Happily Ever After (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 5)

by Blair Babylon

  She turned back to face the altar. The arched ceiling soared above them, and solemn chatter floated toward the statues and plaster far above.

  Pierre gazed at the casket, still draped with the red and white silk of the flag, his eyes level and somber. He clutched the gray velvet of the kneeler before them, holding onto the cap rail until his knuckles reddened.

  His leg, however, vibrated like he was ready to leap into action.

  Maybe it was due to nervous twitches or exhaustion. While Rainer IV’s passing might be a shock to the rest of the world, Pierre had been standing vigil over the elderly Prince—holding his hand and talking to him, reassuring him and praising him—while he lingered between life and death, for hours every day, for weeks. The nurses had been so familiar with Pierre, bringing him food so he could wedge a meal into his time at the hospital. Several of them mentioned they would call him on his private phone when there was a change.

  Flicka had been at Rainier’s bedside for some time the last couple of days, too. Listening to him gasp for breath was hard, but she’d stayed, always wondering if he’d ordered her death.

  But maybe he hadn’t.

  Sitting beside the sickbed of the man who might have attempted to murder her felt odd, even cold, but he might not have done it. He might have just summoned a few odd reactions at inopportune times and not had anything to do with it. Rainier IV always had been just the slightest bit odd, having been born and educated to be a monarch his whole life. Being raised with the divine right of kings in one’s pocket warps minds. It might have just been his intrinsic coldness and arrogance she’d seen.

  In that case, she should sit with Prince Rainier IV and keep him company as he died.

  The last few weeks hadn’t been easy for Pierre, either. He had managed to keep up with his own schedule and picked up some of Rainier’s appointments, too, sleeping little. Business and planning meetings had been scheduled after midnight, and his trainer had arrived for brief, rigorous workouts before dawn. The dark circles under his eyes were real.

  In the cathedral, Pierre stood straight beside her, the sunlight glowing on his black hair, and sighed. It sounded heartfelt, perhaps as it was supposed to.

  Flicka dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief she’d stuffed in her coat pocket. With effort, she straightened her spine and breathed. Her eyes dried, and she blinked, keeping control.

  Pierre’s fingers found hers as they stood together, facing the altar and the casket of the man who had raised him after his parents’ death.

  He whispered, “They’ll crown me prince in a few days. This is everything I’ve hoped for, my whole life. This is everything I’ve always wanted, finally.”

  His dark eyes were unnaturally bright with excitement, and he squeezed her fingers.

  Inside, Flicka winced at his reaction. It might just be exhaustion. Maybe all the Grimaldi sometimes had odd reactions to stress, not just Rainier IV. Maybe Pierre would collapse when they left the church in utter despair, and that terrible thing to say at a funeral was just him distracting himself so he could stay on his feet until the funeral was over.

  He said, “In a few days, we’ll be the Prince and Princess of Monaco, and I can finally do everything I’ve always wanted to. My life as the Prince can begin. It will all be mine, the country, the money, the wealth and fame, all of it. He’s finally dead, that asshole. If he hadn’t had that stroke, I was about ready to squirt poison in his ear while he was asleep. Hebenon is a good poison for that. Now that he’s dead, he can’t threaten to cut me off ever again.”

  Flicka gasped at the callousness of it and let her fingers drop away from his grip.

  Hebenon.

  It sounded like he’d researched it.

  Pierre glanced at her out of the corners of his eyes, and a quick grin lit his face before he schooled his features into something more appropriate for a funeral mass. “No one can stop me now. With you here in Monaco where I am the police and the army, you’re mine, and you’ll produce heirs for Monaco just like we agreed. You’re under my control, and I won’t allow you to screw this up for me.”

  Flicka stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge the horrors Pierre was muttering to her. Magnus Jensen was in the front pew with them, two people past Pierre, and she listened in case Magnus made a move or gave her a signal, just in case.

  She had survived in Monaco for four days. How much longer would Magnus wait to rescue her?

  Raphael.

  Raphael would rescue her soon.

  Because he was out there, somewhere, waiting and planning her escape. She knew it. She could feel him.

  She prayed to the looming image of Jesus Christ above the altar that she could feel Raphael’s soul still in this world.

  Beside her, Pierre whispered, “You need to make an appointment with that fertility clinic. I want heirs as soon as possible. It would have looked better for me to have a son already when Rainier died, but we’ll have to make up for lost time. Maybe we can do twins. Yes, twins. That will cement the monarchy in everyone’s minds, to have two heirs as soon as possible.”

  Flicka could barely imagine being pregnant with one baby by Pierre, let alone two at once.

  But she could imagine being pregnant with a child, quite clearly.

  Very clearly.

  She touched her stomach, just below the thin belt around her coat.

  Pierre said, “Twins run in your family. No one will suspect.”

  That was a disconcerting thought.

  Jesus, twins did run in her family. Identical twins were just a fluke that sometimes happened, but there was a familial genetic predisposition to produce two eggs and thus conceive fraternal twins.

  Just like Wulfram and Constantine, her brothers.

  Flicka’s fingers flexed over her stomach.

  Pierre said, “I know we contracted for only two, but Monaco might need more heirs. A big family would look wonderful for the press. Your great-something grandmother was Queen Victoria of England. How many princes and princesses did she have?”

  “Nine,” Flicka said, answering out of habit. Victoria’s husband Albert had also died tragically early and young, not even ten years older than Pierre was now.

  In front of them, Rainier IV’s closed casket was lowered to the floor. More funeral wreaths and displays of tropical flowers from around the world heaped around the ornate box.

  “Nine,” Pierre repeated, his voice rising. “Nine heirs would be wonderful. There would never be another succession crisis in the House of Grimaldi. You need an appointment with that fertility clinic right away.”

  Flicka shook her head at the threat. “That’s not going to happen, Pierre.”

  His voice lowered, and he looked down at the kneeler where he rested his hands. “I’ll have someone set it up for this afternoon. My security staff will escort you. I can cancel my appointment if the doctor says that it’s naturally a good time.”

  She had to tell Pierre sometime, and if she didn’t, the doctors would tell him soon anyway. If she told him that minute, right there, during his uncle’s funeral, they would be in public when he received the news, and he couldn’t beat her up or do anything else.

  She’d already experienced what happened when Pierre Grimaldi received news in private that he didn’t like.

  Flicka leaned toward Pierre’s shoulder.

  He smiled a bit more, as would be perfectly normal for a husband who was interested in what his wife had to say.

  Flicka said, “I had the medical exam at the fertility clinic yesterday.”

  “Excellent,” Pierre said, laying his hand on her back, near her waist, because she had moved closer to him. “What schedule did they suggest?”

  She whispered, “None, because I am already pregnant with the child of my husband, Raphael Mirabaud.”

  She stood straight and regarded the alabaster crucifix, gazing back at her. The gray velvet was silky under her palms as she steadied herself by gripping the kneeler. The doctor had indeed told her that sh
e was pregnant, and they’d confirmed it with a test. She had already been a few days overdue in her menstrual cycle.

  As she’d suspected, because they were in public, Pierre showed no trace of emotion, not a flush in his cheeks nor a tightening of his jaw. Though his face was frozen in the same expression as a few minutes ago, he seemed too serene to be angry.

  The priests, wearing violet and black as it was Advent and Christmas was coming in a few weeks, filed around the casket. Incense smoke from their braziers infiltrated the air and cut the perfume of the multitude of flowers hanging on the walls, the ends of the aisles, and the columns of the church.

  Pierre leaned in, whispering, “As per the contract, that will have to be terminated.”

  “But you’re Catholic,” Flicka said. “Monaco is a Catholic country, and you still believe that whole Divine Right of Kings via Catholicism. You are entirely opposed to that sort of thing.”

  He shook his head, maybe sadly. “That’s for little people, not people like us.” Pierre’s kind smile never wavered. “The Catholic monarchy is more important than mere Catholic politics. We’ll arrange for a doctor’s consultation tomorrow morning and schedule it soon after. Then we can begin to produce legitimate heirs for Monaco, many of them, until I am satisfied that you have produced enough.”

  At Midnight

  Flicka von Hannover

  Boudicca,

  Queen of the Celts.

  Flicka laid in her bed in the Prince’s Palace in Monaco, staring at the silk and velvet canopy above her.

  She had to fight back.

  Her ancestors had led armies into battle, riding a horse at the forefront. They had planned strategies and won wars. They had held castles against insurmountable odds.

  She would survive this, and she would save herself and Raphael’s baby growing inside her and Alina, too. And she wouldn’t be Pierre’s broodmare, laboring out child after child for Monaco.

  Flicka was a princess. She very well might be descended from Boudicca, warrior queen of the British Celtic Iceni tribe. Flicka was related to every other bloodthirsty warrior monarch throughout history, so why not Boudicca, too? Boudicca had led an uprising against the Roman Empire, defeating legion after legion with her band of wild Celts.

  What would Boudicca do?

  She’d scream into the wind, strap her sword on, jump into her chariot, and kick some Italian ass.

  Which was just what Flicka needed to do.

  She would not allow Pierre Goddamn Grimaldi, The Rat Bastard, to rip her child from her body.

  Or to feed her poison to kill and expel it.

  She thought about that.

  Pierre was exactly the type to try something so sneaky and underhanded as putting abortion drugs in her food. His ancestors had lied and murdered to take control of Monaco. He’d been rather blasé about his idea of poisoning Prince Rainier IV. Would he go so far as to instruct the kitchen to salt her food with abortion drugs?

  If Flicka threatened Pierre’s ability to become the Prince of Monaco, he might do it. Even when she’d been little and Pierre had come over to her and Wulfie’s house, he’d talked about when he would be the Prince.

  Her heart felt heavy.

  So, she would have to make sure that she didn’t eat anything laced with poison.

  She should keep Alina away from the cookies, too, just in case.

  She refused to think that Pierre might threaten Alina with any harm. Surely, he wouldn’t do such a despicable thing.

  Yes, Flicka needed some Boudicca in her soul.

  Boudicca became the ruler of the Iceni Celts after her husband, the king, had been killed in battle.

  Flicka stopped thinking about the dead husband part.

  Somewhere out there, Raphael was alive.

  Surely, without Flicka and Alina as hostages, he had been able to fight his way to freedom, and he was coming to save her.

  She was counting on him.

  It was interesting, though, that Boudicca’s dead king was yet another example of how kings and princes didn’t live particularly long lives in her family. Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, had been only forty-two when he’d died.

  Pierre should watch his damn back, just in case Flicka went all Henry the Eighth on him. She had the Tudor genes for it.

  Flicka lay in the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while, as she usually did due to her genetic insomnia, but for the last two weeks, she’d needed more sleep than usual.

  Growing a baby is hard work.

  She nodded off sometime around one in the morning, sleeping fitfully and tangled in the sheets, and she didn’t hear her bedroom door open in the dark an hour later.

  Escape

  Raphael Mirabaud

  “Two qualities are indispensable:

  first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour,

  retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth;

  and second, the courage to follow this faint light

  wherever it may lead.”

  —Carl von Clausewitz

  The inside of the handgun’s barrel was a silver tunnel into the darkness of the Geneva warehouse at midnight.

  5.

  Above the silver tube, Piotr Ilyin glared at Raphael, his eyes wide and his teeth bared. Piotr Ilyin was the head of the Ilyin Bratva, the Russian version of a Mafia Godfather. His organized crime syndicate had imported fifteen young girls to be sold for slavery, sexual abuse, and murder.

  They had been standing behind Raphael just a few minutes ago.

  Now, they were gone in a puff of wintry wind and snowflakes, like a magic trick.

  Raphael drew a breath, ready to deny that he knew what had happened to the “shipment.”

  He did know, though. While Flicka had marched out of the warehouse carrying Raphael’s daughter, Alina, and surrounded by the Monegasque army, the fifteen young girls had quietly been spirited away to safety.

  He assumed they had been rescued. He wasn’t sure, exactly. He hadn’t been watching them.

  But he had a very good suspicion that they were safer now than they had been for weeks.

  Something metallic clattered on the cement floor behind him.

  Ticking.

  4.

  That clicky-tock had punctuated Raphael’s dreams and nightmares for a decade or longer.

  Piotr was lifting his head to look at what had fallen to the ground back there, and his gun rose into the air with his gaze, pointing above Raphael’s forehead.

  3.

  Raphael tensed.

  2.

  He tucked his toes under his feet.

  1.

  Raphael grabbed his ears an instant before the first flash-bang grenade blasted the air out of the warehouse and rolled on his side. A bullet buzzed by his head.

  Russian and French shouts ricocheted around the Geneva warehouse, louder even than the high whine in Raphael’s ears.

  He leaped to his feet, yanked the handgun from his pocket, and aimed the pistol behind himself as he sprinted for cover. He poked the air with the gun as he squeezed the trigger, taking some of the recoil out of the shots. The first trigger pull was stiffer than the rest, but now the trigger needed only a fraction of an inch to fire another bullet into the frenzy of running men and flying bullets that pushed vapor trails through the air and sparked on the metal walls and containers in the warehouse.

  The Beretta 92FS in his hand held fifteen rounds in the magazine plus one in the chamber. He’d already expended three. Thirteen bullets left.

  Bullets pelted the floor and walls of the warehouse, blasting from muzzles and zinging through the air, each caliber a different bang and whizz to create a chaotic cacophony like snapping pops. Long, fluorescent light bulbs on the ceiling shattered, dimming the warehouse as bullets flew.

  Raphael aimed and shot into the melee.

  Piotr staggered and grabbed his shoulder, looking up in surprise. The gun fell from his limp hand.

  Raphael raised his gun again,
leveling the sights between Piotr’s eyes. He gripped the gun and squeezed the trigger.

  A hole appeared in Piotr’s forehead, and he crumpled to the floor.

  Raphael dove behind the van that had brought the children into the warehouse and crouched behind it.

  Gunsights and barrels gleamed in the darkness as they caught the light from overhead or the streetlights outside. Gunpowder stung his nose like burning sulfur.

  He picked out targets as he shot from behind the cover of the van. Brass bullet casings tumbled from his gun to the cement floor, but he couldn’t hear the tinkle of the metal over the echoing gunshots and high whine in his ears. Raphael had been a spotter in military operations, relaying distance and wind conditions to the sniper behind the gun, but he had pulled the trigger, too. Always, it had been on someone else’s orders. Always, Raphael had felt justified because he had been rescuing innocent people from terrorists or kidnappers.

  Saving only his own hide felt selfish, but he lifted the small gun and aligned the sights, readying himself to shoot again.

  More shots rang out of the darkness behind him. Gunshots banged, and something larger boomed.

  Some of the Rogues hadn’t left with the girls.

  Several of the Ilyin Bratva’s men went down. Whether they’d been shot or were just taking the opportunity to duck, Raphael couldn’t tell.

  He surveyed the remaining people. He’d been introduced to several of Piotr Ilyin’s six lieutenants during his weeks in Geneva, as his father tried to settle him into the crime syndicate. All had been directly involved with importing the girls.

  He felt no remorse as he picked off every last one of them, squeezing the trigger with practiced pulls past the breakpoint. If he didn’t take them out, they’d import another group of innocent girls for slaughter next week. Gunpowder embers pinpricked his face and hands as he shot into the dark. Thunks and screams echoed among the gunshot bangs.