At Midnight

by Blair Babylon

  Océane would second the motions. Océane held ten percent of the voting stock, so she was his pocket aces. He’d been surprised that she held so much voting stock, but it made sense. She’d been the one to come back into the fold after Raphael had bolted. There would have been rewards.

  His uncle Bastien sat at Valerian’s right hand. Raphael thought he could count on Bastien’s support. Bastien had promised Flicka that he would vote for Raphael.

  Valerian Mirabaud held twenty percent of the voting stock because he was the president. It would take an uprising to unseat him, and Raphael was counting on just that.

  Raphael would need over half of everyone else’s support to reach fifty-one percent and thus win the battle. He had no voting stock of his own to throw into the fray. His leaving when he was seventeen had cemented that.

  His older sister Ambre Mirabaud-Messerli sat two seats down. She’d smiled at him when they’d been walking in, but he wasn’t sure if she knew what was going to happen. Océane had told him that Ambre was with them at least in theory, but he hadn’t talked to her directly. He hadn’t looked into her pale gray eyes and asked her if he could count on her to defy their father and dangerous Russian mobsters, endangering herself and her family.

  Raphael’s other cousins and relatives sat around the table, speaking when they had something to contribute. Most of them held two to five percent of the voting stock. Either Raphael, Bastien, or Océane had talked to all of them. They’d conferred and calculated their odds.

  If they were wrong about more than a few of them, he was lost.

  The math added up, though. Valerian’s twenty percent essentially canceled out Oceane’s ten percent and Bastien’s ten percent.

  Therefore, Raphael needed to get the votes of more than half of the stocks split between the other shareholders who were present.

  That quorum rule was a stroke of luck for Raphael. Because of that, he needed to get fifty-one percent of the voting shares in the room, not over half of all the shares that existed. If it had been the other way around, absent shares would have effectively counted for Valerian.

  Looking around the room discomforted Raphael. Many of the people who were making eye contact with him were some of the lower-ranking family members whose stock portfolios would be among the smaller portions.

  The vote was going to be close, but when he did the math, Raphael thought he would win by about two percent.

  Raphael bided his time, waiting as his father and the rest of the committee worked their way down the agenda.

  He calculated and recalculated his odds of success.

  Even if Raphael were wrong about two people, he could still win this, depending on who they were. Many of the other members of his family had expressed concerns over the years about the direction of the bank, in that it was sinking further into crime and corruption rather than resting on the bedrock of the high-quality banking services upon which Raphael’s great-grandfather had built Geneva Trust.

  When Raphael had approached his cousin Ory, sidling into her office at the bank, his tactic had been to ask her, “Can you imagine what Grandfather Mirabaud would say if he could see how much of our business is tied up with organized crime syndicates?”

  Ory had shifted in her seat, uncomfortable, and told him in a low monotone, “I imagine Grandfather is spinning in his grave every night. What we did in the past was bad enough, taking advantage of laws that were in effect, but actively financing crime is worse.”

  When Raphael looked around the room and took the measure of his many cousins and other relatives on the governing board, he read their body language as if he were back at the Golden Horseshoe Casino, playing poker.

  The ones who knew that the coup was about to be staged sat a little straighter, moved a little more stiffly, and glanced down at their agenda more often than they would have otherwise. They had a secret. It wasn’t a good secret. They were steeling themselves for battle.

  They would probably come in on his side.

  Those who didn’t know—his father Valerian, a few of Valerian’s toadies, and some of the older members of the board—were behaving more normally. Raphael had been very careful about whom he told, lest Valerian circumvent Raphael’s plan.

  Raphael had been sure that Ory was in his corner, but she wasn’t looking at him now. He didn’t like her body language. Her slouched posture reeked of low cards and getting ready to fold.

  The meeting droned on. Raphael contributed numbers to a conversation about future oil prices and international diplomacy, and his allies seemed satisfied with them.

  Good. He needed to prove that he could lead. No one knew about his MBA from the London Business School, so he needed to show that he understood business without revealing that.

  The meeting crawled down the agenda.

  Raphael ticked off the second-to-last item as the discussion ended.

  Showtime.

  He shuffled the papers under his agenda to bring his notes to the top. He scooted his chair back, preparing to stand.

  The door at the end of the room opened.

  Six people walked in, all wearing suits, and took their places in the empty chairs at the end of the table, shaking hands with others who stood and leaned toward them.

  Raphael recognized them. They were his aunts and uncles and third cousins, all of them from the previous generation and exceedingly conservative in their views of how the bank should be run. Océane had updated Raphael on their positions from a list, and none of them were good for him.

  Valerian raised his hand and greeted them. “Thank you for coming, Kateline, Tours, and everyone. You’re just in time, I think.”

  Valerian turned his head, his silver hair shining in the sunlight from the skylight above the table, and asked, “Are there any other motions to be made at this meeting?”

  He stared directly at Raphael, his direct gaze and prim smile daring Raphael to put forth his vote of no-confidence.

  With that, Raphael knew that he didn’t have the votes.

  He adjusted his chair closer to the table and capped his pen, looking bored and glancing at the door like he had better places to go and people to see.

  Valerian said, “I thought not. Let’s adjourn for coffee and pastries, shall we?”

  Afterward, Raphael huddled in Bastien’s office with him and Océane.

  “We’ll need to try some other way,” Bastien said. “Perhaps an all-member meeting or proxy vote.”

  “It’s always the old people who don’t attend the meetings,” Océane said. “If anything, we should call an emergency meeting and come in right at the fifteen members to declare a quorum, fifteen people whom we want there and none of the older guys.”

  “We should rethink this,” Raphael said. “We need to plan this operation so that either Outcome A is a winner or Outcome B is a winner. This was incredibly risky, and he almost took us out. If he’d known you two were in on it, he would’ve stripped you of your stock to prevent it from happening.”

  Bastien nodded. “That’s how I got my extra five percent. Ulrich tried to take over just after you left, and Valerian won. He always wins.”

  “No,” Raphael said. “He’s always won in the past. We’ll figure out a way to stop this.”

  If taking over the bank wasn’t going to work, Raphael would have to consider other options.

  Whispers, Again

  Flicka von Hannover

  Really,

  it was just in case there were microphones

  hidden in the bedroom.

  Really.

  Warm water poured over Flicka’s bare skin.

  Her feet slid on the porcelain under her toes, but Raphael’s arm around her back held her up. The tile scraped her, but she didn’t care. His breath on her neck was warmer than the shower water as they moved together, one slow pulse at a time.

  Flicka whispered, “If there are microphones, surely they won’t be able to hear us in here.”

  Raphael ran his lips up her neck to her ea
r and stepped forward, sliding deeper inside her. “I like the way you think.”

  She fought to her keep her mind about her, to tell him what she needed to, but she just wanted to feel him.

  His slippery body, smooth skin rippled with muscle, rubbed against hers. A trail of slick hair conditioner that smelled like rosemary created a smooth river down his round pec and over the cobblestones of his abs. Water beaded on his skin down to the tan line low on his hips from the swimming lessons in the hot Vegas sun. She held herself up with her paler arms over his shoulders, stroking the wet satin of his skin under her palms. “Raphael—”

  He growled, “Say my name again.”

  “Raphael, I need to tell you something.”

  “Say it slowly,” he said, wrapping her thigh around his tight waist and grinding harder into her.

  Her body was tightening, and her head floated as he moved, his hips curling under her with muscular, lithe strokes.

  “Pierre got a judge in Monaco to void the divorce, to say I’m still married to him.”

  “Didn’t know Monaco was big enough to have a court.”

  “Of course, it does, and Pierre can tell them what to do in cases like this.”

  He lifted her other leg and held her ass in his hands, pressing her back against the rough tile as she sank down on him. “Can I kill him yet?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “You divorced him. When I get us out of here, we’ll go to the States. That divorce is valid in the States. Then I’ll marry you, and if he so much as sends you an email, I will cut his throat.” He pumped up into her, and she watched him through slitted eyes with her head thrown back. His jaw bulged where he was clenching his teeth, and his massive chest expanded with each labored breath. “I will never let him touch you again. You’re mine, now. Mine. Every bit of you is mine to taste,” he leaned forward and bit her neck, crushing her up against the tile, “to hold,” his fingers tightened on her ass, “and to take.”

  He drove into her, bucking his hips and making her forget all about Pierre and his stupid court decision, until the hot, wet world turned white and she cried out.

  As she panted, hanging onto his shoulder and breathing in the warm, soapy smell of Raphael, he whispered in her ear, “I have a meeting tomorrow night. If I’m not home by two o’clock in the morning or if you hear anything downstairs at any time, fight your way out. Go through my mother’s bedroom, off the balcony. Don’t take Alina. I don’t think they’ll hurt her. Wulfram will come for her with lawyers, but get out, and run.”

  Flicka nodded, though she knew she wouldn’t leave Alina.

  Piotr Ilyin

  Raphael Mirabaud

  He knew everything.

  Raphael and Valerian met Piotr Ilyin in a private room in a restaurant.

  The Russian minders had flanked Raphael all day, every day, so he hadn’t been able to find or procure anything like a weapon. Unarmed and surrounded, he was walking into a locked-room meeting with an old enemy who had stated he would like nothing less than Raphael’s cold body lying at his feet.

  He straightened.

  These might be his last few moments. He wasn’t going to spend them sniveling and crawling.

  When Piotr had last seen Raphael, he’d been a seventeen-year-old boy who’d been half in love with death.

  Now, he had everything to live for.

  At night, Raphael’s head barely touched the pillow before Flicka’s hand crawled through the sheets to him. He didn’t have to pretend to be asleep anymore. He reached for her, cradled her, and felt her warmth seep into his soul. He could wrap his arms around her and whisper to her, feeling her soft skin and the silk of her hair in his hands.

  And Alina, his baby, his heart. She was talking more every day, beginning to hold real conversations with French words salted into her sentences, and was so earnest about everything. Flicka had managed to keep taking her to the park to be with other kids, and when he came home and saw the two of them playing on the floor together, he couldn’t imagine anything closer to Heaven.

  He’d kissed them both good-bye when he’d left, having gone back to the house to shower and change before supper.

  He prayed it wasn’t for the last time.

  When he’d told Flicka not to take Alina if she had to run, it was because if Flicka was alone, she might stand a chance to survive. If she had Alina with her, the chance of both of them escaping dropped to cold, absolute zero.

  He knew he’d told Flicka to save herself.

  He just hoped she didn’t figure it out because he suspected she wouldn’t do it.

  His body felt like he was composed of nothing but bitter smoke.

  Heavy footsteps fell around him as they walked through the dim hallways to the private room at the back of the restaurant.

  One of the restaurant staff opened the door at the end of the hallway as they approached. She scooted out of the way as they neared the rectangle of light.

  Inside, one man was seated at a round table set with four settings. More bodyguards stood against the walls.

  Raphael would have instantly recognized Piotr Ilyin in a crowd or a line-up.

  Piotr Ilyin, now the head of the Ilyin Bratva, was a slim, tall man, obviously athletic. His black hair had gained a bit of ash smudged at the temples, but his blue eyes were as lively as ever. He was around forty now, when a man’s youthful face becomes rugged and mature. Laugh lines radiated from his eyes. He must have shaved a second time that day, too, because he and Raphael had used to compare their hearty five o’clock shadows. Raphael’s had been dark gold and less visible than Piotr’s black scruff, but they both grew brooms on their chins.

  Piotr Ilyin smiled and stood when Raphael entered the room ahead of Valerian, extending his hand over the table. “Ah, so this is our mystery man who managed the Savona shipment. I should have known that your prodigal son had returned, Valerian. It’s been, what ten years? Twelve?”

  As always, his accent was a crisp British affect with essentially no Russian growl remaining at all.

  Raphael shook Piotr’s warm, dry palm. “Almost fifteen years.”

  “Shocking, where the time has gone. We were so young, then. So young, so strong, and with so much hair.” He touched his dark hairline, which Raphael didn’t think had receded in the slightest.

  “You look like you haven’t aged a day,” Raphael said. “Must be all that clean living.”

  Piotr laughed. “More like well-preserved because I am constantly, thoroughly pickled. Wine?” He held up a blue bottle with the cork crammed back in at a rakish angle.

  “Please,” Raphael said, sitting at Piotr’s right hand. His father sat across from him.

  Raphael didn’t mistake Piotr’s affable demeanor as meaning he was safe. It was quite possible that they might have a lovely supper, discuss old friends and family, affirm Raphael’s place in Piotr’s organization as one of his favored captains, and Piotr might shake his hand heartily or embrace him. Then, as soon as Raphael and Valerian walked through the door, while finishing his dessert, Piotr Ilyin might offhandedly tell his men to put a bullet in the back of Raphael’s head, and to do the same to Valerian, Flicka, and Alina to send a message about Piotr Ilyin’s unwillingness to forgive treason.

  But Piotr had no proof that Raphael had committed treason, and that was why Raphael was still alive.

  Raphael turned on what little charm he remembered from his days in the high castles when he lived among the princes and kings. Piotr Ilyin wouldn’t be amused by the easy sarcasm and black humor Raphael had developed with Wulfram and the Welfenlegion.

  Though he didn’t blink or allow a change in his expression for even an instant, sometimes when he had been with the Welfenlegion, he had been struck at how far he had come, though some would say how far he had fallen. He’d gone from being the heir to a powerful financial family with contacts among the world’s elite to being a ruffian for hire, but his soul had been cleaner for it.

  Now, those e
asy days of wagering and camaraderie with Wulfram and the guys—Friedhelm Vonlanthen, Luca Wyss, Julien Bodilsen, and the dozens of others—seemed like another lifetime that had happened to someone else.

  During supper, Piotr and Raphael discussed world politics, specifically the underhanded influence of unscrupulous states.

  “Their fatal flaw wasn’t that they couldn’t imagine it,” Piotr said, “because they indulged in provokatsiya, kompromat, and dezinformatsiya whenever they felt it was necessary. They knew it happened. They knew it was easy. It’s that they couldn’t fathom someone else doing it to them. They were arrogant, believing that no one would come after them, but the bears were always there, of course. The bears created an elegant campaign, sowing discord for the sake of chaos, salting the earth with dragon’s teeth, and the result is that the country is falling apart. It’s a beautiful thing to behold, and of course, we are profiting from it no matter what they do. In the end, it’s all about money.”

  Raphael was leaning back in his chair, drinking his wine as if he were entirely at ease. A few pieces of steak and potato remained on his plate. “It always is about the money, isn’t it?”

  Piotr threw him a sharp look. “Sometimes it’s about loyalty. Sometimes, it is about tradition.”

  So that is how it would begin.

  Raphael didn’t think that mere flattery would do a damn thing because Piotr was smarter than that. Stupid people could be flattered into doing things. Unroll a red carpet or have a bunch of children sing their praises, and you can get anything you want out of them. It’s easy.

  But Piotr Ilyin, never. He lived a calm life with his wife and children, Raphael had heard, holding the reins of the crime syndicate with quiet hands.

  Raphael had to convince him that he was blameless in the police raids that had nearly broken the Ilyin Bratva fifteen years ago.