.”
“If Flicka were to divorce Pierre, he would lose his place in the line of succession in Monaco. It’s a Catholic country and a Catholic monarchy.”
“It’s not a monarchy.” Wulf’s touch of emphasis might have been a sneer on anyone less subtle.
Dieter supposed that the fine line between a monarchy, and whatever Monaco was, must be important to someone who gave a shit. “A principality, then, Durchlaucht. But if he thought he might lose it, he might become desperate.”
Wulf crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you have any reason to think that she might have cause to divorce him?”
“No,” Dieter lied. The tiny flash drive weighed in his pocket. “But I worry what might happen if he thinks she will.”
Wulf nodded. “Maxence would inherit. No one has seen him in years. Last I heard, he wanted to be a priest.”
“A Jesuit, Quentin said.”
“Has he taken Holy Orders yet?”
“Quentin said no one is sure.”
“You’re chummy with Quentin Sault, these days.”
Dieter said, “Your contract to provide security for your sister is my highest prioritized assignment. We liaise with the Monegasque security team to facilitate that job.”
“That was stiff.”
“I don’t like Quentin Sault’s training or his methods, and I think he’s under orders to prioritize Pierre’s safety over Flicka’s.”
“Of course, he is. Prince Rainer would have explicitly stated that, or he should have. That’s why you’re there.”
“And he’s easy to pump for information.”
“That benefits us.”
“And everyone else he talks to. She thinks that she slips away from them and us often.”
“She has always done this.”
“She’s getting better at it.”
“Evidently.” Wulf’s tone was as dry as Dieter had ever heard it. “After Maxence, the next person in line for the throne is Alexandre Grimaldi. I can’t imagine he would take it, and his sister Christine wouldn’t, either. If Pierre and Flicka divorce, Rainier is going to have a game of regal hot potato on his hands.”
Dieter didn’t keep up on aristocratic gossip if it didn’t impact Flicka or his other clients. “The problem is that a divorcé would be excluded, but a widower wouldn’t.”
Wulf looked at the carpet under their feet. “Pierre has been one of my closest friends since we were six. I can’t imagine he would murder my sister.”
“Then it’s a good thing it’s my job to imagine it,” Dieter said, “because it may not be up to Pierre. His uncle will not tolerate a succession crisis.”
Dieter needed to find out what was on Flicka’s flash drive, soon.
Saving Flicka
Dieter Schwarz
Because she makes music,
or she used to.
Dieter wandered through the reception, inspecting his men at their duties. He climbed a rear staircase to the balconies. Up there in the dark, the oily scent of clean guns and the sulfurous tang of gunpowder overpowered the white flowers’ fragrance.
Musicians played and sang for entertainment. The lights had been turned down very low over the crowd, so his snipers had gone to night-vision goggles for surveilling the dark part of the room. A few guys without goggles watched the entertainers on the dance floor, where a piano had been stationed.
Dieter braced his arms on the balcony railing to watch Flicka and Christine Grimaldi play a short duet for piano and violin.
They laughed at each other through the performance, each trying to play louder than the other one or flailing around in ever-more dramatic flourishes, and their excellent musical performance turned into a half-drunk comedy routine.
Christine played the violin too close to Flicka, poking Flicka in her ear with the tip of her bow at the end of each stroke.
Flicka kept transposing the piano part farther and farther down the piano to get away from her, until she played only the most thundering bass notes on the keyboard.
In the last few measures, she fell off the piano bench and landed on her ass, kicking her feet in the air, but she kept her fingers on the keyboard and played the last few notes by reaching above her head, jostling the tiara she wore.
At the end, a spotlight picked out her hand, stretched above the piano in triumph.
Flicka was beautiful when she played.
After that, Dieter managed to slip away to look at Flicka’s flash drive and hack France.
When Dieter came back, the lights were dimmed to a level like candlelight, and a string quartet played a waltz. Wedding guests in dark tuxedos and slim designer dresses swayed on the dance floor.
Flicka was standing at the bar, rattling a glass of ice at the bartender, who appeared to be stalling on refilling her drink.
Dieter tapped her shoulder.
She turned, angry at the intrusion. When she saw Dieter, she sighed like the fight had gone out of her.
Instead of just telling her, he held out his hand. “May I have this dance?”
She looked from his palm to his eyes, her brilliant green eyes sparkling even in the dim light.
After a second, she laid her fingers in his. “I thought you’d never ask.”
She led him to the dance floor and spun into his arms, settling one hand on his shoulder. “You’re not married anymore, right?”
“I’m not,” he admitted.
Dieter slid one hand around her waist to her back and stepped in. The music around them swelled, and his heart thumped with her nearness.
“So were you able to hack the French?” she asked.
He shrugged. “France has always been shit at defending anything.”
Flicka laughed like the German princess she was.
And his Swiss mercenary ancestors had driven
the Germans back out of France just as many times as her family had invaded it.
Her body relaxed in Dieter’s arms as she chuckled.
“All right,” she said. “And you found?”
“They’re real,” he said, “all of the documents are real copies, and it looks like the pictures are genuine, too. Everything is registered with the local government offices or were easy to find, otherwise.”
Flicka sagged in his arms. “I was hoping they were photoshopped.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I had to make sure. My father might have faked them somehow. I wouldn’t put it past him at all. But I’m not surprised. It’s just one more cut.”
“I looked for a marriage certificate on file, but I didn’t find one.”
She shook her head. “My father told me that there wasn’t one. It was never legal. Just religious.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not.” Flicka lifted her head. Tears swam on her lower eyelids. “I don’t like living a lie. I’m glad I know. Maybe it’s even for the best in the long run.”
He smiled down at her to sympathize. Finding out that your spouse has been deceiving you hurts, as he knew too well. “Anything, Durchlauchtig.”
“I know.” Her hand crept up his shoulder, and her finger stroked his neck. The touch wasn’t meant to be overtly sexual, just affectionate, but his skin grew goosebumps under her hand.
The dancing wedding guests around them swayed and talked, thundering and chattering over the waltz played by the string quartet in the dark ballroom.
A man’s scream rang out over the crowd, “What have you done to your hand?”
Dieter whirled Flicka behind him, shielding her with his arms stretched back like gates around her.
Flicka stayed close to his back, doing what she should in an emergency.
The center of the crowd was pulling back from around an old man, Georgie Johnson, and Alexandre Grimaldi.
In Dieter’s earpiece, his security forces checked in that they were monitoring the situation and had their weapons aimed at the problem area.
Alexandre jerked his hand out of the man’s grip. “Leave me alone.”
The man sprayed spittle as he shouted, “You don’t have the right to break your hand! You don’t have the right to run away and hide and take your gift from the world!”
Dieter whispered into his earpiece, “Are the wolf and lamb secured?”
“Affirmative,” Luca Wyss’s voice said. “Out the side door and monitoring the situation.”
Dieter glanced up. His Rogue Security forces were shadows on the balcony, their dark guns pointed at the center of the ballroom.
Another man’s voice said, “The assailant does not appear to be armed. Repeat: not armed. Might be a social situation.”
“I’m at two o’clock,” Dieter said. “I have the songbird. It’s too crowded down here. I need personnel to break a path.”
“On our way,” another man’s voice said.
Within a minute, Magnus Jensen and Aiden Grier were at his sides, stretching their arms into the crowd to break a path out of the mob to a door and the hallway outside.
Flicka followed meekly, letting them lead but keeping up with Dieter and his two Rogue Security operators.
In the hallway, Dieter couldn’t help himself. He wrapped his arms around Flicka, gathering even her arms into his embrace and shielding her.
Her slim form molded to his body, and she buried her face against his shoulder, clutching his lapels in her small fists.
He asked, “You’re all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “I hate it when that happens, especially in crowds.”
His heartbeat slowly returned to normal.
But Flicka didn’t unwind her arms from around his neck for a few more minutes, so he held her, breathing in the herbal mint from her hair and the faint rose scent of her perfume.
The End
Flicka von Hannover
Not our deal.
Flicka downed another hit of scotch as she waited for her husband in their suite.
The living room, where she sat on the couch, was done in pale blue and ivory, very French. The fabric under her legs and against her bare back was thick silk. Flicka wondered if it was durable, considering it was in a hotel, and then decided she didn’t care.
The whiskey was strong, dulling the bright fire of shock that had splashed over her skin.
She sipped the scotch again, trying to remember how many drinks she had had that night. Smoke and darkness covered her tongue, and fumes of wood trailed into her nose.
Liquid courage, she assured herself.
Maybe she was trying to get herself so drunk that she passed out, and then she wouldn’t have to do this. She’d already taken off the diamond necklace and earrings she’d been wearing, but her hair still wrapped the steel, platinum, and diamonds of the tiara. She’d have to unpin it later.
She checked her phone, but no new texts from Pierre had appeared. Her last text to him read: Can you come up for a few minutes? I have something I need to show you.
He had texted back: In just a few minutes. Talking to friends.
The printed-out pictures and birth certificates lay on the coffee table that stood before the couch. She set her tumbler on the glass top, leaving a wet ring where a few drops of scotch had rolled down the side.
She texted again, hoping to pique his interest rather than tip him off: You’ve really got to see these, and dropped her phone in her purse. It rattled on the flash drive in the bottom of the clutch.
A few minutes later, the card reader on the suite’s door whirred. The door opened, and Pierre walked in.
Quentin Sault and another Secret Service guy strode in behind him and took up residence along the wall.
Flicka had had security guys around her whole life. She didn’t even notice them half the time.
For just a moment, through her whiskey fog, Flicka saw her husband as other people saw him, how she used to see him. His dark hair and eyes were glamorous and dramatic, and he was spectacularly tall. The tuxedo he wore fit his lean, muscular body beautifully, clinging to his wide shoulders and long legs. His straight posture looked regal.
When he turned to her, when he smiled at seeing her sitting on the couch and cradling a glass of whiskey, he could have been seeing and greeting anyone. She had taken his natural good humor as affection, and she had been wrong.
No, looking back at when they had been dating, Pierre had been affectionate and sweet, carefully paying attention to her. It hadn’t been just his natural pleasantness that he gave everyone. He had seduced her, and Flicka had fallen for it.
Pierre smiled at her as he crossed the room. “What is it that can’t wait even an hour?”
The whiskey glass cooled Flicka’s hand where she gripped it. “Who’s Abigai Caillemotte?”
Pierre’s smile remained steady and reflected amusement in his dark eyes. “Just some woman I slept with.”
“She’s pretty.” Abigai Caillemotte was pretty. Her driver’s license picture had long, brown hair that curled at the ends. Her lively eyes exuded mischief, even in the government photo. She was two years younger than Pierre, eight years older than Flicka.
Pierre said, “I don’t sleep with ugly women.”
Flicka gestured to the official copies of the birth certificates strewn across the coffee table. She’d taken off her wedding rings, too. “You have four children with her.”
“Not at all. I had a short screw with her years ago. She must have become a crazed stalker and written my name on the documents.”
“You signed the birth certificates.”
Pierre stood on the other side of the coffee table, looking down at the documents. “She forged my signature.”
She nudged a birth certificate aside, revealing a photo of Pierre holding a baby. He wore a tremendous smile, and his eyes shimmered with tears. The timestamp on the pic was six months before, a few months before his and Flicka’s w
edding.
Flicka said, “Doesn’t look like she forged your signature.”
Pierre slid his hands into his pockets and regarded the documents on the table.
Flicka said, “There’s the hotel bill for the George V Hotel in her name, during our wedding. You paid with your credit card. She attended our wedding.”
“Flicka—” he said, his voice pitched low.
“And here’s the one for this very hotel, the Montreux Palace. You haven’t paid yet, but you put your card down for incidentals. She’s here. She’s here right now. Isn’t she?”
Pierre’s voice was perfectly even. “We have a mature, sophisticated relationship, Flicka. We agreed. We’re not bound by outdated morals. She’s just some woman I’m screwing.”
Flicka pushed the birth certificate of another one of their children aside. Pierre was dancing with Abigai Caillemotte, their hands clasped, and the gentle and exultant look in his dark eyes was utterly foreign. “This was at our wedding. She was at our reception, and you danced with her. You can see the orchestra in the background, and there’s the spiral staircase in the lobby of the Louvre. The timestamp is the date of our wedding.”
“This doesn’t concern you,” Pierre said. “We have an arrangement.”
“That’s why you didn’t come home on our wedding night, isn’t it? You were with her on our wedding night.”
“We agreed about boundaries. You shouldn’t be asking me this.”
“We have an arrangement about you screwing other women,” Flicka said, blinking so that she wouldn’t cry. Her eyes burned. “This is not just screwing another woman.”
“It’s just a casual screw.”
“No, it’s not,” Flicka said, swallowing hard because her throat kept closing up. “Don’t lie to me. You love this woman. You’ve been in love with her for years, and you have four children together.” She looked up at him. “What does Abigai think about you marrying me?”
Once Upon a Time: Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka Page 21
