At Midnight

by Blair Babylon

  “I can’t believe you were there. I can’t believe I didn’t see you.”

  No one looked at the security staff. He’d hidden from them for years by standing in the shadows along the walls.

  He lied, “I didn’t see you, either.”

  “And you, little Raphe, you were a bodyguard. I’ll bet you were a big, bad bodyguard, too,” she mocked him, grinning hard. She hadn’t let go of his arms. “Did they let you carry a gun?”

  He cracked up, and laughter rolled out of him. Trust Océane to make the last fifteen years a huge joke. He should have approached her first. “Yes, I carried a gun.”

  “But you’re just a baby! You’re a fetus!”

  He was laughing so hard that tears gathered in his eyes. Océane had always been like this. “I’ll have to tell you everything that happened, maybe over supper. Maybe over supper and beer.”

  “Oh, I can’t drink anymore, not until the teenagers are grown up. One of them caught me tipsy last year, and I haven’t heard the end of it yet. We’ll do it over coffee, a lot of coffee.”

  “I can’t believe you’re working at the bank,” he told her.

  “Well, yeah.” Her arms dropped to her lap. “Father convinced me.”

  “The Ilyins are practically running Geneva Trust.”

  Her lips twitched to the side. She had always made that face when she didn’t like something. “You noticed, huh?”

  He smiled at her, knowing that he looked like the mischievous sixteen-year-old who had entertained his older sister with his infractions, and leaned in. “Do you want to do something about that?”

  An hour later, Raphael was walking back to his office, smiling, when his Uncle Bastien touched his arm. “There’s been a problem at the house.”

  Racing Home

  Raphael Mirabaud

  Teatime.

  Raphael raced from the garage into the Mirabaud family house, bellowing, “Where are they?”

  His uncle Bast had already told him what had happened with the damned mercenary. Raphael wasn’t sure whether he should first make sure Flicka and Alina were all right or immediately find the Russian and rip out the man’s windpipe with his bare hands.

  He came around a corner from the garage wing into the main foyer of the house and shouted, “Flicka!” into the wide entertaining area. His deep voice bounced off the dark sage green walls and gold marble stairs leading to the upper floors.

  “Raphael, really. You don’t need to raise your voice,” his mother said, stepping down the stairs. “She’s in your suite. I made her some of my special tea.”

  Raphael bounded up the stairs two at a time. He growled, “Earl Grey isn’t going to solve a damn thing.”

  “It has gin in it, silly.”

  He paused. “You put gin in your tea?”

  “I had three daughters within four years, and then I had you, and the girls were teenagers when you were a toddler. Of course, I put gin in my tea.”

  That explained quite a bit of his childhood.

  Raphael sprinted up the stairs to the guest suite where he and the two girls he loved were imprisoned.

  He shoved the door out of his way and found Flicka, sitting on the couch with red nose and eyes, drinking the last bit of tea from an upended teacup.

  Alina was stacking blocks on the floor.

  Two of the ever-present Russian guards stood at attention beside the door. He was reaching for the closer one when Flicka said, “That’s not him. They told that guy to go home for the day.”

  He asked Flicka, “Are you all right?”

  Flicka poured more tea into her cup. “Sure. I mean, I’m about ready to damage this historical home by clawing my way out through the walls, but I’m fine.”

  The weak-looking tea she was pouring reached the brim of the cup.

  Flicka picked up the cup and drank.

  Raphael said, “She puts gin in the tea.”

  “Oh, I know she puts gin in the tea. That’s how I’ve been staying sane.”

  “Are you day-drinking with her?”

  “Heck, yeah.”

  He sat down beside her on the couch and poured himself a cup of tea.

  Flicka leaned against him.

  He wrapped his arm around her, cradling her against his side, and felt her sigh and snuggle close.

  At that, Raphael relaxed.

  Finally, he could comfort her by holding her in his arms again.

  A wisp of homicidal rage trickled through him, still present in case he ever saw Pierre Grimaldi again.

  Raphael sipped his tea, which was as strong as many martinis. “I’m working on some things at the bank.”

  “Good. Nice that you have a career.”

  He whispered into her hair. “Give me a few weeks.”

  “Where on Earth could we go that is safe from Pierre and his Secret Service and the Swiss banker mafia?”

  And a Russian bratva, but he didn’t tell her that. “I’ll have us out of here soon.”

  Flicka grumbled, “I’ll be an alcoholic from your mother’s tea soon.”

  He hugged her more closely to his side.

  She said, “Oh, who are we kidding? If I’m not already a lush from hanging out with my Le Rosey friends and Pierre, nothing’s going to convert me.”

  Raphael slid down the couch, slouching a little. Alina crawled up on his other side and laid her head on his chest.

  Deep contentment settled over him, and he held the two girls that he loved more than his own life and honor to his chest.

  He might have dozed for a few minutes.

  Afterward, Raphael did find the asshole who had grabbed Flicka, who had not gone home but was on duty outside the house in the back garden. Raphael informed him with the roughest barracks language he could muster that it would be inadvisable to so much as tap Flicka on the shoulder ever again.

  He might have had his forearm across the guy’s windpipe and had him shoved up against a brick wall, glaring down at the guy who thought it was a good idea to manhandle a woman.

  Raphael was positive, however, that the guard recognized his military training and understood that another mishap would not be tolerated.

  He left the guy with some sore ribs and rubbing this throat.

  Burner Phone

  Flicka von Hannover

  Bastien had said I could count on him.

  Flicka was downstairs in one of the parlors a few days later, playing with blocks with Alina after lunch. The walls of their guest suite had become too familiar, and Flicka at least needed to see some other walls within the house.

  Sophie was off somewhere shopping.

  Flicka had delicately suggested that she might like to see the shops of Geneva, too, as it had been at least a few months since she’d been downtown to shop for Wulfie’s wedding, but Flicka was evidently still under house arrest.

  Some noise happened near the front door, but Flicka couldn’t rouse herself to try to be seen by some delivery person who wouldn’t know who she was anyway.

  Another set of hulking-brute guards stood at the door to the foyer, anyway. They’d probably grab her, and then she’d have another unfortunate episode, as she thought of it.

  Princesses and queens don’t panic. In times of stress, princesses and queens were serene and efficient, not fluttery. They held the keys and the castle while the kings were off conquering, assuming that they were not at the head of their armies like Queen Elizabeth the First.

  Flicka was related to Elizabeth the First, though not directly, of course. Elizabeth probably had produced no children.

  Probably.

  However, Elizabeth’s grandfather, King Henry the Seventh, had arranged the marriage of his oldest daughter Margaret Tudor to King James the Fourth of Scotland. Their granddaughter had been Mary, Queen of Scots, who was a formidable queen and Flicka’s eleventh or twelfth great-grandmother through the English monarchs and Queen Victoria.

  Mary, Queen of Scots had conspired to murder her husband Henry Stewart, the Lord Darnley,
because their marriage was a bad one, and then she married the guy who had held the knife.

  Pierre should stop and consider who Flicka’s family was before he did stupid things. Her ancestral past was littered with dead spouses.

  Heck, Henry the Eighth was her however-many-greats uncle through the same Margaret Tudor, the one who executed two of his wives for the hell of it, and two more of his wives had “died” in his custody.

  Pierre should watch his damn back.

  Flicka sat on the floor with her back to the couch, stacking blocks with Alina, who clapped her hands because she loved playing with Flicka-mama on the floor.

  At least Alina was there. Flicka smiled at her green-eyed baby.

  Bastien Mirabaud strode into the parlor. “How are you?”

  Flicka gathered her feet under herself and pushed against the couch to stand up. “I’m fine. Yourself?”

  That was a lame thing to say. She felt like wet wool pressed all around her, dragging her down. Summoning decent conversation felt like too much effort.

  Bastien said, “Sit, sit,” and toppled onto the couch, his long arms spreading over the back of it. “I’m just here to check up on you after the other day.”

  “Oh, sure. I’m fine. Would you like tea?” She could handle of some Sophie’s special tea right about then.

  “Oh, I’m just here for a moment.”

  He was acting weird.

  Flicka went with it. “Okay, well, it’s always good to see you. Had any good Weizenbier lately?”

  His sideways glance at her held months of shame. “I can’t believe you were delivering my martinis and beer.”

  “I did a good job of it, though.”

  “You did,” he acknowledged, smiling more. “I didn’t recognize you.”

  “We’d never met in person, right?”

  “I’m not one for cotillions and balls. Valerian is. I think he scheduled important meetings that one of us had to attend for those dates, and I leaped at the opportunity to escape the pomp.”

  Flicka bit her lip. “You didn’t attend either of your daughters’ coming-outs.”

  “No, but I attended all their graduations and the vast majority of their hockey games, hundreds of them. I don’t do well in a room full of ball gowns and jewels. I want everyone to put their diamonds back in their safety deposit boxes, and I worry whether those baubles are properly insured. I lament the negative ROI of dresses and tuxes purchased for one event.”

  Flicka was chuckling as he finished his banker’s list. “My Shooting Star cotillions always turned a healthy profit for my charities. They had a return on investment that you could be proud of.”

  “Ah, but I worry about the opportunity costs. If you hadn’t thrown those balls but instead invested that money in nice, low-risk funds and then utilized your time in more advantageous ways—”

  “Like getting a job?”

  “One suitable for a princess, of course.”

  “So, not waiting tables. I must say I’m disappointed.” The banter lifted her spirits a bit.

  “Perhaps as an investment advisor.”

  “Oh, so you are trying to recruit me for Geneva Trust. I should have known you had an ulterior motive.”

  He laughed and turned on the couch. “We could use a bit more royal charm around Geneva Trust and fewer oblique threats, but I wasn’t being so self-serving. I’m just saying that you seemed to run the bar at the Silver Horseshoe with impressive efficiency. You should put that to use, someday.”

  “You’ve never told me why you were at the Monaco and the Silver Horseshoe in the first place,” she said.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Raphael told me you’d been looking for him.”

  Bastien scooted around on the cushions like sitting was uncomfortable for him. He even rose up on his arms as he was turning, and one of his hands slipped between the couch cushions while he fidgeted. “Raphael disappeared when he was seventeen. His father was desperate to find him and have him back. Friends saw the video where he proposed on the plane and recognized him.”

  Flicka fretted, “I knew that stunt was a bad idea.”

  “It drew a lot of attention to you both.”

  “Yeah, but we almost made it, if not for that.”

  “He used his passport. It was being tracked. We would have found him within another few days or so.”

  “So, it was because of me. I needed to travel but didn’t have my passport, and so we had to use the ones for Raphael and Gretchen.”

  Bastien frowned. “You don’t have your passport?”

  “I have nothing. I don’t have a driver’s license, a passport, or even my birth certificate.”

  Bastien stood as if the thought had made him jump backward. “That’s not optimal at all.”

  “It’s the way it is.”

  “You traveled on the bank’s plane on a fake passport? You gave a counterfeit passport to passport control when we came in?”

  Flicka shrugged. “Passport control didn’t board the plane in Geneva. Besides, it wasn’t really a fake. It just has someone else’s name on it.”

  “That’s absurd. We’ll have to rectify that as soon as you get your own passport returned to you. We can’t have the bank implicated in immigration irregularities.”

  Flicka laughed. “Bastien, they’re holding me here against my will. This is kidnapping, and they’re holding me hostage. Surely you’re not more concerned about paperwork than that.”

  Bastien shushed her and glanced at the Russian guards placidly standing by the exit to the foyer.

  Flicka said, “Oh, they know.”

  “Still, we’ll have to work on that at some point. I should leave now. It was nice seeing you, Ms. von Hannover, and I’m glad you’ve recovered from the other day.”

  He strode out, his long legs covering the thick rug and then the inlaid wood floor of the entryway.

  Flicka looked over at Alina, who was still stacking blocks. “I think that went well. Don’t you?”

  Alina nodded at her and went back to stacking blocks.

  Just as Flicka was ready to stand, she noticed a silver corner sticking up between the couch cushions where Bastien had been sitting. The silver edge enclosed a glass screen.

  Good Lord, he’d brought her a burner phone, and it was just a few feet away.

  The two Russian guards were standing at parade rest, their hands clasped in front of their tank-like bodies, watching her.

  Flicka spread her arms and pressed the phone deeper between the cushions as she slid off the couch to the floor, hiding it.

  She stacked blocks with Alina long enough that any normal person would surely tire of such a thing and finally said, “Come on, Alina. Let’s go to the kitchen for a snack.”

  Alina scooped her blocks into her little tray to take them with her.

  Flicka got to her knees and turned, pressing her hands on the couch cushions to shove herself to standing.

  Her fingers dove between the cushions and found the cool glass of the phone, and she slipped it and the cord wrapped around it into her pocket as she stood and turned back to Alina.

  The guards had already turned to go to the kitchen.

  Perfect.

  Flicka took Alina to the kitchen for cookies and then upstairs for a bit before the evening began.

  Upstairs, the bodyguards stationed themselves in the guest suite, but there were no women guards to escort her to the bathroom when needed.

  An oversight on their part.

  Discriminatory hiring practices weaken any organization. The Russian guards really should have tried harder to recruit women.

  The dilemma was that she wanted some people to know she was there so that she and Alina would be safer, but she didn’t want Pierre to know where she was so that he could harass her, kidnap her, or serve her court papers.

  Also, if she sent a mass text to the world, her millions of social media followers, and all the journalists’ phone numbers in her head, the reporters might f
ind and rescue her, but Raphael and Alina might be immediately killed.

  Raphael had told her about failing to find the mole in Wulfram’s organization, so as much as she wanted to hear her brother’s voice, she couldn’t call him.

  She had to walk a delicate line.

  In the bathroom, Flicka texted as quickly as she could, her fingertips flying over the screen.

  Text after text peeled off the screen over her phone and flew through the cellular network.

  That night, after some heavy petting in front of the bodyguards and a firm slam of the bedroom door, Flicka passed the phone to Raphael in silence, and he hugged her hard, whispering, “My darling little spy, when we get out of this, you are going to train the Rogue Security personnel on how a royal does black ops.”

  No Longer Invisible

  Flicka von Hannover

  I don’t know how Raphael’s plan was going,

  but my plan looked like it might have legs.

  The next day, Flicka had left the door to their suite standing open while she played on the floor with Alina, stacking little foam blocks in ever-more complex configurations, so she heard the front doors slam and a woman’s voice yell, “Friederike Augusta von Hannover, get your butt downstairs right now!”

  That was not Sophie’s voice. Surely the housekeepers hadn’t gotten that casual yet. But no other women were supposed to know she was there.

  Flicka ran out of the suite, slamming her stomach against the railing to look over the entryway. “Yes? I’m here! I’m Friederike von Hannover and I’m here!”

  A small group of women turned their faces up to where Flicka was standing. Sunlight streamed in the windows tiling the front of the house, brightening their pale, northern European skin to glowing alabaster.

  One of the women in front, a slight, young woman wearing a black suit, stepped forward. Sunlight glared off her chunky glasses, making silver squares over her eyes. “Flicka! I can’t believe you’re in Geneva, staying at my aunt and uncle’s house, and you didn’t even call me! I’m working at the UN directly across the lake. You could have taken a boat from the moorings outside and sailed across the lake in five minutes to see me. But you didn’t, you slacker!”