Two years ago.
Flicka forced her legs to move and strode over to where Dieter stood.
She whispered, “What the hell is wrong with you that you came barging in here, making it all about yourself, at such a time?”
“I didn’t know that Rae was having complications. My wife left me today while I was at work,” Dieter said, his voice quiet in the busy kitchen.
A bitchy part of Flicka’s brain piped up, asking, Karma?
But Flicka didn’t say that because her perfect, shiny, medieval suit of armor needed Dieter on board with her plan. Her shattered heart hurt too much for anything else.
He said, “She cleaned out the bank accounts that I use for my business, for over a hundred people who depend on me for their mortgages and food and everything else, and abandoned our daughter with a neighbor. I think she’s been cheating on me with someone else.”
Flicka said, “Wulfram and Rae need us both to help them right now. Your petty problems are nothing, nothing, compared to what they’re going through. Money is not a problem. Wulfram will dump money on you until you’re crushed under it if you let him. Your daughter appears to be a perfect little angel who is not in any distress. Her mother isn’t dead of cancer, horribly and in pain. She’s just on a nookie run with a hottie. I will arrange for nannies or daycare or whatever she needs. Rae might die, and if she does, Wulf will fall, hard, down that black pit in his soul. You will be there for Wulf for whatever he needs, got it?”
Dieter nodded, his blond hair falling over his forehead what little bit his military-style haircut would allow. “I was just shocked. I should have seen it coming, you know? Wulf would have read her mind or whatever he does and known that she was going to leave. I didn’t know all this was going on.”
A person you’re in love with breaks up with you, and then you’re confronted with evidence that they’d been screwing someone else? “That must suck to be blindsided like that.”
He flinched and stared into his coffee. “Is Rae okay?”
“For the moment, yes, but this could go very wrong, very quickly. Wulfram might need us at any time, and we must be there for him. I promised her. I promised I would do whatever it takes to keep him from killing himself if she dies.”
Dieter closed his gray eyes for a moment and swallowed hard. “It’s that serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“Sheisse.”
“We both need to be here, in the house.”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding.
“So here’s what we’re going to do. Whenever we’re in a room together, we’re polite. You and I will pretend just like we used to that everything was just damn fine.”
“I thought things were better between us lately,” he said.
“How old is your daughter, Dieter?”
“I swear I didn’t—”
“How old?”
He bowed his head. “Fifteen months.”
“I can do the damn math. Was she conceived before or after you decided that we shouldn’t have a relationship anymore, that even a secret relationship was too much?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said.
“I heard you got married and had a kid, but I didn’t know you walked away from me and married someone else in less than a month.”
Which meant that it wasn’t that Dieter hadn’t wanted to get married. It meant that Dieter didn’t want to marry her.
Flicka grabbed onto the cold marble countertop to steady herself. “I don’t want to hear about how you met Alina’s mother and then you didn’t give a shit about me anymore. You left me for her, didn’t you?”
“Flicka, I’m sorry—”
“Were you already screwing her when you left London?”
“No.”
“I don’t want to hear it. I can’t bear it. Pierre may be a Rat Bastard, but he’s honest about it. I know what he is, and I’m okay with that. You weren’t supposed to be like that, Dieter. You weren’t supposed to do that to me. I trusted you with my heart and my life. I don’t know how to trust anyone anymore.”
“Let me explain—”
“No. You did all the talking that night. This time, I’m talking. I’m stronger now. I’m tougher. I’m not that little girl who cried over you anymore,” she lied, “and you’re not going to abandon Wulfram when he needs you more than ever before. You will do exactly what I say, got it?”
“Yes,” he said, glancing back at the staff, who were cooking and paying no attention to their end of the kitchen.
“Good. When Wulf and Rae aren’t around, don’t you even goddamn talk to me. I don’t want to hear your stupid voice. Understand?”
He stared into his coffee. “Yes.”
Flicka stomped out of the kitchen.
She stood at the bottom of the stairs for a minute, breathing hard and trying to calm her panicking heart that was shredding itself in her chest, before she climbed the stairs to be with Rae and Wulfram.
Damn him.
Flicka had thought the last two years had scarred her, toughening her skin until nothing could slice her again.
Seeing the baby Alina and calculating what must have happened exactly two years ago had flayed her all over again.
Under The Same Roof
Flicka von Hannover
Damage.
During the summer in the southwestern US, the sun isn’t a benevolent warm hug in the sky like in London or Switzerland.
The southwestern sun is a white-hot star that scorches the sky and sears pavement and sidewalks. It blasts laser beams, thinning the air, and staying out too long feels like radiation burns on your skin.
Flicka stayed inside Schloss Southwestern, only venturing out in the early morning for a quick swim in the central courtyard pool or driving around in air-conditioned vehicles.
Even at night, the hot air clung to her skin, making her sweat almost instantly.
It was absolutely abominable.
And Dieter Schwarz skulked around the house, carefully avoiding her as much as possible.
Yet she stayed on in the parched, air-conditioned house, keeping Rae company and watching Wulf.
Wulf was perfectly calm. He sat beside his wife as she lay in their bed for hours, talking with her, watching dozens of movies, and just being there.
He had a television installed on the bookcases that filled the walls so Rae could comfortably watch while lying on her left side.
He brought in carpenters to build a special desk that was wheeled up to the side of the bed, where textbooks or tablets could be propped at an angle for easier reading, and a computer monitor also tilted for her viewing as she typed or dictated.
When Wulf was in the bedroom with his wife, he smiled calmly and cared for whatever she needed or wanted.
Outside of the bedroom, Wulf was a steel-coated machine, betraying no emotion as he manically finished tasks so he could return to her.
His despair worried Flicka. There was no way she could leave.
Flicka had a desk moved into their bedroom so she could keep Rae company while they worked.
For the wedding, Flicka kept all the metaphorical balls in the air, ready to slash a proverbial ribbon and activate the Rube Goldberg machine of wedding planning.
At the first word that Rae and Wulf had been cleared to have their wedding, Flicka could make one phone call to set the process in motion, pick up her already-packed suitcase from her closet, and be driven to the airport where Pierre’s smaller jet would be filing its flight plan and fueling to fly her to Montreux to oversee the details.
The concierges at the Le Montreux Palace hotel were highlighted in Flicka’s contacts list.
Private plane companies were on her speed-dial.
Catering and cloth goods companies had their supplies ready and stored to avoid dust or must.
Florists hovered their fingers over the purchase buttons, ready to place large orders of flowers for the decor and bouquets.
Their wedding clothes were packed into garment bags
in Flicka’s closet, ready to be driven to the plane. The final fittings and steamings would occur directly before the ceremony.
Flicka teetered on the edge of the start line, ready for the race to begin.
Because, surely, at some point, Rae would be okay, and the wedding would happen.
The other option was unthinkable. Flicka refused to consider it.
Dieter Schwarz skulked around the house, keeping out of Flicka’s way during the days and being perfectly pleasant when they were cooped-up together at Wulf’s long dining table for supper.
Wulf had his supper on a tray upstairs with his wife, of course, though he often came down for dessert or a glass of wine, afterward.
Every night, Dieter and Flicka dined with Yoshi, who had also stayed at the residence in the awful case that he would be needed. Yoshi played the perfect host at supper and did not seem to notice the tension between them. Every night, he selected a cultural or political topic for them to discuss, and they dived in whole-heartedly and debated with good humor and equanimity.
While Flicka silently seethed.
But she snapped her shiny princess armor shut and debated prettily every night with Dieter, Yoshi, and eventually, Wulf.
She said nothing that might have been construed as passive-aggressive. None of her sentences might have included a barbed double entendre. She was the soul of pleasantry.
For a week.
A whole damn week.
Flicka had to do something else.
The nursery required assembling and decorating.
Flicka turned her attention toward the baby’s needs.
The Welfenlegion were conscripted to assemble Rae’s top ten choices of cribs and display them where she lay on the bed, laughing the whole time at the spectacle.
Flicka organized the crib parade, extolling the safety and design virtues of each like a beauty pageant or game show host as tall, strong men wheeled the beds around the room for Rae’s inspection.
Rae made a sound choice rather quickly, and Flicka was pleased.
Though she was again rather too idle.
Another week of scorching weather and blazing light outside the windows passed.
Flicka pled a cold virus and hid in her little suite for two days, but she soon realized that the unusual flowers in her room were giving her allergies. As soon as the odd yellow blooms were removed, her eyes and nose cleared up within hours.
Dammit.
She rejoined the household and hung out with Rae.
Some flowers went out of season in the middle of July, and would thus be unavailable for any wedding that might occur. Substitutions had to be decided.
New flowers were selected.
They were beautiful.
Another week of perfectly balanced stasis and torturous dinner parties with Dieter, Yoshi, and the belated Wulf.
Slowly, Flicka seethed less.
Seething in rage was exhausting.
So now, two years later, she had a little more information about why her affair with Dieter had ended. It didn’t change anything. It wouldn’t have changed anything if she had known it at the time, except perhaps to have hurt her more deeply.
Her relationship with Dieter had been doomed from the start. He’d wanted something else, and he’d found it, at least for a short time. Maybe he needed someone less driven who kowtowed to his needs more, and if that was the case, Flicka could not have been a good match for him. It was probably for the best, after all.
When Pierre had courted her, she was ready for him, having learned valuable lessons about heartbreak, acceptance, and commitment.
When she had been very young, she’d had a child’s crush on the dashing Pierre Grimaldi.
Maybe, in her innocence then, she’d known that Pierre was the one for her.
And so Flicka let her anger at Dieter Schwarz settle down and flow away because she had, indeed, ended up married to the right man.
The suppers became easier for her, and she perhaps didn’t argue quite so vehemently against all of Dieter’s ideas.
Maybe when he smiled at her, she noticed—in a platonic, detached way, of course—that he was an incredibly handsome man, with a Nordic jaw and cheekbones carved by testosterone and gray eyes like smoke above a smoldering fire.
Yoshi seemed more pleased with their supper conversation, and the tension drifted away from the house.
Then, one day, Wulf took Rae to a doctor’s appointment.
There was an ultrasound.
Wulf’s voice on Flicka’s phone said, “The placenta is viewed to have lifted off the cervix. It is safe for Rae to travel, though we must keep a close watch and not overtax her.”
Flicka sprang into action.
Her first call was to Dieter Schwarz.
Mission Is A Go
Dieter Schwarz
Go time.
Over the weeks that stretched into months while he lived at Wulfram’s house under the same roof as Flicka, Dieter took over the Welfenlegion again as a side project while he managed his private security firm, Rogue Security, and tracked his wayward wife.
Wulfram’s lawyers called Dieter the day after he arrived, while he was still reeling from Gretchen’s decision, and he signed the paperwork for legal separation based on abandonment and full custody of his daughter within a week. That snarky note she had signed and dated made the proceedings exceptionally quick. The divorce process began in her absence.
Once Dieter confirmed that Gretchen had left with his friend Hans Werner, tracking them had become easier. Dieter was disappointed in how easy it was to track them to northern California, using the information from Hans’s credit cards where they checked into hotels. Any of the Welfenlegion should have been better at subterfuge than that.
Oddly, Gretchen hadn’t taken her passport, so she and Hans couldn’t even leave the country.
They tried to spend the money that they had stolen from Dieter, but he and Wulfram’s lawyers slapped liens and holds on their accounts. Dieter found evidence that she had sold her car for cash, which was just fine with him. It meant that she wasn’t able to get the money that she’d stolen, and she probably didn’t have any other money of his hidden.
He silently raged at her through computer screens and via lawyers’ documents, but that anger soon turned on himself.
Dieter blamed himself for causing all this heartache. He had tried to do the honorable thing at every turning point in his life, which had always been a terrible decision.
He had walked away from Flicka because he had been betraying Wulfram’s trust, he wasn’t an important enough person to be her husband, and because he had seen a man at her Shooting Star Cotillion who looked too familiar. That man had overlooked Dieter because Dieter was merely a hired security thug, but he would eventually see Dieter and know who he was. That was too dangerous for Flicka.
When Dieter had left, he’d broken both their hearts.
He had married Gretchen because, after a drunken one-night-stand, she’d gotten pregnant, and he’d taken responsibility for a young, wild woman who wasn’t ready for a family. His only consolation was that when Gretchen had finally, inevitably bolted, the marriage had made it easy for him to take full custody of Alina. His daughter was certainly his responsibility and his one joy in this part of his life.
There was one more decision, far in his past, where he had made the honorable choice, but in that case, the honorable choice was the only moral choice. He had lost his birth family and his name, but he couldn’t have lived with the alternative. It would have caused worse suffering for too many.
But he had caused heartache at every turn.
He had to do better in this world.
He began by being a better father to Alina, taking care of her, and by being as studiously kind to Flicka as she would allow him to be. Finding out that Alina had been conceived less than a month after he’d left London had hurt her more, and again, he wished he had found a way to tell her about Alina earlier.
At suppers wit
h Yoshi, he discussed the topic of the night carefully with him and Flicka, trying to support her arguments wherever he could. It warmed his heart to see that her subversive, anarchist view of the world hadn’t dulled one bit. If anything, her arguments became more honed during their discussions. He tried not to revel in them too obviously. Still, he loved seeing that she still wanted to burn down the world.
Over wine and time and the excellent food that Wulf’s chefs prepared, her sharpness toward him smoothed out.
He tried harder to make it up to her.
If he ever got another chance to be with her, he would give anything—his heart, his soul, his body—to do it right.
But it was unlikely. Flicka had married Pierre Grimaldi, a man with the stature and resources to literally give her the world, as she should have.
So he tried to make it right in other ways.
The lawyers found Gretchen and Hans wretchedly shacked up in a cabin in a forest, trying to live on love. His lawyers showed them Dieter’s offer of a hundred thousand dollars in exchange for all the frozen funds restored to Dieter, a final divorce, and his full custody of Alina. Gretchen signed the divorce papers. Dieter counter-signed the paperwork just under a month after he had found her note and his child abandoned with a neighbor.
His scrawl on the line was unrecognizable, but the name below was one he hadn’t seen in a long time. He stared at it for a while before he put the paperwork away.
Dieter was drinking coffee in the Welfenlegion staff office in Wulfram’s house, working on an organizational chart for Wulf’s security team. Since Dieter had resigned from Wulf’s employ, ad hoc positions and teams had cropped up, leading to confusion. The wide paper spread on the desk looked like Europe in 1917, with German names and acronyms scribbled over an arrow-graffitied map.
Once Upon a Time: Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka Page 15