The center of the warehouse was set up to be a free-fire zone to ensure no other bratva or crime organization stole the valuable merchandise standing near the van. Most human traffickers are slavers, selling women for prostitution or men as labor slaves. The benefit there was that the slaves could be sold over and over again and were thus a valuable commodity that continued to generate revenue.
These girls were meant to be sold once, an unusual arrangement, and thus their prices were hundreds of times the amount usually garnered for a human being.
Each one was very valuable.
This operation was at high risk of being attacked.
The men had stood back from the van in case it had already been compromised, but with the girls unloaded, it was unlikely that the bus was a threat.
The girls huddled together as the men approached, obviously terrified.
Any time now, Raphael thought. Any damn time.
Raphael hated himself with a vehement, raging anger that he did not allow to break the thin ice of his expression.
He hated Piotr Ilyin and the entire Ilyin Bratva.
Piotr Ilyin stood behind Raphael with a small cadre of men, watching the process unfold. He wasn’t holding a rifle, though Raphael wouldn’t venture that he was unarmed. A heavy, showy weapon wasn’t his style.
The few men standing around him looked more alert than the line who were advancing on the bus. Those guys looked around too much, their heads swiveling on their necks as they peered around the edges of their coat hoods or chinned their mufflers out of the way. Raphael didn’t like how jumpy they were.
The bay doors creaked again as they were pulled closer together, a sharp whine above the crunching of footsteps on ice and gravel.
Raphael heard more footsteps behind him, too many footsteps, all at once.
Piotr’s entourage wouldn’t be walking around the warehouse. No one else should be back there.
Raphael turned halfway and looked back.
Three stories of offices clustered in the back of the warehouse. The dark windows were black squares on the back wall. A hallway from the back door led through the administration space to the warehouse floor.
Four men had walked into the warehouse from that hallway.
Flicka and Alina stood in the center of the crowd of men, holding hands.
Alina’s baby eyes were huge as she looked around, and she moved closer to Flicka’s leg.
Flicka’s eyes were slitted in anger. She picked Alina up and held her tightly against her chest, trying to comfort her or preparing to shield her. Alina’s hand closed around the gold and black brooch Flicka wore pinned to her blouse, his old alpine mountaineering pin.
There could be only one reason why they had been brought here, which meant that neither the Geneva police nor the Rogues had rescued them.
Damn it. Even Raphael’s redundant rescue operations hadn’t been enough. The Rogues and the police should have been standing over them, arguing over who got to save them, but it hadn’t been enough.
Raphael’s hand flew across his chest to where his gun should have been under his other armpit, but his father’s guards had stripped him of all his weapons in Las Vegas and frisked him after the Rotterdam operation. He didn’t even have a damned ballpoint pen.
Hands grabbed Raphael. He blocked arms and slapped them away, fighting a vicious but doomed melee for mere seconds before guns were pointed at his head, and at Flicka’s head, and at Alina’s.
And so he stopped fighting.
Like they knew he would.
Raphael raised his arms and laced his fingers behind his head.
Someone kicked him in the spine, a bright spike of pain from his skull to his legs.
He fell to his knees.
Piotr Ilyin’s bodyguards moved en masse with Piotr as he walked over to Raphael. Piotr would never shout across a warehouse.
Raphael waited, watching carefully for any sign that either Rogue Security or the police had arrived, but he saw nothing.
Piotr stopped in front of him and leaned down slightly. “It seems you have many names, don’t you?”
“I’m just Raphael Mirabaud now. Dieter Schwarz was a pipe dream.”
“But you have another name, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“It would have been difficult, even fifteen years ago, to change your identity so completely, obtain a passport, and even enlist in the Swiss military without proper, registered documents.”
“The dark web is a mysterious place, and you can buy anything you want there, even fifteen years ago, if you knew where to look.” Raphael jerked his head toward the group of fifteen young girls standing beside the van. “Anything.”
The creaks of the bay doors died away as the men wrestling them stopped and stepped inside to watch what was transpiring between Raphael and Piotr.
Piotr asked, “But you didn’t buy a new identity from the dark web, did you?”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Piotr bent at the waist a little more, leaning in conspiratorially. “The Ilyin Bratva survives because we infiltrate. We have sources everywhere, even local Swiss police departments.”
Ice and fiery panic washed over Raphael, but he didn’t move.
“It’s astonishing how quickly Basch Favre rose in the police department after being discharged from the military, isn’t it? In not even ten years, he climbed the ranks from a street officer to the Colonel of the Cantonal Police. It’s surprising how quickly he was promoted, even shocking. It should have taken at least twenty years of service for anyone to rise so high. More like thirty. Many officers in that department were eager to earn a bit of extra money by writing a good report on a fellow officer or recommending them for an award or a promotion. We have always wanted to know who the Archangel source was, but even Favre couldn’t unseal the records. When you identified yourself to him, we knew who you were.”
The world tipped on its axis. Raphael’s fingers clenched behind his head, digging into his scalp.
“Before that, I was never sure.” Piotr gazed at the steel beams spiderwebbing the ceiling, musing on the uncertainties of the universe. “How could a teenager, who had been so loyal and avid in his work, have been a plant at so young an age? Should I burn a man, one with such a promising past, for running away when the police descended, killing and arresting so many of us?”
Raphael looked downward at Piotr’s shoes. Instead of wearing his usual shined dress shoes that he had worn to the restaurant and even to the snowy park, he was wearing steel-toed boots under his suit trousers.
Piotr continued, “In this business, there is much uncertainty. Is this person on the dark web who they say they are? Will this buyer turn out to be the police or a rival? Will these guns I am selling shoot my men on their next job?” He laughed a little. “Such a stereotypical Russian, da? Always ruminating on melancholy philosophy. But with this, we have certainty. When you called in the Archangel code to Basch Favre, then I knew for sure. That was the turning point. You, Raphael Mirabaud, are the Archangel source who committed treason against the Bratva and informed the police. Seventeen of us were killed in the raids, and many more are still in prison. For this, you will die, and your wife and daughter will die with you because that is what happens to traitors to the Ilyin Bratva. It is tradition.”
The warehouse seemed to fill with sulfurous smoke, clamping Raphael’s throat shut. His eyes burned. The police weren’t coming, he knew, because Basch Favre had sold him out, but maybe Rogue Security would.
He prayed that Magnus and the Rogues would run for Flicka and Alina and leave him there on the floor to die. He prayed to every saint and angel he had neglected his whole life that the Rogues would save Flicka and Alina.
Raphael choked out, “You can’t kill the woman. That’s Princess Friederike Augusta von Hannover. She’s an international celebrity. Interpol will investigate her death.”
“I know who she is,” Piotr said. �
�She recently suffered a traumatic divorce. A suicide after such a terrible event would be perfectly logical, especially since she has obviously hidden herself away in the world, where she became increasingly distraught and insane.”
“Hey!” Flicka said. Alina was still in her arms.
Piotr half-turned and motioned to the men at the back of the room. “Just the child.”
Flicka’s voice snarled above the quiet scuffle, “No, no! I won’t let you. I won’t let you take her.”
In the end, which was less than a minute, the men did take Alina away from Flicka. The brute ripped Alina out of Flicka’s arms and wrestled her away. Flicka struggled against him but didn’t scream or sob. Her green eyes glared like lasers. Her anger was deadly, focused rage, not hysteria.
She ended up on her knees on the floor, too, with her hands interlaced behind her head and a gun pointing at her temple. One of the assholes covered Flicka’s mouth with his black-gloved hand.
Alina fought like a wildcat, screaming and shredding the man’s face with her tiny nails as he walked across the warehouse toward Raphael. His body armor was probably preventing most of the damage from the toddler, but a scratch near his eye was bleeding where her needle-like nails had ripped him open. He spun her around so that she was facing away from him and gathered her arms across her chest. Alina shrilled harder, a siren that pierced Raphael through.
He assessed his options.
If he did something, if he jumped and attacked Piotr Ilyin, they would shoot Raphael in the head immediately. If he were dead, there would be no reason for them to torture Alina and Flicka. Their deaths might be quick bullets to the head instead of whatever Piotr Ilyin had planned with his steel-toed boots. In any circumstance, their deaths would certainly be quicker. Raphael was quite certain that Piotr wasn’t a sadist, just an effective businessman in a brutal business.
He tucked his toes underneath his feet, readying himself to jump.
The man holding Alina approached them, trying to keep his head away from the child who had blood on her hands from ripping at his skin. God, he was proud of her for fighting so hard.
Raphael gauged the man’s speed so he could jump at the least opportune moment, maybe even landing a punch or two before he was shot.
From the rafters, a man’s voice shouted, “Freeze! All of you!”
Raphael didn’t recognize the voice, but he sure as hell recognized that accent.
The Monegasque Secret Service
Flicka von Hannover
When the rescuers
aren’t the good guys.
At that first shout from above, “Freeze! All of you!” in Italian-accented French, Flicka looked up, even though the man’s horrible hand still clamped over her mouth. His glove smelled like sour onions and made her want to retch. His thumb rested on her nose, but she could see beyond the black splotch of it in the center of her vision.
Far above her head, different men with guns lined the catwalks than had been there when she had entered the warehouse not even three minutes before.
Finally, the Monegasque Secret Service had managed to pull off an intricate operation. Finally. Maybe Pierre had replaced Quentin Sault with someone competent.
She was almost limp with relief, except that Alina was thirty feet in front of her and being carried toward Raphael and the other men, most of whom were toting guns. Instead, she braced herself to spring to her feet and sprint to Alina.
Boots pattered with quick steps in the corridor behind her.
Soldiers in special forces uniforms and Kevlar armor ran into the room, stalking double-time in that peculiar half-run, half-creep used for dangerous entries, with their guns held at ready and the stocks pressed against their shoulders.
The Ilyin Bratva’s men had been caught off-guard, watching the spectacle of what happened to traitors to their organization. None of them raised a weapon to fire at the Monegasque special forces operators flooding onto the warehouse’s main floor.
One of the operators yelled, “Hands up! All of you, hands off your weapons! Hands on your heads!”
The bratva members raised their hands and interlaced them behind their necks.
More black-clad men stepped out of the shadows. All of them bore a harlequin-checked shield on the left side of their chests, the sigil of the Princely House of Grimaldi, and the red and white flag of Monaco on their right arms.
Another man led twenty or so more men into the warehouse. These men wore the black fatigues of commandoes, but insignia glinted on their collars and chests. They carried automatic weapons across their chests like they were authorized to in a military parade, and they marched in a stomping, double-time rhythm.
She’d never been so happy to see someone from Monaco in her whole life.
The man at the front, Quentin Sault, surveyed the situation. He motioned one sharp gesture at his men, and Monaco’s army marched toward Flicka.
Damn it. Why couldn’t Pierre have sent someone other than Quentin goddamn Sault?
Quentin told the man holding her, “Remove your hands from Her Highness’s person or I will cut them off.”
Somewhere outside in the dark night, an engine started.
The bratva man glanced at his Russian mafia boss, Piotr Ilyin, and then at the many special forces soldiers pointing large guns directly at him.
He lifted his hands away from Flicka and stepped back.
Flicka spat a piece of his leather glove out of her mouth and rested her hands on the floor. “About damn time, Quentin.”
Quentin didn’t say a word, and that was probably for the best because Flicka might have slapped his face at the first sarcasm out of it.
She told him, “Okay, Sault, have your men go get Alina and Raphael.”
“Who?” Quentin asked.
“Dieter,” she told him, “Dieter Schwarz, sitting right over there, and his daughter, just right over there.”
In the center of the warehouse, Raphael was still kneeling with his hands behind his head. He stared at her, his gray eyes wide and his jaw bulging where he clenched it. Men surrounded him, their arms raised, but their guns hanging on straps around their necks still pointed in his direction.
Quentin glanced up at the many Monegasque men still on the catwalks and in the warehouse. The Monegasque army maintained perilous control because they had their weapons at the ready, but they were outnumbered. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Our only orders were to secure you.”
“No! Quentin, I won’t leave without them.”
“I’m sorry, madam, it’s not up to you.” He motioned with his head, and two of his soldiers released their weapons with one hand each to grab her arms.
“Quentin! Quentin, no! You have to take them, too. Piotr will kill them if you don’t.”
“I’m sorry, madam,” he said, his expression grim like he was grinding his teeth. “Our mission was only to secure you. We are not authorized to go beyond the scope of the mission.”
Panic jumped in her veins. “But you have to get Alina! She’s just a baby. Please, Quentin, please! You have to get her!”
“I’m sorry, madam.” His jaw didn’t open as he ground out the words and his eyes surveyed the situation, watching every twitch of the bratva’s men who were all heavily armed and ready to massacre him, his men, and his operational target. “Our mission was only to secure you. We are not authorized to go beyond the scope of the mission. I can’t. I’m so sorry. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
Alina’s shrieks rose, tearing at her. “Flicka-mama! Flicka-mama!”
“She’s my daughter,” Flicka told Quentin, shaking off the soldiers and hanging on his arm. She grabbed Quentin to make him look at her. “Look at me, and look at Alina. Look at her green eyes and the shape of her face. She’s my daughter, not Dieter’s. I got pregnant when I was in London, and we needed to hide it. My bodyguard wasn’t able to have children with his first wife, so we arranged a private, secret adoption.”
Quentin’s dark eyes flicked to her face and then ba
ck to the room, maintaining situational awareness, but he didn’t say anything. He stared at Alina and the men holding her, assessing.
“You have to get her. I’ll do anything,” she told Quentin. “Anything. If you get her, I’ll sign anything Pierre wants me to. I’ll do all the public events he wants me to. I’ll do all the duties that he needs me to. I won’t make a peep. I’ll tell the world that Pierre rescued me, and I’ll be devoted to Monaco forever. Just get her, and I’ll do it all.”
He bit his lip in anger. “You promise.”
“I do. I swear to God and all that is holy. I’ll remarry him and bear heirs for Monaco. I swear I’ll do anything.”
“I accept your offer.” Quentin Sault motioned to the troops, “Five men, with me.”
Five men strode from behind Flicka to surround Quentin Sault.
The six of them moved in formation, stalking the Russian bratva man who held Alina.
Flicka clasped her hands together in front of her chest and prayed as hard as she could. All the prayers she had learned as a child merged into a wordless scream of begging in her head.
Quentin Sault and his men reached the Russian carrying Alina.
After a staring contest, raised weapons, and bared teeth, they snatched the child away from him. Quentin said something to the child, and Alina clung to his neck as the five soldiers formed a phalanx around Quentin and Alina, guns pointing out and bristling as he walked back to her.
Alina’s green eyes were huge and watery as she stared at Flicka while the soldiers escorted her back.
Quentin shoved the toddler into Flicka’s arms.
Flicka grabbed Alina and held her shaking little body against her chest, murmuring, “It’s okay now. I’ve got you. I’ve got you now.”
Alina clutched her neck, sobbing, “I want Daddy. I want Daddy.”
At Midnight (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 4) Page 21
