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

by Blair Babylon

  Pierre sighed. “I can’t argue with that, and I don’t have time to be tied up in court hearings over a child that isn’t even mine. Flicka, bring Alina.”

  Flicka hurried from the throne room, through the hallways, and to her apartment, the Princess Grace suite.

  Secret Service officers trailed her the whole way.

  Alina was hiding under her bed, so Flicka lowered herself to the thick rug and laid her cheek against the softness to peer into the dark space under the mattress. She hoped the housekeepers vacuumed under there. “Alina-baby?”

  “Mama, can I come out now?”

  “Yes, Alina. I told you it’s okay to come out with the lady housekeepers.”

  Alina clawed her way out from under the bed. “I don’t want to go back to that place.”

  “No, honey. Never. We’ll never go back to that warehouse. Alina, do you remember Uncle Wulfie?”

  The child shook her head, her blond hair floating around her eyes.

  “You’ll remember him when you see him. You remember Suze-mama?”

  Alina shrugged and stuck her finger in her mouth.

  Little kids forget things so quickly. “Uncle Wulfie is going to take you home with him, and you’ll be safe there. No one will ever take you again. Suze-mama will be there, and she’ll take care of you. Auntie Rae will be there, too.”

  Alina peered up at Flicka with her huge, pale green eyes. “I don’t want to go, Mama. I want to stay with you.”

  Flicka’s chest cramped. “I’ll come as soon as I can, but I want you to go with Uncle Wulfie for now. He’s strong and good, just like Daddy. He’ll keep you safe, and I’ll come soon, okay?”

  “I don’t want to go. Want to stay with Mama.”

  Time to pull out the big guns. “Uncle Wulfie has cookies on his airplane.”

  “Airplane?” She looked suspiciously at Flicka. “On an airplane?”

  “Yes, you’ll go on the airplane with Uncle Wulfie.”

  “Promise the airplane.”

  “Yes, two kinds of airplane. The noisy airplane like a few days ago, hel-i-cop-ter, and then another airplane.”

  “Okay,” Alina said. “Okay, airplane.”

  Alina clung to Flicka, her chubby arms wrapped tightly around Flicka’s neck. Flicka held her under her legs and with her arm wrapped around the child’s back, feeling her breathe, warm in her arms.

  She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to let Alina go.

  It was best if Alina went and lived with Wulf. She would be safe, far away in America and behind Wulfram’s security lines. If Alina could be safe anywhere in the world, she would be safe with Wulf.

  Flicka’s heart was breaking wide open.

  It was the best thing for Alina. The safest place for Alina was with Wulfram.

  Flicka held her child tightly until she reached the throne room, breathing in her fresh baby scent and treasuring the feel of her softness in her arms, and then she carefully transferred the child to Wulf.

  Wulf carried the child with a practiced arm around her waist.

  The cramp in Flicka’s chest deepened, hurting, and she felt ripped open.

  She choked back sobs because she didn’t want to scare Alina, but she didn’t want Alina to go. She missed her already. Keeping the child safe was worth every bit of her own pain.

  Her knees weakened, and Flicka nearly fell. Somehow, she remained standing.

  Wulf was perfect with Alina, talking gently to the child and telling her it would be all right, that he was glad to see her, and that they had cookies on his airplane.

  Alina asked him, her baby eyes holding a world of dubious thoughts, “Airplane?”

  “Yes,” Wulfram told her. “Big airplane.”

  Flicka could see why she had clung so hard to Wulfram after their mother had died.

  Wulf hugged Flicka, too, wrapping his free arm around her and whispering into her hair, “Be ready. It won’t be long. I promise, it will be soon.”

  Flicka peeled her arms off of Wulf so he could leave without her.

  When Wulf walked away, holding Alina in his strong arms, the little girl reached one arm back for Flicka, her green eyes and heart-shaped face visible over Wulf’s broad shoulder as he strode out of the throne room.

  Flicka smiled and waved goodbye cheerily, though tears smudged the room into smears of scarlet and white sunlight.

  Alexandre looked back as he walked away with Wulfram, worried, but he left her in the throne room with Pierre.

  Flicka found a memory deep in her mind of herself clinging to Wulfie at that age and wondered if she’d looked the same, green eyes and heart-shaped face in his arms, looking back over his shoulder.

  And then Flicka realized that she had looked exactly like Alina, though with darker green eyes.

  Exactly like Alina.

  Tumult rose in Flicka, and she breathed deeply to keep herself from running after Wulfie and Alina, who must certainly be her child with Raphael from all those years ago in London.

  Pierre stepped up to her side. “She is your child, isn’t she?”

  Flicka nodded.

  Yes, Alina was her daughter.

  From the other side of the throne room, the photographer called, “May we continue now?”

  Flicka turned back and blinked. “Yes, of course.”

  Betrayal

  Raphael Mirabaud

  I should have told him earlier.

  It should have come from me.

  When Wulfram von Hannover walked into the hotel room in France carrying Alina, Raphael could tell that something about his demeanor had changed.

  Something big.

  Wulfram set Alina on the carpeting, and the toddler sprinted to Raphael, squealing, “Daddy-daddy-daddy!” the whole way.

  Raphael caught the child as she leaped at him, flying through the air after she’d launched off her toes. She was getting to be rather athletic.

  His daughter might take after him more than he’d thought. That was pleasing to think about.

  The child sobbed on his neck, crying a damp spot onto his shirt. Her hair smelled like lemons, flowers, and dust. He rubbed Alina’s back and murmured reassurances, telling her it was going to be all right now.

  The warmth and sweetness of her baby wiggles soothed him. When he’d been on his knees in that warehouse, guns pointed at his skull and gravel grinding into his shins, he’d thought about the last time he’d held Alina. He’d said goodbye to her quickly that morning when he’d left for work at Geneva Trust, not knowing that it might be for the last time. He’d kissed her forehead and let Flicka pull her off of him, the three of them laughing.

  Raphael squeezed Alina’s chubby torso and limbs to his chest, breathing in her baby scent and trying to feel every second of her heart fluttering against his chest.

  Past Alina’s neck, Wulfram leaned his shoulder against the wall, his legs crossed at his ankles and his arms woven tightly over his chest. He stared at the floor.

  Raphael asked him, “Is Flicka okay?”

  “Yes.”

  Just that one word.

  Wulfram wasn’t a chatty guy, but he seemed more taciturn than usual.

  “Did something happen?” Raphael asked.

  “No. Everything went according to the plan, except I threatened Pierre with financial ruin unless Flicka walks into Schloss Marienburg or Schloss Southwestern within the next twenty-four hours. I told him I’d bankrupt him personally and Monaco, too.”

  Wulf didn’t look up the whole time he spoke to Raphael.

  “Good,” Raphael said, studying Wulf. “That’s brilliant. Pierre and Quentin might think that’s the attack and ignore our incursion until it’s too late.”

  Wulf shrugged.

  “We’ll get her out tonight,” Raphael said, trying to reassure him.

  Wulf nodded and tightened his arms across his chest.

  Raphael asked, “What’s wrong?”

  When Wulf looked up, his face was as serene as ever, but rage filled his blue
eyes. “I remember the Archangel raids.”

  Oh, God. “Wulfram—”

  “It was my senior year of high school. Pierre and I watched the news after Flicka had gone to bed. She wouldn’t remember much about them. We watched the reports on the major criminals, the Ilyins and the Mirabauds. The newspapers and magazines had long articles. It’s funny how no one put it together: Archangel raids and Raphael Mirabaud.”

  Raphael said, “I can explain—”

  “Raphael Mirabaud was the worst of them, involved in drug running, weapons smuggling, and human trafficking. The news said he was assumed to be dead after the raids, but they never found a body. He was even declared dead, legally.”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Flicka called you Raphael.”

  “I couldn’t tell anybody.”

  “Alina’s last name is Mirabaud.”

  “I didn’t know the Ilyin Bratva was involved in human trafficking when I started running guns and drugs. I was a stupid kid. I was fifteen when I started small jobs for them.”

  “All the Russian crime syndicates are involved in the foulest of crimes,” Wulfram said. “I went to school with some of their next generation. Dima and Tatiana Butorin knew exactly what their parents were doing while they were planning to take over the business someday, even in high school.”

  Raphael said, “I didn’t know. I contacted the police when the Ilyins showed us what they were doing with the girls, what they wanted us to fund. That day broke me. It shattered me. I became someone different that night. I went directly to the police station to turn government informant. I wore hidden recording equipment and copied computer records. I did everything so the police could take them down.”

  “You were one of them,” Wulfram said, “and all this time, you never told me.”

  “I never told anyone,” Raphael said, holding Alina to his shoulder as she chewed his shirt a little. “The government gave me a new identity after the Archangel raids, the name Dieter Schwarz. The social services people wanted me to talk to a counselor, but I just wanted to enlist in the military and never think about the bank or the Ilyins again.”

  “Your marriage certificate and divorce papers were in the file. You didn’t use the Schwarz name to marry Gretchen. I could have sworn that the priest called you Dieter.”

  “He did. I asked him to, but my legal name was on the marriage license and Alina’s birth certificate. I was worried that I might die and Alina might need a kidney or bone marrow or something. She has cousins, quite a lot of cousins, but she might have needed to know who they were. I kept having these dreams, that I was dead and she was alone and didn’t know who she was. Afterward, everything felt wrong. Neither of the names felt right.”

  Wulfram’s tone was, if anything, lighter, when he asked, “Which name did you use to marry my sister?”

  Icy regret blew through Raphael. “I had to marry her right away. It was a ruse to make Pierre stay away from her.”

  “It was just a ruse, then. You don’t love her. It was all a sham, just like your first marriage.”

  “It wasn’t like that at all.”

  “She loves you. I could see it in her eyes. She will be heartbroken when she finds out it was just ‘a ruse’ for you.”

  “She’s everything to me, Wulfram. I’ve loved her for years.”

  “How many years, exactly?” Wulfram asked, his blue eyes turning colder. “Just how young was she when you first took advantage of her?”

  “It wasn’t like that. She wasn’t a child.”

  “You were an adult. Even if she threw herself at you in some childish, virginal explorations, you should have said no. How old was she?”

  “She was twenty,” Raphael admitted.

  “And you were?”

  “Thirty-one. Well, thirty.”

  His voice didn’t rise. “Why is that?”

  “I was still seventeen when I enlisted. I’m six months younger than I’ve been saying I am.”

  “Six months doesn’t matter. You were a decade older than she was. She was a child, Dieter. She was my child, and I trusted you to protect her and not to hurt her.”

  “I should have told you. I should have asked your permission before I dated her or married her.”

  Wulfram shook his head, perhaps even angrier. “I don’t own my sister or her body. These aren’t feudal times. If I had that kind of control over her, I would have locked her in a dungeon rather than let her marry that rat bastard Pierre Grimaldi. I knew he was an asshole, though we were friends.” His voice lowered. “We used to be friends.” He looked at Dieter again, his blue eyes still bright with anger. “But you, I trusted you. I knew there was something about your past you were hiding all the way back in the barracks, but I didn’t pry. We were twenty years old, and I thought I knew you. I thought that if it was important, you would tell me. If you didn’t tell me, it must not be important. I thought we were brothers in arms and fellow soldiers and friends, real friends, so I trusted you like no other with my life and hers.”

  Raphael said, “I did my job. I put my body and life on the line for you. I took care of you both. I took more than one bullet and knife blade meant for you and Flicka.”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “Believe this: I fell in love with her. When we were in London, I was afraid I was endangering her because I thought the Ilyins were onto me, and that was why I left her and came to Chicago.”

  “You broke her heart?”

  Raphael closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “If you weren’t holding your child, I would punch you in the mouth.”

  “I deserve it.”

  “You have a type, don’t you? When you married Gretchen, I thought she looked oddly like Flicka, but I didn’t say anything. I never believed it was possible that you’d forced yourself on her.”

  “I didn’t, Wulf. I swear. She initiated it.”

  “You should have refused. She was a child.”

  “I tried to tell her no. I swear, I tried. You know how she is when she decides she wants something. She was twenty years old. I thought I was an infatuation she’d get over, even though she was already more for me. It was after you’d moved to Chicago, months afterward. But she was so beautiful, and—”

  Wulf’s tone remained conversational. “And what, damn you?”

  “—and I was already in love with her. I was already in love with her determination and her spirit, in her dedication to the piano and music, in her work for charities and how she cared about what she was doing, not just how it looked, in her grace, in her kindness, in her sophisticated and silly sense of humor, in everything about her. I worshipped her. She was my Durchlauchtig.”

  “I can’t count how many times I told you that it is Durchlauchtigste. You can’t even speak German all that well, can you, Raphael?”

  “Not Hochdeutsch, just Schwiizertüütsch,” the Swiss, spoken dialect, “and no, I can’t. French is my first language.”

  “I don’t know you at all.” Wulfram pushed off the wall. “I need to ready my plane to return to my wife and newborn child. I will be back for Alina in an hour. Have her ready to travel.”

  He left the hotel room, closing the door firmly behind him.

  Wulfram von Hannover would never slam a door, Raphael knew. He wouldn’t frighten a child by slamming it, and he would never be so uncultured.

  And now Wulfram knew that he was Raphael Mirabaud.

  Raphael had been dreading this day, this reckoning, for years. Every new betrayal—his name, his relationship with Flicka, and now their marriage—had compounded how terrible this day would be, and he couldn’t go after Wulfram right now to try to explain himself.

  He only had an hour with his daughter, and he needed to launch the operation to rescue Flicka.

  Raphael juggled Alina in his arms until she was sitting on his hip and looking at him. “We have a little while until you have to go home with Uncle Wulf.”

  “Want to stay w
ith Daddy,” Alina said, picking at his shirt collar. “Not Uncle Wulfie.”

  Flicka must have called him that. “I need you to fly on the plane with Uncle Wulfie.”

  “Plane?” Alina asked, her pale green eyes serious.

  “Yes, on a plane,” Raphael said.

  “Okay,” Alina said, but she specified, “on a plane.”

  “And then I’ll bring Flicka-mama, and then we’ll go home.”

  Alina looked confused. “Not Flicka-mama. Just Mama now.”

  “You call her Mama now?”

  “Yes. Flicka-mama is Mama.”

  Raphael’s heart swelled at how Flicka had taken such care of Alina, how it wasn’t her responsibility, but she had.

  He said, “I’ll bring Mama, and we’ll all go home.”

  A Spy Arrested

  Flicka von Hannover

  I guess I knew then

  which side he was really on.

  Flicka was walking through the greeting rooms of the Prince’s Palace, overseeing the final preparations for the Prince’s Winter Ball that evening.

  Each anteroom was grander than the last, and they’d been designed specifically that way. As one walked into the palace and through these halls and chambers toward the throne room, each room’s ceiling was loftier, and each color scheme became richer. The decor became more ornate with more gilding and more sumptuous fabrics. The grandeur was intended to reduce visitors and make them feel smaller, more insignificant, until they were at last admitted to the throne room where the Prince reigned from his throne upon a raised dais, the labors of Hercules on the ceiling to inspire him and an enormous crown suspended above his head.

  Thusly, emissaries from foreign lands were reduced to scraping supplicants before they even met the Prince of Monaco.

  And who says fashion and decorating aren’t important?