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

by Blair Babylon

  Dieter nodded, signifying that the video was going out live.

  She waited three seconds to allow some blank space at the beginning, and then said, “Friends, I have a lot to tell you. Stay with me to the end because it’s all important.”

  She drew a deep breath, straining the tiny buttons on her blouse. Some of her clothes had turned up in her closet that morning. She must have left them at Schloss Marienburg during a previous trip, maybe as far back as college, but unaccountably, she was more bosomy than the last time she’d worn the top.

  Dieter nodded at Flicka and smiled, though he was watching her through the screen.

  She continued, “I know I sent out some conflicting and disturbing posts on social media lately, and now I need to set the story straight.

  “The first thing you need to know is that I have left my ex-husband, Crown Prince Pierre Grimaldi of Monaco. I divorced him in Las Vegas early last month as specified in the prenuptial agreement that we both signed. Lawyers from both our sides hammered out that thing for months. We both knew everything that was in it. No matter what his kangaroo court in Monaco says, I have divorced him, and that legal divorce is final.

  “I understand you’re sad that it didn’t work out. I am, too. I wanted to be with a man I loved and who loved me, but that isn’t Pierre Grimaldi.

  “I left Pierre because he has a family and four children with another woman, and he loves her. They were married in a church by a priest, though they never filed a legal marriage license. When I found out and confronted him with evidence that he was already married, first he lied about it and denied they were married, saying that she was nothing to him. He said she was just a woman he’d screwed who was making up stories about him being the father of her four children. He didn’t stand up for her. He didn’t stand up for their children. I had been given more evidence, though. When I showed him the pictures of him present at the birth of one of their children within the last year, after he and I were engaged—”

  Flicka sucked in a very deep breath because she wasn’t sure she wanted to say this on camera, but it was the truth and it was hardly a unique truth. Too many of her women friends would whisper to her that they understood exactly what Flicka had felt.

  “—Pierre Grimaldi beat me and raped me.”

  And there it was. It was out. It was an accusation of a crime that she couldn’t take back, but it was the hard truth.

  “He held me prisoner in Monaco, and I will never willingly go back to him. He tried to kidnap me after the court hearing in Nevada. You might have seen the video of the soldiers swarming us as we tried to leave.

  “Even these last few weeks, when I was in Monaco, he was holding me prisoner. I had asked for his help to get out of a different bad situation—like I said, I have a lot to tell you—and he sent soldiers to help me. But then, he had them take me to Monaco, and he locked me up. Guards constantly surrounded me so that I couldn’t leave the palace. He controlled all my social media, phone calls, and contact with everyone.

  “When I went missing these last few months, I was in the company of my bodyguard, Dieter Schwarz, who owns the private security company, Rogue Security.”

  Dieter leaned out from behind where he held the camera and frowned.

  Flicka caught his eye and smiled at him. Just seeing him was reassuring in a way that nothing else ever was.

  She said, “He’s holding the phone right now so I can stream this.”

  That earned her an eyebrow raised in concern and a scowl. He looked over the phone as if he might say something, lowering the phone as he did so.

  The whole video must be bobbling like an earthquake was swallowing the castle.

  Flicka motioned with her hands, up, up, and Dieter lifted the camera back to his eye-level. He was still scowling.

  Wow, they almost had a serious camera-angle malfunction. Princess Flicka should never be seen with a quadruple chin, eye bags, and snarly bitch face, which is what a low camera angle always does.

  However, she was going to have a baby someday soon, if everything went properly, so maybe she shouldn’t care quite so much about her image in photos in the coming years.

  She was quite looking forward to it.

  Flicka cleared her throat and continued, “As I said, a man who is a very amateur camera operator but a professional soldier is looking after me, but he’s far more than that. He rescued me from Monaco in a crazy plan that I still can’t believe worked—I wish I could have livestreamed me sprinting across Monaco in high heels and a ball gown—and he helped me get safely to my family home, Marienburg Castle.” She flipped her fingers at the ridiculous excess around her.

  “After I divorced my cheating ex-husband, I married Dieter Schwarz.” She held up her left hand and waggled her new wedding band. “I want everyone to know. Dieter Schwarz is my husband, and I love him more than my own life. I’m deliriously happy to be Mrs. Dieter Schwarz.

  “As a matter of fact, if you look back over old photos of me, you can probably find him scowling in the background, protecting me, because he’s always been there for me. When that sniper shot at me in Paris after my wedding to Pierre, Dieter Schwarz was the man who saved me and took the bullet. He’s always been my protector. He’s always been the one.”

  She looked over the phone at Dieter’s gray eyes, which had widened above where he held the camera. “Okay, Lieblingwächter, my love, you can stop the feed now. We’re done.”

  Dieter startled and tapped the screen. “I didn’t know you were going to do that.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  He shook his head. “Well, if that doesn’t get Pierre’s attention, nothing will.”

  “But he’ll leave me alone now, don’t you think?”

  Dieter stared at the phone before he looked up at her, but lines still creased his face. “I wish I could tell you yes, but some guys never stop.”

  Catching Up

  Dieter Schwarz

  I hadn’t been able to check my Rogue Security email for months

  because the police or Grimaldi might have traced the login.

  Big mistake.

  Dieter and Flicka were sitting in the formal dining room at Schloss Marienburg, a long space for the extended table that could seat at least fifty people. Chandeliers dripping crystals blazed above the table. Shining, silver candelabra stood at attention on the table at even intervals, save for the one that Flicka had pushed aside so she could set up her new laptop and Dieter, sitting across from her, could be distracted by every smile and flinch on her lovely face.

  Even though he had work to do.

  Dieter had been on his phone all morning, becoming Dieter Schwarz again.

  Running Rogue Security was more than a full-time job, and the emails had piled up in his inbox over the months, hundreds of them. The Welfenlegion stationed with Wulfrum’s father had loaned him a computer that morning and a secured phone the night before. With the help of his company’s IT department, which was composed entirely of Blaise Lyon, who was one of the best hackers on the planet, Dieter began to dig himself out of the mess.

  The first thing he did upon receiving the phone the night before, even before supper and hours before he’d sneaked into Flicka’s bedroom, was to check in with Friedhelm Vonlanthen in Nice and begin to organize his current assignment, the safety of Flicka von Hannover. Blaise Lyon confirmed that Aidan Greer had successfully escaped and maintained his freedom after Quentin Sault and the Secret Service had discovered he was a spy. Magnus Jensen and the other Rogues had mostly escaped from the Prince’s Palace and the Winter Ball that night.

  Which meant that Dieter had twenty men, Rogue Security and Welfenlegion operators, who were converging on Schloss Marienburg to bolster their defenses as he sat in the palace’s formal dining room.

  Getting plane tickets for the twenty guys who were at liberty had taken some time, and they were all on different flights. Flights out of the Nice, France airport was essentially booked solid. They’d tried to rent a jet, but
all the companies had told him that they were sold out. The airport itself was clogged with private planes flying out, stragglers from Pierre’s Winter Ball a few days before. Friedhelm had said that it looked like half of Europe was bugging out of Monaco, via France.

  This was exactly the kind of operation where Rogue Security needed a damn airplane. If they’d had a private plane available, all the Rogues could have piled on and arrived at Schloss Marienburg before midnight instead of this logistical mess. If they hadn’t been able to get out of Nice, they could have rendezvoused with the plane in Turin, Italy, just an hour away.

  A few Rogues had managed to wrangle tickets on early flights and had already arrived. More were trickling in as the morning wore on. Having Magnus, Friedhelm, and others in the house allayed some of Dieter’s worry that Pierre might try a military-style assault, like the one Dieter had used as a ruse. They were in a castle. With those guys at his back, Dieter could hold off an army for months.

  The current operation was shaping up. Dieter was satisfied with the increasingly secure defenses.

  However, on the email front, Dieter Schwarz had a lot of work waiting for him.

  Magnus Jensen and his other lieutenants had been doing their best, but they couldn’t sign contracts for new work, nor could they scout new clients, nor could they sign off on the finished and final reports to close completed projects.

  As he worked into it—reading the paperwork and signing forms electronically—he grew more comfortable in his skin. All the paperwork shouted Dieter, Dieter Schwarz, at him.

  Raphael Mirabaud faded further into his past.

  With every report he saw, filled with the names of his ARD-10 friends and other accomplices in the shadowy, quasi-legal world of Rogue Security, he felt more like a Swiss warrior forged in ice.

  As he and Flicka sat at the dining room table, wading through reams of electronic paperwork, an alert sounded on Dieter’s new phone.

  He glanced at the text. “Shit.”

  Catching Up #2

  Flicka von Hannover

  OMG.

  The emails.

  “Shit,” Dieter said, staring at a phone in his hand.

  Flicka looked up from the computer she’d borrowed from her father. “What?”

  Dieter scowled at his phone, and his lip rose in a snarl.

  Flicka hadn’t gone on social media to watch the hubbub she’d created with that livestream that morning. Fielding overdue emails had taken the entire morning and continued past lunch. No one had allowed her access to a computer or even regular use of a phone for months when they’d been in hiding in Las Vegas and then held captive in Geneva and Monaco. Things had happened that she couldn’t even fathom. Plus, hundreds of routine emails had to be deleted.

  And, of course, thousands of missives from worried friends stuffed her inbox, asking what that livestream was about, where she was after the Winter Ball, why the Hell she hadn’t called anyone if she were actually in Monaco, why she hadn’t replied at all to anyone or posted on social media, where she went after Las Vegas, why all those soldiers had been after her, why she hadn’t replied, where was she, and why had she been so quiet lately?

  Scrolling down through the older and older emails was like rolling back the days, walking backward from captivity and anticipated sexual slavery in Monaco to being held hostage in Geneva to the kidnapping at the Las Vegas courthouse to her disappearance after Wulfram’s wedding in Montreux.

  It felt like rewinding years instead of just a few months.

  Reading through the emails, a few stuck out. The heartfelt pleadings from Rae Stone, Christine Grimaldi, and Georgie Johnson—begging her to call them, to make contact somehow—required immediate replies, apologies, and promises of visits and meals.

  And now, Dieter had seen something on his rig that he didn’t like.

  She asked again, “Dieter? What is it?”

  “The German police are here. They’ve contacted the Welfenlegion security contact, and now they’re directly outside.”

  “We just won’t let them in.”

  Dieter shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Sure, it is. What are they going to do, storm the castle?”

  His scowl deepened. “They have a warrant for your arrest.”

  Panic flashed through her. “What! Leaving Pierre isn’t a crime.”

  “Accomplice to attempted murder. Evidently, they have a bunch of other fill-in-the-blank arrest warrants for anyone else who was there that night for attempted murder and accomplice.”

  “We won’t tell them who else was there.”

  “There were surveillance cameras, and they have hard copy shots from the footage. They will be matching faces.

  “But you were rescuing me!”

  “And maybe a judge will take that into consideration, and maybe they won’t. The security business has drawbacks.”

  “We just won’t let them in, then. We’ll take you and anyone else out of here via a helicopter to Switzerland, and then fly you somewhere they can’t get you.”

  “Pretty much anywhere I’d choose to live has an extradition treaty with Germany, and Rogue Security needs me as an operator. We have to face this.”

  “Damn Pierre for doing this.”

  “I’ll call Rogue Security’s lawyers.”

  “And I’ll call mine.” As she was picking up her phone, a new email at the top of her long, long inbox caught her eye, from Pierre Monaco. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  She opened the email and read it. “It’s not just German police officers that are outside. Pierre is standing outside with them.”

  “Grimaldi? He came in person?”

  “He must have flown out as soon as he saw the video. He says he has half the Monegasque army with him.”

  “Vonlanthen said the Nice airport was crawling with private planes. Dammit.”

  “Pierre says that he will withdraw the arrest warrants if I talk to him.”

  “What the hell could he want to talk to you about, after that video this morning?”

  “I don’t know, but if it makes the arrest warrants go away, maybe I should talk to him.”

  “He has an army here. He’ll try to snatch you back.”

  Flicka picked up her phone and dialed the phone number for Pierre Monaco, the phone number she’d seen in Geneva, Pierre’s secret line. “We’ll arrange it so he can’t. You, me, Pierre, and Pierre gets one guy, and that’s it. Witnesses and not enough people to fight. The rest of his army can wait outside the castle. We’ll raise the drawbridge.”

  Dieter blinked and then blinked again. “I don’t remember seeing a drawbridge.”

  Her phone rang next to her cheek. “Goddammit. George-Five built this castle to host balls and receptions and to be pretty, not for a war. Next time we pour money into this stupid, roof-leaking, money-hemorrhaging castle, I’m adding a drawbridge. What use is a damn castle if you can’t raise the drawbridge?”

  In her ear, a man’s voice snapped, “How did you get this number?”

  She said into the phone, “Pierre, it’s Flicka. What the hell do you mean, arrest warrants?”

  Pierre’s tone instantly changed. “Flicka, darling, I apologize for everything. I beg you to allow me to talk to you and explain myself. If we talk, I’ll withdraw all the charges and the arrest warrants. Just hear me out.”

  From Pierre, that was a lot of groveling.

  She told him her terms, that he and one other person of his would be allowed into the castle along with the German police. He agreed, and she hung up.

  “Well,” she said to Dieter, “He’s on his way in.”

  Dieter leaned on his elbows. “I realize there will be a lot of talking going on. No matter who asks, you don’t have to say anything about us. I’m fine. I realize that this isn’t the time or place to discuss that. I won’t get jealous or stupid.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “I know you’re mine.”

  Flicka clung to his fingers. “Alway
s, Lieblingwächter.”

  “Always, my Durchlauchtig.” He slapped his laptop closed. “I’ll borrow a shitload of guns and knives from the Welfenlegion detail. Give me five minutes. Don’t let him in until I’m there.”

  Burn It All Down

  Flicka von Hannover

  I saw my chance,

  and I took it.

  In the sitting room, Flicka took her place in a silver chair. Eight tall, ripped men stood around her, glowering at the door.

  Some of her guards were Welfenlegion whom Wulfram had stationed at Kaiserhaus months before, and some were Rogue Security who’d arrived that morning when Dieter had contacted them.

  Yes, eight men, and more stood outside the doors behind her, ready to storm in.

  Yeah, she’d told Pierre that they would have one security person each, but this was Schloss Marienburg, her home territory, where she might have been an actual monarch but for that unfortunate pick of alliances during the Austro-Prussian War. Her family had never acknowledged the Prussian annexation of Hannover nor the Unification of Germany. All that was irrelevant to her family’s royal claims, they believed.

  Thus, in her own castle in her own kingdom, she’d bloody well have all the bodyguards she pleased because she was the Queen.

  Actually, Flicka was the Princess Royal because her older brother Wulfram would inherit the throne of the Kingdom of Hannover, but she was definitely in charge of the castle at that moment.

  Dieter Schwarz stood at her left hand. He wore black slacks that accentuated his long legs and a black tee shirt that was perhaps half a size too small so that it stretched across his broad chest. The tactical holster on his hip matched his slacks, while the blued steel of his handgun was the dark silver accent his ensemble needed.

  He stared straight forward, steely-eyed and hard-jawed with late afternoon sunlight haloing his golden hair, and he waited with Flicka.