At Midnight (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 4)

by Blair Babylon

  “We got word of it. After that, it was easy to find out where your ticket went. You even used your real name, for God’s sake.”

  Raphael sipped the whiskey, which was smooth and nearly sweet. Flicka probably could have identified it. He suspected scotch from the smoke in the aroma and on his tongue. “It was an emergency. I had to get Flicka out of Europe and to Nevada.”

  “I can’t believe you proposed marriage to Friederike von Hannover,” Bastien said, looking over his glass at Raphael. His dusky blue eyes narrowed with his smile.

  “I meant it,” Raphael said. “I’m not sure she meant it when she said yes.”

  “So are you going to marry her?”

  “Things are a little up in the air right now, like whether any of us, including Alina, will survive the week.”

  Bastien flinched and stared into his drink. “That’s up to Valerian.”

  “The guards must have informed Piotr Ilyin that he got us back,” Raphael prodded him.

  “I have to assume they did. There are Russian guards everywhere. They’re glaring at me when I go take a piss. They’re our largest client. They’re our predominant client. Piotr seemed to know everything about Geneva Trust even before we do.”

  “I don’t like that we do so much business with the Ilyin organization.”

  Bastien shrugged. “That’s also Valerian’s decision.”

  Raphael set his glass on the coffee table between them. “What if it wasn’t his decision?”

  Bastien didn’t even look up at him. “It is his decision.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  “What are you going to do, kick the Ilyin Bratva out of the bank?”

  Raphael was disconcerted that he was so transparent, but he was seeking Bastien’s support. “Yes. That’s exactly the plan.”

  “You were gone, Raphael. You left. You can’t sweep in here and take over by a shareholders’ vote. You need to look at the bank’s finances. Without the Ilyins’ money, we’re insolvent. Instantly insolvent. The bank would collapse without them. Our only option would be to sell our assets and liabilities to another institution to recoup what we could.”

  Raphael frowned. “Then we’ll divest them slowly as we take on other customers. We’ve always had more inquiries than we could handle.”

  “Not anymore, not after we took damage from the authorities. You can’t divest them. The last time we tried, they threatened our families. They aren’t screwing around. They’re the Russian mob, and we’re a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ilyin Bratva, now.”

  Raphael’s heart sank. “I’ll figure out a way to recapitalize us.”

  “You’ve been a personal bodyguard for a decade and a half, Raphael. You don’t know anything about banking. You didn’t even take a degree at university.”

  This was why Raphael was asking questions and not supplying information: he had suspected that his father and family didn’t know much, if anything, about Dieter Schwarz.

  They didn’t realize the training he’d received during his military years.

  They didn’t know about his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in London.

  They didn’t know about Rogue Security.

  Raphael had been a professional gambler for months, and he knew how to hide the fact that he had pocket aces.

  “Yes,” he said, “you’re right, Uncle Bast, but I learned a great deal by listening to Wulfram von Hannover.”

  “How to throw your body to take a bullet for him? That’ll come in handy when you need to apologize to Piotr Ilyin and beg for your life, as well as Flicka’s and Alina’s.”

  “It’s where I learned leadership and loyalty.”

  “Those are pretty words.”

  “It’s where I learned how to stage a coup.”

  “Fascinating. Are you planning to stage a coup and install military junta in the bank?”

  “Yes, and I need your help.”

  “You will fail spectacularly, and you might get us all killed.”

  “That’s the risk when you stage a coup.”

  “Nerves of steel, when you’re discussing it over day-drinking.”

  “I need your support, Uncle Bast. I want to make this bank noble again. I want to kick out the criminals and return us to being an ethical, moral institution. Geneva Trust should be a guardian of the Alps, not a cancer in them.”

  “I tried that, Raphael. Valerian sits in the large office, and I run some of the commercial accounts.”

  “But this time, you’ll have me. This time, we’ll win.”

  Bastien was watching him closely. “When you say it like that, I almost believe you could do it.”

  “I can. I have resources. I’ll rebuild Geneva Trust to be a shining example of what Swiss banks should be. We can be proud of what we do. We won’t be criminals anymore.”

  Bastien slid the rest of his drink down his throat. “If you have enough votes to kick Valerian off the board, I’ll support you, but not until I’m sure you aren’t going to get us all killed.”

  “I’m waging war for my life, and for my daughter’s, and for my future wife’s.”

  Bastien set his glass on the table. “I suppose you do have significant motivation to see this through. Do you think you’re going to marry her?”

  “I know I will. I’ll risk everything to save her and Alina, and then I’ll make her mine.”

  “She has a habit of divorce.”

  “She had excellent cause. I would’ve made her a widow. Just a small opening is all it would have taken.”

  Bastien sighed. “I can see you doing that.”

  “She and Alina are my whole world. I can’t let anything happen to them.”

  Bastien nodded. “I think I’ll send my wife and daughters on holiday for a month or so until the dust settles, if they will go. They’re all as stubborn as they are well-read.”

  “One more thing—”

  “Oh, God. What?”

  “My father is planning a meeting with me and Piotr Ilyin, isn’t he?”

  “He’s made that clear to everyone.”

  “I don’t understand why.”

  “He has created a win-win situation. If Piotr Ilyin accepts you back into the organization, Valerian looks like a genius for bringing back his favorite lieutenant. If Piotr kills you, Valerian chose loyalty to him over his own son. Either way, Valerian wins.”

  “Unless I take the bank away from him.”

  “He didn’t count on that. He doesn’t realize how convincing you’ve become.”

  “And one more thing—”

  “Jesus Christ, Raphael.”

  “Alina is my heart, walking around outside my body. I can’t believe my father is planning to turn his son over to a man who will probably murder him.”

  Bastien’s gray eyebrows flickered, a twitch of unease. “From the time your father and I were children, I’ve always known that Valerian was different than other people, certainly different than myself. When I was at university, I studied psychology and learned what a psychopath was, and then I understood. I always assumed that was where you got it.”

  Park

  Flicka von Hannover

  The first day at the park.

  Flicka sat on a cold park bench, wearing a few layers against the late November chill. Past Lake Geneva and on the horizon, the alpine peaks of Mont Salève, which was actually across the border in France, and Mont Blanc on the French-Italian border jutted into the blue sky.

  Snow powdered both, and Flicka wondered if they might be allowed to ski at some point. Alina was getting close to two years old. She could ski with one of them holding onto a hula hoop. Learning to ski late had always hindered Flicka’s winter sports.

  Alina ran right up to a group of little girls and chattered at them.

  They stared at her because she had spoken English.

  Flicka started to walk over to the group of small children to translate.

  Alina spoke to them in Alemannic German, and most of the kids’ blank star
es didn’t change.

  One of the little boys said something back, his smile widening.

  Flicka reached them and translated Alina’s baby babbles into French baby babbles, and the children agreed on how to play and ran off to a set of steps and ramps to clamber on.

  Another mother walked over to Flicka and said in French, “She’s cute, your little one. What does she speak?”

  “English and Alemannic. We lived in the States.”

  “She’ll pick up French quickly.”

  “Oh, yes. They always do.”

  In her peripheral vision, three of the Russian guards approached her. More of them ringed the small playground, not succeeding at all in being unobtrusive.

  The other parents stared at the burly men standing guard around them. A few mothers had been walking toward the playground, seen the massive brutes, and changed direction to the soccer field.

  One of the bodyguards said to Flicka in Russian-accented French, “Madame, return please.”

  The guards didn’t know that she spoke perfectly fluent Russian, and she wasn’t going to tell them just in case they might discuss things in front of her, thinking that she wouldn’t understand them.

  Flicka rolled her eyes and followed them back to the sunny bench where Sophie also sat to watch Alina play.

  Sophie asked, “What did you talk about with the woman?”

  “That Alina doesn’t speak French,” Flicka said.

  “Nothing else?”

  “What would I have had time to say?”

  “I’m not sure this was a good idea,” Sophie mused. “If Alina needs fresh air, we can build a gym on the east lawn.”

  “She needs other kids to play with,” Flicka said. “It’s unnatural to coop her up in a house with only me and you. She’ll turn into an old lady before she’s five.”

  Sophie laughed. “Just what are you implying?” But she meant it with good humor.

  “I’m saying she needs friends,” Flicka said, frustrated. “She needs to go out and see friends.”

  The guards hadn’t given her an inch to escape, damn it. They were well-trained.

  If they had been Monegasque Secret Service, Flicka would have grabbed Alina, slipped past them, and been halfway to Germany before they’d noticed she was gone.

  She watched them the whole time they were at the park, but they didn’t drop their vigilance at all.

  Flicka needed to find another way out.

  Message

  Flicka von Hannover

  What Pierre didn’t say

  was more important

  than what he did.

  Alina was down for her morning nap, so Flicka was flipping through the television channels on the TV in the guest suite, looking for news, any news.

  Damn, she missed her phone. If she had a phone, she could have gotten out of this weird guest-hostage-kidnapping thing in an hour.

  Seriously, with the phone numbers in her head, she could have mounted an assault on a small country or staged an A-list celebrity ball in the front yard and just walked out under the cameras.

  Except she didn’t have a damn phone.

  Or a tablet.

  Or a computer.

  Or even a text-based e-reader.

  And thus, she was mad as hell and terrified and bored out of her mind.

  At least she had Alina for company.

  Raphael’s mother Sophie had offered to find her a nanny, but Flicka needed somebody to talk to. Alina might not be up for a philosophical debate, but she was fun to play with.

  Plus, with Alina here, Sophie stopped by Flicka’s beautifully decorated prison cell several times a day to deliver necessities and clothes, and she usually stayed to hang out and talk. It was beginning to be a joke that the housekeepers should follow her in with a tea tray because it was going to be called for eventually.

  Dieter and the other Welfenlegion had warned Flicka her whole life about how horrible it would be if she were kidnapped, but she’d pictured fewer vases in niches and less velvet upholstery in her dungeon. The food that was at the formal suppers and delivered to the room was really good, too.

  As hostage situations went, this didn’t suck.

  A knock rattled on the suite’s door.

  Flicka pushed herself off the couch to go over and unlock it. Raphael locked it on his way out every day, and Flicka hadn’t had a chance to flip the latches back to unlocked.

  On the other side of the door, Sophie stood, clutching a piece of paper. She was as perfectly put together as ever in caramel slacks and a silk blouse, her makeup, flawless. Flicka did not doubt that if she fell down the stairs at three in the morning and Sophie came down to see what the ruckus was, she would have her lipstick and earrings on.

  “Hi, honey,” Flicka said, standing back to let Sophie in. “Alina’s down for her nap. What’s up?”

  Sophie stood outside the door, fidgeting with the paper, and it rattled in her hands. “Valerian doesn’t want to show this to you, but I thought you needed to know what’s going on. To be clear, I want you to throw this horrible thing in the bin right away.”

  Flicka kind of wanted to slam the door in Sophie’s face and simultaneously to snatch the paper out of her hands.

  Horrible, horrible thoughts assailed her, like maybe Dieter was dead somewhere, and that was a picture of his mutilated corpse.

  She kept her voice light and serene. “Is Raphael all right?”

  Sophie’s eyebrows dipped as much as they could. “Well, yes. Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t he be?”

  “Well, the picture, or whatever it is—”

  “Oh, no. Raphael is perfectly healthy as far as I know and probably grumbling at the tedium of bank business and drinking too much coffee. He was always more active than his sisters, but little boys are. I keep telling him he needs to switch to tea or chocolate.”

  Flicka asked, “Wulfram and Reagan? Are they okay? Is it from the news?”

  “They’re also fine, again as far as I know. This is not bad news of someone. This is—well, you should look at it.”

  Sophie held the paper out to Flicka. The paper shivered like Sophie’s hand was trembling.

  Flicka took it from her, and the paper continued to rattle.

  Black typing covered it, so it wasn’t a picture or something.

  Flicka rotated the sheet in her hands.

  At the top, a block of printing looked like email addresses.

  Her eyes locked on something familiar.

  The email address that the message had been sent to was her own. “Did you guys break into my email account?”

  Sophie said, “Raphael gave us the password to monitor the account in case there was something important. Valerian thought this didn’t rise to that level, but he brought it to me for a second opinion. I thought you needed to see it.”

  Dammit, she’d been hoping if someone left a phone or a computer unattended, she might be able to get into her email account and shoot out a mass email that she was being detained, but they were watching it. “Does Valerian know you’re giving this to me?”

  “He doesn’t need to know everything.”

  “Right.”

  She looked at whom the email was from and nearly dropped the damn paper.

  Pierre Monaco.

  The email was from His Serene Highness Pierre Grimaldi, her very ex-husband, the heir presumptive to the princely throne of Monaco.

  But the email wasn’t from Pierre’s HSH account with his real name on it. He’d sent the message from his secret, private account, which no one kept official records of.

  Flicka almost laughed because this email, this one right here in her hand, was the very first time Pierre had ever emailed her from his secret account.

  All their correspondence while they’d been friends, dating, and married had been through his official account and thus subject to official record-keeping regulations. Someday, every one of his sweet but not sexy emails to her and her replies would be publicly available, though it would be some
years after they were both dead.

  She’d only discovered the Pierre Monaco account when she’d been staying with her brother Wulfram and his wife, Rae, to keep her company while she was on bedrest due to some pregnancy complications. Wulfie had left his phone lying on a nightstand when he’d popped out of the bedroom. Flicka had walked by and glanced at an email open on the screen, something about an old business deal between the two of them that Wulfie was less than satisfied with, and so Wulfie would not be investing in any more of Pierre’s dealings.

  Flicka hadn’t heard anything at all about the two of them having a business deal together, so she’d stopped and looked at it more closely, and that’s when she’d noticed the odd email address Pierre had been corresponding from: Pierre Monaco.

  Later, Flicka had discovered Pierre had used this secret account to communicate with his other wife, Abigai Caillemotte.

  And now he was writing to Flicka from it.

  Secretly.

  Wow, nothing this guy did made her any less pissed off at him.

  She almost called the housekeepers to start a fire in the fireplace so she could burn the stupid email without even reading it.

  A candle would do.

  Or a match.

  Or maybe Flicka could set the paper on fire with lasers from her eyes if she hated it hard enough.

  She took a deep breath and read what her philandering husband and his wandering shlong wanted her to know.

  My Dearest Flicka,

  If the fire had been blazing in the fireplace, it would have all been over with, right there. She would have tossed the paper in without another thought.

  My Dearest Flicka, indeed.

  You don’t treat someone who is Dearest the way Pierre had treated Flicka. You don’t call someone Dearest when you’re in love with and married to someone else. You don’t rape and beat someone who is Dearest to you.

  His hands and his fists rose in her mind.

  She could not find any reason why she should read his detestable email, but she continued. Maybe she wanted some more reasons to hate him.

  She looked at the email’s header again.