Once Upon a Time: Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka

by Blair Babylon

  Wulfie met with the Mirabauds and other Swiss banking families every year at the Davos summit, where the world’s wealthiest elites met to ski, look at new cars and airplanes, and discuss how they would direct the world’s economies for the next year.

  Finally, she was quite sure that she had gotten to everybody.

  Or most people, at least.

  Flicka watched the crowd in the dim Louvre lobby from a vantage point above the dance floor, taking a breather from the hubbub, and Rae Stone joined her.

  Flicka had just met Rae a few days before when Wulfram had shown up unexpectedly for Flicka’s wedding, and she had only heard that Rae existed earlier that month. The auburn-haired Rae Stone was even taller than Flicka, which she thought was just delicious, and they stood together companionably and chatted, watching the wedding reception crowd.

  Flicka’s brother Wulfram was leaning on one of the long bars that wove through the crowd, talking with their cousin, William, who was scheduled to become the King of England in a few decades. A bartender gave him another highball glass as she watched.

  The two men were standing close to each other, close enough to whisper things they didn’t want anyone to know. Usually, both of them took up more personal space than that.

  Odd. Flicka watched them more closely.

  Wills offered his cell phone to Wulf, and he braced his other hand on Wulf’s shoulder as if in support. The phone’s pale glare lit Wulf’s face in the dim light as he took it.

  There were very few reasons why William would make a call on his own phone and then hand it to Wulf.

  There was only one formal occasion that would cause Wulf to appear so serious as he took the phone and spoke into it.

  Surely, it couldn’t be.

  Dieter couldn’t have been right about Wulfie and Rae, not so quickly.

  She had been teasing Wulf when she had made sure that Rae’s new clothes included an ivory, tea-length dress.

  Sort of. She had sort of been teasing him.

  Odd things happen when hope wars with cynicism.

  Strange shopping choices, at least.

  Beside Flicka’s ear, Rae asked, “They’re really close, aren’t they?”

  Flicka nodded and didn’t take her eyes off the conspiracy over by the bar. “They have a lot in common.”

  Tremendous amounts.

  Wulf nodded with the phone still at his ear, and William clapped him on the shoulder. After another few moments of talking on the phone, Wulf handed the cell back to his cousin, who spoke seriously on it for a moment before he tapped the screen to hang up.

  Wow.

  Flicka realized that she was absolutely staring at them but didn’t look away.

  When it was over, William jostled Wulf with the hand he still held on Wulf’s shoulder, grinned, and offered his other hand to shake. Wulf shook, and then they hugged in the quickest of shoulder-bumps before they broke apart and looked around to make sure no one in the throng of people surrounding them had noticed, which of course they had.

  Shock flashed through Flicka.

  In a moment of unguarded candor, because she had been drinking numerous champagne toasts at three different receptions, she murmured, “That should have been Constantin.”

  Dumbfounded denial quickly turned to expediency. She turned toward Rae Stone, the source of all this consternation.

  “What was he doing?” Rae asked her.

  “I’m sure that I have no idea.” Flicka presented a calm facade as she thought, quickly, about what all that meant and how to deal with it without causing a kerfuffle. It wasn’t that she was worried about being upstaged at her own wedding. Quite honestly, Flicka would have loved it, but she doubted that oh-so-private Wulf would make a spectacle of himself.

  But if this went wrong, it would be terrible for him, worse than anyone but Flicka knew.

  And maybe Dieter. Dieter might understand Wulf’s idiosyncrasies as well as she did.

  Maybe.

  “Come on,” Rae whispered. “Give it up.”

  “Moi?” Flicka asked. “Je ne sais pas quoi que ce soit, but I need to talk to you, quickly, before he comes back.”

  Over by the bar, Wulf and William separated. Wulf began to push through the crowd toward where Flicka and Rae were standing.

  “Merde.” Flicka raised her head to whisper into Rae’s ear. “Quickly. Listen to me. I do not want to influence you in this most personal decision, but if you need to tell him no, please be kind. I am begging you, be honest, but kind. You can hurt him so badly.”

  Rae reared back and stared at her. “I don’t ever want to hurt him, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The girl seemed so damn young to Flicka, even though Rae was only about a year younger than she was. Maybe not growing up with assassins stalking your every move left one more innocent.

  Flicka asked her, “You know about Constantin and the shooting, right?”

  Rae glanced down, frowning. “Um, yeah.”

  “You know about his memory, right?” Flicka pressed.

  “Uh, I couldn’t say.”

  Oh, good. The poor girl wasn’t going into this completely blind. “I’ll take that as yes. His memory is better than whatever he has told you, no matter what he has told you.” Wulf’s preternaturally sharp memory was a Hannover family trait, along with blond hair and brightly colored eyes. “He hides it. He puts up a false front so that no one will know.”

  Rae nodded. “A shiny, mirrored shell.”

  Flicka liked that analogy. “Yes, just like that. I didn’t realize why until I was sixteen, and I think I’m the only one who knows the extent of it. I was a terrible person at sixteen. A monster.”

  “Everyone is. It’s developmentally normal.” Rae was a psych major.

  Flicka glanced back over the crowd, where Wulf was edging closer to them all the time. This had to be fast, but Rae must understand. “I was a spoiled brat of the worst kind. Too much money, too early.”

  She stretched to whisper everything just past Rae’s shoulder. Her friends, duchesses and princesses and ladies, surrounded them. All looked elsewhere, studying the crowd, enjoying the music, and pointedly not eavesdropping. Yes, Flicka’s girls had her back.

  She whispered faster, spilling secrets. “He forgave me. He’s not cruel with it. He will forgive anything, but he cannot forget.”

  Yes, Wulf could forgive anything, but if this little ingenue cut into Wulfram with sarcasm when he proposed, so help her God, Flicka would take Rae down hard.

  Flicka looked up and followed Rae’s line of sight to Wulfram, only three rows of people away. He dodged left, going around the Deposed Duchess of Somewhere in Eastern Europe. Even Flicka couldn’t keep them all straight.

  Flicka whispered quickly to Rae, “Please, if you have to tell him no, please be kind. That moment will stab at him for the rest of his life.” She stepped backward. “Wulfie! I was just telling your friend here how beautiful she looks.”

  Her brother looked back and forth between her and Rae, his crystal-blue eyes as emotionless as sapphires.

  Flicka beamed at him, certainly giving nothing away, certainly not letting him know that she had just spilled to Rae things that he might not want her to know but that she absolutely needed to.

  Wulfie was ramrod straight beside Rae, not showing any indication at all that he had just asked the Queen of England for permission to marry.

  It was disconcerting. Flicka wanted to stamp her foot and swear like shit, but she didn’t, of course. Her Serene Highness was attending her own wedding reception, not making a scene in a restaurant in the bad part of London.

  Maybe she should grab Wulfie and drag him off amidst the Louvre’s many art galleries and small viewing areas and demand to know just what the hell he was thinking.

  Marriage!

  Seriously!

  Wulfram wasn’t the marrying type. He wasn’t the falling-in-love type, not in the slightest. That kind of love was a vulnerability that neither of them cou
ld afford. Yes, they loved each other in a very odd siblings-mixed-up-with-parent-child way, but that was to be expected.

  It wouldn’t utterly destroy the other if one of them were killed.

  Flicka followed Wulf and Rae back to their assigned dining table, fully intending to drag Wulf off to the side and talk some sense into him, at least for the night. Yoshi had been pouring scotch into him all damn night long. No matter how steady he seemed, he was probably wasted.

  Dieter met Wulf and Rae at the table. The bulk on his right arm under his black suit must be the bandage after they had sewn him up.

  Flicka took a step toward him before she remembered herself. She just wanted to make sure he was all right.

  “Ms. Stone.” Dieter held her phone out to her with his left hand. “You’ve had a phone call on your mobile.”

  “I did?” Rae glanced at the phone, her auburn hair swishing around her shoulders.

  Maybe if Dieter took Rae off somewhere, she could talk some sense into Wulfie.

  Rae turned to Flicka. “I need to make a phone call. Is there someplace quiet, someplace private?”

  Perfect. “There are a thousand little rooms in here. I’ll have someone take you up.”

  She signaled one of the waiters, who called a man in a black suit.

  When Rae walked away with him, Flicka tried to snag Wulf’s arm, but he shook her off and walked after Rae Stone as if hypnotized.

  That failing, Flicka tried to grab Dieter to tell him to bring Wulf back down to her, but Dieter had already turned to follow them to the elevator.

  Dammit.

  Dancing With Your Uncle

  Dieter Schwarz

  Sometimes, you have to suck it up

  and dance with your ex,

  no matter how much your heart breaks.

  On the third floor of the Louvre Museum, far back in an alcove hung with antique paintings, Dieter and Wulf waited.

  Around the corner, Rae Stone spoke to her mother on the phone, listening to her explain that she would be staying in Paris that night and in college afterward, despite her mother’s pleas to go home to the Southwest and the cult that had brainwashed her family. That was a sad situation.

  On the opposite wall, an Enlightenment-era painting showed an effete earl posing with his skinny dog, upper-class people doing upper-class things. Dieter didn’t care for the pretentiousness of it. He’d seen enough bullshit pretentiousness in his life.

  Mumbles from the huge crowd below rumbled through the floor and ductwork.

  It was very uncontrolled down there. Security-wise, he didn’t like it.

  The bullet’s crease stung when he moved his arm.

  From around the corner, Rae’s voice rose in defiance.

  She definitely wasn’t leaving France that night.

  Dieter cursed under his breath.

  “Something wrong?” Wulf whispered to him in Alemannic.

  “She’s not leaving you this week, damn it. I am losing a week’s pay on this.”

  Dieter and Wulf had started gambling on everything when they had been in the Swiss Army together, and the habit had spilled over to the rest of the men in Wulf’s personal protection detail.

  Wulf asked him, “Do you want to make it all back?”

  “How would I do that?” Dieter grumbled. He had outstanding bets on most key areas of Wulf’s life.

  “Double or nothing.” Wulf pulled a small, black box from his trouser pocket and snapped it open. Museum spotlights caught the fire in the ring’s dark blue center stone and sent sparks coursing through the white diamonds surrounding it. He tilted it, and the center stone turned red in the slanting light.

  It was obviously a goddamn engagement ring.

  “Sheisse!” Dieter hissed. How the hell had he missed that this was happening?

  Wulf snapped the box closed. “I retrieved it from Schloss Marienburg. The setting was my grandmother’s.”

  “Tonight? Now?” Dieter was going to lose a hell of a lot more than a week’s paycheck on this one.

  Wulf said, “I have been trying to figure out a way to get her alone someplace proper. I nearly dragged her to the top of the Eiffel Tower this afternoon. I didn’t think of a mobile call. Bloody brilliant.”

  “Sheisse. I put down a thousand euros two years ago that Harry would beat you to the altar.”

  “You should demand good odds.”

  “Are you sure? Women can be nothing but heartbreak.”

  Wulf smiled. “You have ten minutes.”

  “I had better get ten-to-one for this, Durchlaucht.”

  Wulfram smiled at Dieter’s old nickname for him, but his eyes wandered back to the entrance to the viewing room where Rae was sitting.

  Dieter muttered into his lapel that he needed to be relieved from the personal duty and waited, fidgeting, for two squirming minutes while Wulfram tapped the ring box in his pocket.

  Soon after Wulf had met Dieter in the Swiss Army, when Dieter had been Wulf’s rifle training instructor, Dieter had discovered the German word Durchlaucht, a style that meant Your Serene Highness and had been used by many of the ruling and princely families of Europe for centuries, including the Hannovers. The unisex style was used for very high-ranking princes and princesses, but not kings. It was a jab at their lost throne, and Dieter knew it.

  Wulfram had recognized the word and refused to take the bait, and after a while, it became a bro-word between them. Wulf was even amused by Dieter’s persistence in calling him that.

  When Dieter finally became comfortable enough with Wulfram’s ten-year-old little sister to tease her, he began to call her Durchlauchtig, which translated as Most Serene Highness, a higher style meant for anointed kings and queens.

  Flicka had instantly known that Durchlauchtig outranked Wulfram’s nickname of Durchlaucht. She had turned on Wulf with a haughty glimmer in her green eyes that had made both of them laugh all night.

  After that, Dieter called Flicka Durchlauchtig every chance he got, and her elfin chin popped up as she grinned at him.

  But he didn’t call her that anymore.

  Friedhelm finally got his ass upstairs so Dieter could double-time it back to the lobby and the reception. He mentally listed the people he needed to find and convince that they needed to lay down a double-or-nothing bet before Wulfram started telling people that he’d proposed to Rae Stone.

  To hell with double or nothing. Dieter was going to wager ten-to-one that Wulf would propose tonight. He might as well make some money off this inside information.

  That sounded like something a Swiss banker would say, not a soldier. A clammy shiver rolled down his spine.

  As soon as Dieter hit the bottom of the stairs, Flicka was standing right there and grabbed his arm. Damn it, she was supposed to be having a fantastic time at her own reception, not stalking him.

  Flicka’s gaze fixed right on Dieter’s, and she spun him to face her. Even in the dim Louvre lobby, he could see the strobe light glinting in her crystal green eyes.

  She demanded, “Did he propose?”

  Dieter jumped in shock. “How the hell did you know that?”

  “It was entirely obvious.”

  He stepped back from Flicka, the subject, and scanned the area. No attackers, no lens glare. No immediate danger. He began evaluating farther out. “It was not obvious. I’m going to lose thousands if I don’t double-or-nothing all those bets.”

  “So he did propose?” Flicka nearly shouted.

  “Not yet.” They were too exposed here, standing on the edge of the crowd in full view of the balconies. He flipped his hand around and took her arm to guide her away from the crowd. His fingers pressed into her soft skin. “He’s going to, though. He has a ring. How the hell did you know?”

  “He was talking with our cousin William. William called his grandmother, I assume, on his cell phone. Wulf talked to her, very seriously, and then there were congratulations.”

  The initial scan for danger was completed with no targets. Dieter began sk
imming his gaze over the balconies and knots of people, looking for situations while he argued, “He doesn’t need the Queen of England’s permission to marry. He’s not British royal family in imminent danger of being crowned king of Britain.”

  Flicka was looking at him, not around herself. When had she gotten so lax about security? She said, “Not under English rules, but house rules. He needed permission from her as the sovereign head of the House of Welf to marry.”

  The balconies were clear. The room was clear. Dieter began a more complicated analysis, looking at people who were moving in the shadows or fidgeting with their clothes.

  His peripheral vision caught glimpses of Flicka’s slim form, the swells of her breasts and hips in the ivory dress she wore, and flashes of the green crystal of her eyes.

  He frowned. “But Wulf is the head of your House.”

  Flicka shook her head. “Wulf is the head of the House of Hannover, which is a cadet branch of the House of Welf. She’s an anointed sovereign, so she’s the head of the House of Welf. It’s complicated. He did need her permission or else he would be disinherited, which means that some cousin or other would instantly become insanely wealthy. Anyway, William congratulated him, so I guess Wulf got her permission, which means he’s going to ask her.”

  “I’m glad I’m Swiss and therefore neutral in all things. We overthrew our minor monarchs long before you Germans did.”

  “Is he proposing up there?”

  Instead of answering, Dieter surveyed the room, not liking the many balconies thronged with people above them. “You shouldn’t be out here in the open.”

  “It’s my wedding reception.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Pierre’s security detail frisked everyone. You set up metal detectors for anyone who didn’t have an HRH in front of their name.”