Once Upon a Time: Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka

by Blair Babylon

  Violence and trauma echoed through their family lines.

  She kept up with her security guys, who were watching the roofs and crowd more than looking at her. Her job was to stay with them.

  Ahead of her, Rae and Wulf reached their SUV. Wulf started to hand Rae inside.

  Flicka and Pierre were yards behind them and veered off for the next SUV.

  The high roofs on the houses standing shoulder-to-shoulder around the basilica would be perfect vantage spots for snipers.

  Flicka was halfway across the courtyard, watching for lens flashes, when the sparkle of sunshine on glass caught her eye.

  A person stood at the back of the crowd over by the basilica’s white walls, holding a long, dark gun, aiming.

  Her breath blasted out her mouth in a scream.

  A man’s hands were already on her shoulders, spinning her underneath him and hurtling her toward the ground. Her back thumped the grass and earth.

  Dieter’s gray eyes were wide as he followed her down and scrambled to gather her arms and head under his body as he crouched. His shoulder touched her forehead, and he bowed his head over hers. “Stay down. For the love of God, Flicka, stay down. Don’t move.”

  The heat of his body flowed over her, and the rich, comforting scent of warm cinnamon drifted between them.

  “But I can run,” she whispered. “We can outrun him.”

  He said, “I will protect you. Stay down.”

  Dieter twitched like someone had kicked him. He gasped, and a warm wetness soaked through Flicka’s dress and onto her ribs.

  She asked, “Dieter?”

  His Bluetooth earbud had fallen out of his ear, and she heard someone shout, “Free!” through it.

  Dieter rolled off of her and grabbed his upper arm. Scarlet blood dribbled between his fingers as he tried to staunch the bleeding.

  Two of Wulf’s tall security staff tugged at Flicka’s arms, trying to get her up and to the cars. She fought them off. Another black suit stood above her, aiming his pistol at anyone who moved near the perimeter.

  Wulf slid to the ground beside Flicka, grabbing at where a blob of scarlet blood stained her white dress down her left side. His deep voice cracked as he yelled, “Flicka!”

  “I’m not hurt! Dieter!” Flicka shouted, pointing.

  On the grass beside her, Dieter lay on his side, clutching his upper arm. Flicka held her hands above him, unsure what to do.

  Rae Stone was running toward them, her long legs and arms pumping as she ran.

  A few yards away, a pile of burly men sprang apart, hauled Pierre Grimaldi to his feet, and hustled him toward a limo.

  Pierre turned and reached through their broad backs, shouting, “Flicka! No! Retourne!”

  The security men shoved Pierre into the car.

  They didn’t come back for Flicka.

  Wulf grabbed her arm. “Are you all right? There’s blood—”

  Flicka told him, “I’m fine. He got Dieter!”

  Rae dove to the ground beside them, looking around wildly at Dieter’s arm and Flicka’s dress.

  Blood spilled between Dieter’s fingers where his hand clamped his arm and soaked his black suit coat, darkening it. He swore in a mishmash of German and Swiss-Deutch.

  Flicka crawled toward Dieter, the grass wet under her palms. Her knees caught in the silk fabric of her wedding dress. “Are you all right? Answer me! Dieter, are you all right!”

  Rae grabbed Dieter’s arm and pressed her hand over where he was bleeding.

  Flicka touched his leg. “You’re okay, aren’t you? You’re okay.”

  Over where the cars waited, Pierre’s car peeled out, its tires smoking. Security SUVs chased after it.

  Wulf yanked off his coat and vest and said to Flicka, “We need to put pressure on the wound. We need bandages.”

  A beeping police car skidded in front of the black SUVs and limousines.

  Flicka tore at the slip inside her dress, ripping off a long, white strip of silk to use as a bandage. She threw it to Rae, who still held her hand over Dieter’s arm.

  Rae caught the white streamer out of the air, wadded it up, and crammed it against the wound, pressing to stop the bleeding.

  Flicka scrabbled for the seam up her side, ripping more bandage strips.

  Wulf twisted his vest into a long cord, looped it around Dieter’s arm and the wad of ivory silk, and twisted the cloth, making a compression bandage.

  Flicka ripped another swatch of cloth off and tossed it to Rae.

  Rae caught it and dabbed at the blood seeping around the bandage. Scarlet bloomed from the inside like blood drifting through water.

  Rae crooned to Dieter, “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

  Dieter cussed like a Swiss sailor. Flicka almost laughed at him as panic whirled inside her.

  An ambulance wailed and screeched to a stop beside the SUVs.

  Flicka looked up. Men in black suits encircled them, facing outward and covering the area with their handguns.

  She peered beyond the men to where she had seen the sunlight flash off a gun’s scope.

  Beyond the security guys’ legs over by the white wall of the basilica, a man was held down by more of their security team. The gunman strained, twisting to try to escape. One of the suits punched him in the ribs.

  Wheels and running feet pounded toward Flicka. The security guys around them parted to let the stretcher through.

  The orderlies lifted Dieter onto the stretcher and strapped him down.

  He was watching where she sat on the ground in her torn, bloody dress as they wheeled him away.

  Flicka couldn’t seem to stand. Her legs had no strength now that the emergency was over. She couldn’t even push herself up, and when some of Wulf’s other bodyguards helped her to her feet, she trembled.

  Damn it, she wasn’t like this.

  Another security man lifted Rae to standing. Wulf sprang to his feet.

  Another of Wulf’s Welfenlegion said, “Wulfram, now. We should leave now.”

  Wulf grabbed Rae’s arm and pushed Flicka toward another group of his Welfenlegion. “Take her back to the hotel. It’s safer if we ride separately.”

  Flicka watched them walk away and climbed into the SUV behind theirs with Wulf’s other security man.

  Inside the SUV, she told the driver, “Follow the ambulance.”

  “But madam,” he said, “Mr. von Hannover instructed us to take you back to the hotel where our security cordon is set up.”

  “I said, to the hospital,” Flicka snapped at him.

  “Mr. Schwarz will be fine. We’ll have information—”

  “Take me to the hospital to see him right now.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  At The Hospital

  Flicka von Hannover

  I thought he was going to die.

  I had to reach him.

  Flicka strode through the antiseptic-laced halls of the hospital, her lace wedding dress dragging on the tile behind her.

  The cathedral-length train weighed on her arm where she had wadded the length of white silk, but it spilled over. Dieter’s blood was drying to a stiff mess on her side, and her bottom and back were stained green and brown from the grass and dirt where he had tackled her to the ground.

  Every time she closed her eyes, she could see his face above her again—his dove gray eyes wide with alarm as his arms closed around her head—and feel that awful flinch when the bullet hit him.

  If the bullet had flown just inches to the left, it would have burrowed through Dieter’s ribs and into his heart or lungs.

  If he hadn’t been perfectly in position and protecting her, the bullet would have slammed into Flicka’s temple and probably killed her.

  And then Wulf would have been alone again, and another von Hannover would have been in the ground, and the media would have whipped themselves into a frenzy.

  Dieter had saved her life, and she wanted to shake that asshole for it.

  Damn it, where was
that exam room? It was supposed to be right around—

  There it was.

  She wheeled around the doorframe to what should be Dieter’s examining room. “Dieter! Leiblingwächter!”

  Inside the examination room, Dieter lay on the bed wearing a hospital gown over his black slacks, watching a doctor sew stitches to close the terrible gash on his arm. Other scars—a few livid, many more faded with age—marked his tanned skin.

  He looked up at her, his gray eyes wide but unreadable.

  Herr and Frau Keller, the older couple who had been Wulf’s head butler and head of staff since Flicka was six, stood beside Dieter’s hospital bed.

  Frau Keller raised one graying eyebrow at Flicka.

  Oh, Lord. Flicka shouldn’t call Dieter Leiblingwächter in front of anyone. She wasn’t even sure how it had popped out of her mouth.

  In German, leibwächter means bodyguard. Flicka had combined that word with the common endearment leibling, which means darling in the same language, to get leiblingwächter. Thus, it came out to mean something like darling guard because there’s nothing Germans like more than a good compound word.

  “Oh hello, Frau Keller, Herr Keller,” Flicka recovered. “Wulf sent me to make sure Dieter was all right.”

  Frau Keller frowned, confused. “No, Herr von Hannover sent us to ensure that Herr Schwarz received competent care.”

  “Well, he must have sent both of us,” she lied. “Dieter? You’re all right?”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” he said, not looking away from Flicka while the surgeon pushed a needle delicately through the bloody meat of his muscle, sewing it together. “I’ll be fine.”

  Blood ran over his tanned skin below the wound. The doctor caught it with a gauze pad.

  Flicka said, “That looks like it hurts.”

  “It’s entirely numb. I wish I’d had the Novocaine for the tetanus shot, earlier.”

  Flicka held onto the doorjamb to steady herself. “Well, if you’re all right, then, I’ll tell Wulfram that.”

  Dieter nodded to her.

  Flicka fled.

  Damn it, she’d wanted to talk to him about it and tell him that Pierre’s Secret Service officers were more than capable of guarding her. Dieter didn’t need to grab her, throw her underneath his strong body, and lay on top of her.

  Except, of course, that Monaco’s Secret Service men had all piled on top of Pierre and whisked him off to the waiting limousines.

  She would have been entirely unprotected and would have probably died, except for Dieter Schwarz.

  Damn him.

  Mass Execution

  Flicka von Hannover

  It seemed sufficient.

  After Flicka had visited Dieter in the hospital and then been driven back to her hotel, she walked into Pierre’s and her suite still wearing her blood-crusted wedding gown.

  She slammed the door open and strode past Rainier Grimaldi, Pierre’s uncle and the reigning Prince of Monaco. He startled like the door had almost hit him, but he was feet away from the swinging door. He shouldn’t be so damn skittish.

  Rainier caught the door and left the suite.

  Four Secret Service men followed him, staying a discreet distance back.

  In Rainier’s defense, blood, gore, and mud covered her white dress. That could startle someone as genteel as an actual sovereign head of a country.

  Pierre’s Head of Security, Quentin Sault, was leaning against the wall by the windows, scowling with his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

  Pierre Grimaldi was in a cold rage, sitting in a chair with his legs crossed, sipping scotch, while a crowd of his Secret Service men stood in front of him, hands clasped behind their backs, heads bowed.

  Two of them had bloody lips.

  For just a second, Flicka had an image of someone with a machine gun mowing them all down.

  Instead, Pierre said to them, “Get out. I will never have you in my presence again. Your employment with the palace and the government is terminated as of this very moment. Get out of my sight.”

  The men slunk out of the suite without a word.

  Flicka asked, “Pierre?”

  He rose from the chair and walked over to her, and she could have sworn that fury was boiling off of him in waves. His shirt cuff was stained red, and his knuckles were bleeding.

  He said, “I am sorry. You will never be unprotected again. Evidently, there were orders from my uncle that my personal safety should be prioritized over yours. I think this mass firing will send a message. I’ll talk to my uncle when we get home. I think this needs to be done in private, not here in France.”

  “It’s okay, though,” she said. “Dieter was there. He pushed me down.”

  “And he took a bullet for you, yes.” Pierre touched her shoulders and the blood that stiffened the side of her dress. “Are you truly all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” she demurred.

  “Your driver called in and said that you were unhurt, but you had insisted on going to the hospital.”

  “I had to check on my brother’s security man.” She thought fast. “It’s traditional in the Welfenlegion that my brother or I personally check on anyone who’s been hurt in the line of duty.”

  “That’s admirable,” Pierre said. “Inefficient, but admirable. Next time, please let them bring you to a secured location rather than run an errand at the hospital, all right?”

  “I’m hoping there won’t be a next time,” Flicka said, “or if there is, that your Secret Service won’t leave the prince’s wife unprotected.”

  Pierre’s brows lowered. “I will make sure they never do it again.”

  Reception At The Louvre

  Flicka von Hannover

  My feet

  feel like hamburger and ground bones

  in these damned shoes.

  In the lobby of the Louvre museum, Flicka stood on the raised dais near the orchestra, surrounded by her friends at her third wedding reception of the night.

  Above her, stars shone in the night sky through the glass pyramid of the Louvre. Half of the orchestra was on a break, so the remnants of the string section glided through a chamber piece of lilting background music. Hordes of wedding guests thronged the appetizer buffets, steaming scents of pastries and sizzling meat. Black tuxedoes and bright ball gowns mingled among the round tables that studded the lobby, swaying with conversation and laughter.

  Flicka’s previous two wedding receptions had been held in the largest hotel ballrooms around Paris. Flicka and Pierre had made their entrance, worked the room efficiently together, and taken so many selfies with hundreds of people. They had danced their first dance together at each, smiling as always, and then rushed to the next reception.

  Flicka’s charities had received millions of dollars that night from people who had so desperately wanted to be invited to a royal wedding that they had paid handsomely for the privilege. Many millions. Flicka was more than pleased with the numbers.

  At least three schools would be built and fully funded forever from this night, she calculated. Maybe four. Maybe even five.

  This last reception in the lobby of the Louvre Museum was for their friends, family, and particularly large donors, though those three populations tended to overlap heavily. She and Pierre had descended the spiral staircase for their entrance, just like the other nobles and royals had done during the evening before them.

  Flicka enjoyed being the center of the spectacle a little too much, but that is a princess’s job, right? She worked hard to do her job spectacularly well.

  And if she had her way, she would be the last person ever to do it.

  Flicka smiled over the crowd at her wedding reception, dressed in their jewels and satin and royal honors sashes. They surged and splashed around the vast floor of the Louvre Museum’s lobby. Human rivers ran through the people standing, first following other people breaking through the crowd toward the buffets and then carried along as they talked and met and flowed by.

  Flicka had
already made the rounds here, too, enjoying these greetings far more than the previous ones. She could joke and laugh with cousins and old school chums. Even her corset under her dress felt looser.

  So many cousins and aunts and uncles. Hundreds. Probably thousands. Some with royal or noble titles, but all with old money wealth and sensibility.

  She took Pierre’s strong arm, and they made their way around the room, meeting old friends.

  Several of her old school chums and relatives had shown up, just for fun.

  Alexandre Grimaldi, Pierre’s cousin and her friend from boarding school, insisted on a quick waltz. He left the emaciated model he had brought with him. She sought out the bar while Alexandre, who was as extravagantly tall as Wulfie and Dieter, held out his hands with a tired smile on his handsome face.

  Flicka knew a little too much about Alexandre, and they both were aware of it. Yet he was an old friend, and now he was her cousin, and he waltzed gently with her. She teased him, “I can’t believe that you aren’t going to play your violin at my wedding reception. I don’t know how you weaseled out of it.”

  He smiled a little more, but a glint of manic light lit his dark eyes. “It’s for the best. You never know what will happen when I play the violin.”

  Flicka grinned prettily at him, but she shuddered inside. “We’d probably better not risk it, then.” She regarded the orchestra. “Maybe they could play one of your contemporary songs, and you could sing for us.”

  Alexandre laughed out loud, his blond-streaked hair swinging by his shoulders. “I’m incognito, remember?”

  “Yes, of course you are, Xan.”

  Flicka made the rounds, dancing or conversing with every guest of the hundreds that attended.

  Valerian Mirabaud, the patriarch of a Swiss banking family that owned the private bank Geneva Trust, was probably personally wealthier and certainly controlled more money and power than most of the royals in the room. He led Flicka in a stately waltz around the dance floor, perfectly respectable the whole time and chatting reasonably about Swiss politics, while his middle-aged daughter Océane danced with Pierre. Flicka knew Océane’s husband, too. They were a nice couple, around forty or so. Valerian himself was tall and lean, and the dim lights glinted off his full, silver hair as he swayed and dipped.