At Midnight

by Blair Babylon

  “That’s good to know,” Sophie said, though she sounded troubled.

  Flicka turned in her seat. “I’m just going to rest for a few minutes. It’s been a long day.” Even though she had napped on the plane.

  “Of course,” Sophie said. “I’ll wake you when we’re close to the house.”

  Yes, the house that Raphael had tried to keep them out of.

  Flicka didn’t think she would actually sleep.

  Wait—

  Not Raphael.

  Dieter.

  Her Dieter, her Lieblingwächter.

  The tires growled on the road under her feet, and Flicka remained motionless in the seat, trying to look serene and asleep so she could think.

  Every mile brought them closer to the Mirabaud house.

  Whispered, In The Dark

  Flicka von Hannover

  We weren’t sure if there were microphones

  in the walls.

  Flicka lay on the bed, holding Dieter’s large hand on the clean, white sheet.

  Dieter stretched out on the other side of the bed, his long legs reaching almost the bottom of the bed. He was wearing pale blue, silk pajamas that still bore the creases from the package a sleepy housekeeper had handed him.

  Flicka wore an oversized, white tee shirt that smelled faintly like the formaldehyde of new clothes.

  During the quick evacuation of the Nevada townhouse, Flicka had thrown a footie sleeper in the diaper bag for Alina, so she was sleeping in the second bedroom of the suite on a double bed, hemmed in by pillows.

  The mercenaries had checked the suite and then withdrawn for the night, staying in the suite’s living room, as if Flicka and Raphael would be perfectly tractable now that it was bedtime. Considering their professionalism earlier, it had surprised her.

  When the mercenaries spoke, which was little and not often, they didn’t have a Swiss accent, nor French, nor German. Flicka was pretty sure that she heard a flat, Russian accent when they did say something.

  Flicka gripped his fingers. “Dieter, talk to me.”

  “It’s Raphael,” he said, and his voice still had that hollow sound. “You have to call me Raphael, and I need you not to slip and call me the other name, even in here. I need to keep that history out of it, if I can.”

  “I can do it,” Flicka said. “I’ll watch myself. I can say it, but I can’t believe your name is Raphael. It seems so weird, but I always thought of you as my guardian angel.”

  “An angel.” His chuff of breath sounded like a snort. “I’m anything but.”

  “I wish I’d known, even if it was our secret.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I’m sorry that I didn’t whisper it to you in bed in London and trust that you could handle it.”

  All the retorts rose in her throat, every one of them meant to slice him open and hurt him like she was hurting.

  Instead, she said, “What was it that Shakespeare said? That a rose by any other name would smell as sweet? It doesn’t matter what you call yourself. You’ve saved my life more times than I can count, and Wulfram’s life more times than that. You’ll always be my Lieblingwächter. Nothing can change that.”

  He held her hand in his fist and pressed it to his heart. His pulse beat fast beneath her hand, and he whispered, “Durchlauchtig.”

  She smiled at the old, grammatically incorrect nickname. “What happens if I slip?”

  “You can’t.” He rolled his head on the pillow, shaking his head no. His gray eyes didn’t leave hers. “It’s important to keep this consistent. What did you tell my mother in the car?”

  Flicka recounted the conversation. “That was okay, right?”

  He smiled a little. “That’s the best I could have hoped for. She didn’t say anything about me?”

  “I think she wanted to, but I negged her and made her feel bad about bringing up Constantin’s murder.”

  “Did you say that Wulfram and I are—close?”

  So very repressed, and Flicka almost laughed at him. “No. I said you met when you were young and that you headed his security team. And that you were good at it. And then I pretended to go to sleep.”

  “That’s okay. That is about as good as I could have hoped for.”

  Flicka wanted to laugh at how terribly serious he was being. “What could she have said about you that was so awful?”

  His downward glance was odd, and the creases at the corners of his eyes scared her. “You’re going to hear this at some point. It might as well be from me.”

  She held his hand more firmly. “You’re my Lieblingwächter. Nothing could change my mind about you.”

  He smiled a little more, and his thumb rubbed across her knuckles. “A few months ago, you hated my guts.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Okay, but I had good reasons.”

  “Yeah, you did.” His voice was breathy, almost wistful. “I betrayed them, my family. The bank had gotten into some bad things, some criminal things. I became involved, too. Something happened. It went too far. It went somewhere I couldn’t go. They crossed my line, and I was as surprised as anyone else that I had a line. I went to the police, but I didn’t stay around to take the blame. I changed my name and left so they couldn’t find me.”

  He’d joined the Swiss army, Flicka knew, but he hadn’t said that. That might be secret. He hadn’t said anything about Rogue Security since his father had appeared, either. Flicka needed to keep track of the secrets.

  “You said the bank was already involved, though,” she said.

  “There were repercussions. I left my family to face them alone.”

  “You were how old?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “You were a seventeen-year-old kid, and you went to the police when you found out they were committing crimes.”

  “The problem was what I was before I went to the police. I was in everything.”

  “You didn’t know any better.”

  “I did, and I liked the danger.”

  She squeezed his hand. “You haven’t changed that much.”

  “No, I was an entirely different person.”

  “You’ll always be my Lieblingwächter, no matter what I call you.”

  He didn’t smile. “And you’ll always be my Durchlauchtig, and I will never betray you, no matter what I have to do. Don’t believe what they tell you. Or if you do believe them, just know that I was different back then. I won’t change back. No matter what I call myself, I’m a guardian of the Alps. I’m as pure as the alpine ice, and I’ll defend you and Alina like the Swiss mercenary I am.”

  She held his hand while the dark pressed all around them.

  A few minutes later, Raphael said, “I have to meet with my father tomorrow at the bank, downtown. Could you, by any chance—”

  “Of course.” Flicka wasn’t going to leave Alina alone with any stranger just then, anyway.

  “It should only be a few hours.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I don’t know when we’re going to be able to get help or nannies.”

  “We’ll manage.”

  He held her hand more tightly. “Don’t let them separate you.”

  “I won’t. You’ve taught me what to do my whole life.”

  She held his hand as his breath deepened into sleep.

  The Real Geneva Trust

  Raphael Mirabaud

  My whole life circled back to this,

  to him.

  Raphael sat in his father’s office at the bank Geneva Trust and tried not to fear what was happening to Flicka and his child back at his family’s house.

  The Geneva Trust building was located in the downtown area near the financial district. Geneva Trust had occupied this crenelated building for over a century. When the other banks and financial services companies had moved their locations to the squat, mirrored behemoths a few miles away, Geneva Trust had stood on tradition and retained its ancestral home in the heart of the
city.

  The bank had upgraded its security to be on par with Fort Knox, however. Steel, alarms, cameras, and motion-detecting laser beams laced the antique building. If a nuclear blast melted the city center, the Geneva Trust building would be a radioactive survivor amidst the slag. Dieter Schwarz would never have tried to break into it. He had no taste for impossible missions.

  The ground floor was rented to a florist and a coffee shop, one of which supplied the bank’s office with fresh flowers, while the other was critical to Geneva Trust’s daily operations. Outside, pedestrian chatter drifted through the open window on this unseasonably warm day from the wide sidewalks below, while a tram zinged down the cables on the street.

  Other offices and meeting rooms comprised the top four floors of the building, plus one well-secured room for safety-deposit boxes. The windows had balconies and teeming flower boxes affixed to the black, wrought-iron railings. The Swiss breeze ruffled the late-season blooms of pink and peach dahlias, daisies, and sage and carried a bite of wintry alpine snow from beyond the city.

  Raphael’s father, Valerian Mirabaud, controlled the board of trustees and the majority of the voting shares, and his office monopolized the top floor of the building. He sat now with his hands steepled on his desk, scrutinizing Raphael with his cold, gray eyes.

  Raphael crossed his legs and stared back at his father. He didn’t worry about blinking, but he didn’t look away.

  “This time,” his father said, “things will be different.”

  Raphael prepared himself to listen.

  “You, Friederike, and Alina will remain in the guest suite of our house.”

  Under Valerian’s control, always in danger.

  “If any of you go out, you will take our security with you.”

  So they could guarantee Raphael’s abject loyalty by threatening Flicka and Alina, and making sure they wouldn’t escape or be rescued.

  “You will be assigned the title of a Vice President of Geneva Trust.”

  So he would be implicated in all business dealings.

  “You will be given a chance to atone, to come back into the fold.”

  Folds were for sheep.

  “If you don’t, I cannot guarantee any of your safety. The Ilyin account—”

  Not the Ilyin Bratva, not the Ilyin crime syndicate, but the Ilyin account. The Mirabauds were financiers, after all.

  “—has indicated in previous years that they would be willing to reconsider their position on you because there was no proof that you had betrayed us personally, if they were satisfied that your previous disappearance was due to youth and fear rather than treason, and if you were shown to be thoroughly integrated into the present business.”

  If Raphael groveled, and if he committed terrible crimes and allowed Flicka and Alina to be held hostage for his good behavior.

  “Then, the Ilyin account would cease their concern with you.”

  The death sentence they had made sure every Bratva member knew about.

  Valerian’s gray eyes softened. “Raphael, I’m trying to save your life. If the Ilyins had found you first, you would be dead in the sun on a Las Vegas street. If we reintegrate you into the bank and the business, you’ll be safe. Flicka and Alina will be safe.”

  He meant that if Raphael gave up everything he believed, everything he had become, Flicka and Alina would be safe from Valerian’s and the Ilyins’ revenge.

  “They will be safe from everything,” Valerian continued. “Even Pierre Grimaldi won’t be able to touch Flicka, if certain people make it known that he should stop that pursuit.”

  This was a catch, that Valerian and the Ilyin Bratva could protect Flicka even from Pierre, the heir apparent to the princely throne of Monaco. After all, the Russian crime syndicates were more powerful than most governments. Maybe all governments.

  “It will take some time to make sure everyone understands that you’re to be trusted now, but after a suitable amount of time has elapsed, Flicka could resume her usual social life, and she could manage her charities and chair the Shooting Star Cotillion.”

  Bribery in addition to threats. Raphael would have done the same thing.

  “You could have your life back, Raphael. You could take your place in the family and the bank. It’s best for all involved.”

  It was perfect, everything he could have asked for and more, which meant he couldn’t trust any of it. His father was lying to him.

  “I understand,” Raphael said, “and I agree. How long do you expect Flicka and Alina to live in a small suite in someone else’s house?”

  Raphael wanted them anywhere else, somewhere safe, and preferably under Wulfram von Hannover’s roof in the faraway, American desert. Their guards were obviously Russian, which meant that Piotr Ilyin was paying them, which meant Piotr Ilyin controlled them.

  “As long as I think it’s necessary,” Valerian said, sitting back in his chair. His gaze sharpened. “You can begin with your apology for betraying the family and me, personally, and we’ll arrange for you to apologize to Piotr Ilyin soon.”

  Raphael had thought he would have more time to prepare a proper speech of contrition, but he had become good at lying in the last fifteen years. He had lied about his name every day, and he had done it in a voice that growled in an Alemannic accent that sounded alien to his own ears. Everything about him was a lie, and he was a diffuse, gray nothing inside.

  “Father,” Raphael said, “You were always right. I apologize for doubting you and for my actions. In the future, I will do what is asked of me by the bank and by my family. You have my loyalty.”

  Right up until Raphael staged a coup to take control of Geneva Trust and broke that chain forever.

  An Assessment of the Situation

  Flicka von Hannover

  I needed to find out why.

  While Raphael went out, Flicka and Alina played peekaboo, though not kitty-ha-boo, around the furniture in the small suite. Flicka wished she had grabbed more than one baby book and a few diapers from their Nevada townhouse, but panic had been screaming through her veins.

  For the peekaboo game, the living room couch and chairs were the major obstacles. Flicka ground her knees to bruised mush playing with the giggling toddler until a knock rattled the door.

  Two guards were posted at the doors to the hallway outside. They were tall brutes, close-shaved and with faux-military haircuts. They neither frowned nor smiled but had stared at the walls. New guards rotated in on a set schedule, every two hours. They did not speak to Flicka or Alina, even when the baby had tugged on one’s pants leg and asked in English what his name was.

  The door rattled with a knock again.

  The guards stepped back, and their hands hovered near holsters, whether to draw their guns to defend Flicka and Alina or to shoot them, Flicka wasn’t sure.

  She hopped to her feet and smoothed her slacks from the day before, her one halfway-decent outfit she’d worn for the divorce hearing. “Come in!”

  Alina echoed her in her itty-bitty baby voice, “Come in!”

  Sophie Mirabaud strode in, followed by two housekeepers who wore gray uniforms and white aprons. The housekeepers carried boxes.

  Sophie was dressed as if she might go to a business meeting or a cocktail party, even though it was only ten in the morning. Her tidy trousers were powder blue silk, and she had topped them with a white blouse. Her blond hair was twisted into a tight chignon, and her soft make-up was flawless.

  Even Sophie’s plastic surgery was perfect: a bit of plumping in her lips and light injectables around her cheekbones and jaw to provide just enough lift to make her look like she was in her mid-forties instead of at least sixty, Flicka calculated.

  Flicka smoothed her blond curls back, hoping that galloping around on the staticky rug hadn’t given her too bad a case of the frizzies. The few minutes that they’d been allowed into the Nevada townhouse hadn’t been long enough for her to grab any make-up. She hoped that the mascara she hadn’t been able to scrub off last
night looked like smoky eyes instead of like a demented rock chick.

  The housekeepers set the boxes on the coffee table in front of the couch and exited quietly, almost as if the boxes had floated in of their own accord. Sophie didn’t acknowledge the women at all.

  Flicka didn’t like that. She and Wulfie had always run warm households where people spoke and laughed with each other.

  Sophie said to Flicka in French, “We’ve sent for a few other necessities. If you would draw up a list, we could have any other items delivered this afternoon.”

  Flicka poked through the boxes of disposable diapers and tiny dresses, baby products and toiletries, and some folded clothes in adult sizes for both her and Dieter.

  Raphael.

  For both her and Raphael.

  She said, “Thank you for these. They’re lovely, and I appreciate them. I could go shopping this afternoon, though, to pick up a few other things we’ll need.”

  “That’s not necessary. We have staff and delivery services,” Sophie said.

  “I could call a car if it’s an inconvenience.”

  The Russian guards glanced at each other but did not speak.

  Sophie’s smile turned grim. “Valerian would prefer that you remain in the house.”

  Flicka didn’t allow her panic and the impulse to jump out of the damn window to show on her face. “But it would just be a short trip.”

  “We must insist.”

  Her heart fell in her chest. “Oh.”

  “You’re certainly welcome to utilize anything in the house, of course. There’s no reason to remain here in the suite.”

  The guards on either side of the door fidgeted, then stilled with their hands clasped behind their backs.

  Flicka winched her mouth up into a sweet, princessy smile. “I’d love to see your house. Could you take me on a tour a little later? After I use some of the things in the boxes? I’d love to see what you’ve done with it.”