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

by Blair Babylon

  Aiden held up his phone with what appeared to be a pretty waitress wearing a red velvet and gold crown on the screen. “We gave the crown jewels back the next morning when we sobered up. We did nae keep ‘em.”

  “Edinburgh has a city around it to hide an operation until the last minute. The Prince’s Palace is on a bare cliff above deep water and will be a harder target.”

  Aiden scoffed, “Och, it’s still a medieval castle with inadequate preparations. A Scottish feral cat could take down the whole Prince’s Palace with nothing more than a thistle and his claws.”

  Raphael chuckled. In Aiden’s world, the Scots should have repelled the English invaders and conquered all of Europe with their sheer bravado. “So, they’re not prepared for an assault.”

  “Even with their shiny-new guns, the fannybaws are not prepared at all,” Aiden assured him. “They did nae order the correct ammunition for them. It’s so pathetic that I thought about giving the fuds a little warning, just to make it sporting. However, I don’t mind shooting Monegasque ducks in a barrel. I’ll buy them a round of good scotch whiskey when all this is over to make amends.”

  Raphael dropped Aiden at a bar where he would doubtlessly be the toast of the crowd in an hour and one of his newfound friends would drive him back to Monaco later that night, because once you’ve met Aiden, you’ll do anything for such a great guy. After that, he drove to a small hotel in the eastern part of Nice, about a twenty-minute drive from the Prince’s Palace in Monaco.

  He tossed the bag from Aiden in a closet of his hotel room and waited until night. He tried to sleep because he was still damned tired from sleeping only a few hours per night while sitting upright on planes.

  One of the Welfenlegion had been bought or bribed.

  One of his friends had spied on him and passed information to someone who might kill Flicka or Wulfram and his family.

  Adrenaline and anger surged in his veins, and he tossed on the hard bed, thoroughly awake as he reviewed every damn person on von Hannover’s plane.

  He came up with nothing but more conjectures and conflicting twitches.

  Maybe Aiden had been wrong, Raphael mused. Maybe the Prince’s Palace’s new fortifications had been planned all along, and there was no Welfenlegion mole.

  During the late afternoon, Raphael received a text from Jordan Defrancesco, Rogue Security’s information source inside Monaco’s Secret Service, which said, “Expecting your attack at the new moon from yacht in the PdF. New defenses anti-aircraft, anti-personnel, chem.”

  Well, that confirmed that the Welfenlegion did, indeed, have a mole, a deeply embedded spy, who had been on von Hannover’s plane that day.

  Dammit.

  Covert Operation #1

  Raphael Mirabaud

  Sneaking into a palace

  isn’t as easy as it looks,

  unless the Monegasque Secret Service is providing security for it.

  When darkness fell, Raphael dressed in a different dark suit, one of his old, boxy-cut ones he’d retrieved from his house in the Southwest, and left the little hotel room to board a train to the Gare de Monaco, the train station in the center of Monaco and a short walk to any other point in the tiny country. Twinkling, golden lights filled the subway station, as subtly beautiful as the rest of Monaco.

  The Prince’s Palace itself was a seventeen-minute walk away from the station, mostly uphill.

  Maybe he should take a damn helicopter next time because the helipad was a little closer than the train station, but riding the train was more incognito.

  Raphael pushed through the crowded sidewalks toward the Saint Nicholas Cathedral, where he’d seen on the television that Prince Rainier IV had had his funeral mass that noon. It was odd that Monaco was without a monarch, but Pierre Grimaldi would remedy that soon. His coronation was scheduled for a few days later.

  The indirect route to the cathedral and then to the palace allowed Raphael to survey the old city of Monaco Ville, weaving among the jostling pedestrians and breathing in the fresh sea air from the water just over the cliff. The somber mood of the funeral lingered in the people strolling on the sidewalks, though the lights were back on at the Monte Carlo casino down in the center of the country below the headlands.

  Once at the Prince’s Palace, Aiden Grier—who was already back on duty as one of Pierre’s Secret Service agents—waved Raphael inside and escorted him through the halls that only staff used. There was no chance of accidentally meeting Flicka or Pierre in these back corridors.

  That was later.

  Raphael had kind of expected stone walls and metal sconces for pitch torches, as the Prince’s Palace was a medieval fortress, but the plaster and electrical wiring must have been upgraded sometime in the last few centuries. Recessed lighting illuminated white walls. Security personnel wearing black suits and household staff wearing dark dresses or suits ambled through the hallways, though they, too, were still downcast after the Prince’s funeral just that afternoon.

  Aiden left Raphael in a small room off the main routes to wait for a few hours, lest they be seen together too much. A brown couch ran along one wall. Raphael was content. He munched one of his favorite protein bars he’d brought from his kitchen in the States.

  He waited for the changing of the Secret Service and military guards at two o’clock in the morning, passing the time by using his phone to take readings of the various WiFi signals for Blaise.

  When he emerged, the lights in the palace’s corridors glowed softly in the ceiling, and many fewer people strolled the shadowy hallway.

  One man, dressed in a dark suit with bulges under the arms like Raphael himself had, nodded as he passed. Raphael nodded back sharply, a confident motion.

  Those Monegasque Secret Service agents didn’t know who was playing on their team. Their turnover rate must be enormous.

  Raphael followed the directions that Aiden had recited to the Princess Grace suite and let himself in with the keys that Aiden had also provided.

  He pressed the door closed behind him, locking it. The tumblers turned and clicked, and he glanced around where Flicka had set herself up.

  The suite was spacious for a set of rooms in such a small palace. It was smaller than their place in Kensington Palace those few years ago, in those halcyon days.

  Memories of their time at Kensington panged him.

  Of course, their apartment at Kensington hadn’t overlooked a swimming pool, but the lighted blue waters were visible outside the tall, arrow-slit windows of Flicka’s current suite. Those windows wouldn’t be good for an assault to gain access to the suite. That was the whole point of arrow-slit windows: good for medieval defense, but hard to enter.

  He padded over the thick rug toward the first bedroom door and turned the knob on the door to lean inside.

  A tiny lump on the bed tangled in the sheets and flopped over, flinging her chubby arm in the air as she rolled.

  Alina.

  Raphael crouched by the bed, looking at his baby. He didn’t dare wake her because she would shrill and bring the guards, but he needed to look at her heart-shaped little face and rosebud lips for a moment. She was beautiful and healthy, and he thanked whoever had listened to his silent, fervent prayers and thanks that Flicka had entered their lives and saved his child.

  He stole quietly from Alina’s bedside to the other bedroom door and let himself in.

  In this room, a king-sized, canopied bed blocked more than half the room. The curtains that enclosed the bed looked like thick, stiff fabric, not gauzy stuff that floated around. In the dark, he couldn’t see colors, but the carpet and drapes seemed pale in the moonlight from the windows, maybe gold or cream. Roses scented the air.

  He approached the bed, walking quietly on the thick carpet.

  His goal was to talk to her, to tell her that they were planning how to most effectively take her and Alina out of Monaco. It would just take a few more days or a week at the most, so she should stay strong, hold on, and not reach for a gun as she�
��d so desperately threatened on that train in Switzerland.

  He leaned on the bed with one hand and touched her shoulder. “Flicka?”

  At Midnight

  Flicka von Hannover

  And like a dream,

  he was gone.

  Flicka was dreaming about floating in the blue water of the swimming pool at the Prince’s Palace in Monaco while seaweed grew all around her, winding around her legs and arms as she tried to swim away.

  One of the seaweed tendrils grabbed her shoulder and rattled her so hard that she flew out of the pool and off the bed. “What!”

  Silver light filled the room from the moon outside the narrow windows, and an illuminated clock cast a blue glow from the other side of her bed onto the face of the man standing over her.

  She struggled and crawled backward.

  White metal and azure glow traced the sides of his face—the slashes of his cheekbones and hard jaw and straight nose—and gleamed in the gray of his eyes.

  “Dieter!” she whispered so hard that her voice scratched her throat. “Lieblingwächter und Raphael!”

  She scrambled over the bed, her fingernails catching on his suit coat and then her hands finding the fine black wool he wore.

  The faint cinnamon smell of his cologne and faint, clean musk of him filled her breath as she inhaled, and she clutched him to her, crying.

  “Flicka, no. Shhh,” he shushed, holding her face tightly against his suit jacket.

  He hasn’t been smoking recently, she thought, her head still muzzy with sleep. She couldn’t smell cigarettes in his clothes at all. “Don’t go. Don’t go away.”

  “I’m here,” he whispered.

  “I’m so sorry I left you there. I’m so sorry.”

  “Durchlauchtig, my Durchlauchtig, you saved Alina and yourself. I will thank God every day that you walked out of that warehouse with Alina. I hated that you went with Pierre, but I thank God for you. If the situation would ever occur again, promise me you’ll do exactly the same thing. Well, maybe not with Pierre, but promise me that you’ll go and take her if you can to someplace safer.”

  Flicka shoved the sheets away with her bare feet and climbed Raphael, grabbing him around his shoulders and locking her mouth over his.

  He gasped under her lips, and his chest swelled. His arms wrapped around her, crushing her against his chest. He swept her legs around and rolled onto her, crawling over her on the bed. He muttered against her skin, “We shouldn’t—”

  “Please,” she whimpered. Though she was trying not to sound pathetic, relief and joy that he was alive burst through her. She shoved his suit coat back and bit the side of his neck above his shirt.

  “Someone might walk in—”

  “I thought you were dead,” she whispered, her fingernails digging into his suit and finding the hard lumps of weapons beneath. “I thought you were dead and I was alone.”

  “Never,” he whispered, his lips hot against her throat as she arched under him. “Even if I were dead, you wouldn’t have been alone.”

  “Touch me. I can’t feel you touching me.”

  His hands stroked her sides, long, firm slides that she felt through her silk nightgown. He whispered against her skin, “Flicka, my Durchlauchtig.”

  Her laugh caught in her throat and turned into a sob. She shoved at his suit jacket, pushing it down his arms. “More.”

  “You do have a thing for adrenaline, don’t you?” Raphael struggled out of his jacket and let her unknot his tie and throw it on the other side of the bed. She fought with his shirt buttons, getting half of them open before he ran his hands under her nightgown and stripped it off over her head, then did away with the little bits of silk she wore under it.

  “God, I’ve missed you,” he murmured against her chest as his lips moved down her stomach. His fingers found her folds and pressed inside, slipping on the wetness there. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  Flicka arched off the bed, his fingers spinning sensations through her.

  His mouth moved lower, his tongue flicking her clit as he breathed warm breath over her skin.

  She’d missed him so much. She might be dreaming. He might be a dream or an angel.

  Flicka dragged her fingers through his hair, feeling the flaxen strands, willing him to be real.

  He crawled up her body, opened his pants, and plunged into her.

  She grabbed his shoulders, dragging her knees up and feeling him stretch her. “Please—”

  Raphael surged forward, his muscular body moving over hers. His shirt was soft on her skin, sliding over her flesh as he stroked inside her.

  Too soon, too fast, the tension built in her, and she lifted her hips to meet him, seeking more.

  He gave her more, filling her so that her world ripped apart.

  Flicka gasped as the waves took her, throbbing from deep inside and plunging her into darkness and wild sound. Raphael strained above her, only grunting softly near her ear as his body clenched with his release.

  Moonlight wove back into the room, and Flicka tried to keep from crying in the silvery dark. “Raphael.”

  “I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m here. You were never alone.”

  “I didn’t know if you were alive,” she whispered, looking at where his fist wrapped a handgun near her head. “I don’t know how anyone could have survived that.”

  “The Rogues sneaked the girls out the back while you were diverting everyone’s attention with Monaco’s Secret Service invasion,” he said. “When the girls were gone and you were safe, they launched flash-bang grenades into the warehouse. They got a gun to me and laid down cover fire, and I fought my way out.”

  “I can’t believe you’re okay.” She wrapped her arms and legs around him, holding him and feeling his skin even as his shirt buttons dug into her chest. “I wanted to believe. I tried to believe. But I didn’t.”

  “I wanted to get word to you, but I couldn’t figure out how.” Raphael backed up and stood on his knees, tucking his shirt into his pants. “Magnus and Aiden couldn’t get you alone to tell you I was all right. The plan to take you and Alina out of here is taking shape. I need you to tell me anything you can about your palace routine or security weaknesses. We’ll get you out soon, in a week or two at most.”

  “Raphael,” she said, struggling to sit up. She dragged the sheet over herself. “You have to take Alina and me out of here right now. We have to go now.”

  “But we don’t have a plan to evacuate you from Monaco and Europe yet,” he said, checking his weapons and reholstering them. The guns’ actions clicked in the dark. “We haven’t cleared a way out of the palace. We can’t do it now, but we’re in the strategy phase of the operation. It shouldn’t be much more than a week.”

  “But we have to go now,” Flicka begged him. “Pierre’s going to talk to the doctor tomorrow. He’s going to prescribe abortion drugs. I don’t know if he’ll force me to take them or sprinkle them on my food, but he’ll make me take them. I’m sure of it.”

  Raphael stilled. “Are you pregnant?”

  Well, this was not how she’d wanted to tell him. “I got pregnant in Geneva. Or Gibraltar, I suppose, but yes. I’m more than a week late.”

  Flicka’s eyes were accustomed to the dark, and in the pale moonlight, she saw the moment Raphael touched his chest and his breath hitched in his throat.

  She asked, “Don’t you want—”

  “Yes!” he said, his whisper turning to a hiss. “Oh, God, Flicka!” He grabbed both her hands and then cradled her to his chest. “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely. Confirmed by a doctor and everything. Timeline says the fatal night was three weeks ago.”

  He reached for her and held her hands. His fingers were shaking. “I want to ask if you’re sure again, just to hear you say yes.”

  “Then, yes. I’m pregnant. I’m sure. Test and everything. Yes.”

  “I’ll get you out,” Raphael whispered. “I’ll get you out tomorrow. We’ll move everything up.
We’ll come up with a plan.” He pressed her hands to his chest. His heart raced under her fingertips. “Be ready. Be ready to go. I don’t know how we’ll do it, but we will. Whatever happens, be ready. Be ready at every moment. Magnus or Aiden will be with you every minute.” He dropped her hands and fumbled around, frisking his suit jacket that lay on the other side of the bed. “I have protein bars. Don’t eat anything he gives you. I’ll have Magnus or other people slip food to you all day long. You’ll need to eat. You’re eating for two. Are you sick yet? Are you okay? Jesus, Flicka. I’ll get you out tomorrow. I promise, I will.”

  “But Alina—”

  Thumps thudded on the bed, and she could see protein bars and shiny foil wrappers. “Her, too. I would never leave her. Just—be ready. Be ready for it when it happens.”

  “You could take Alina right now. Just pick her up and walk out. She probably won’t even wake up.”

  “They would stop us. I wouldn’t make it out. Or they would discover that she was missing and redouble your security. It has to be done the right way because we won’t get a second chance.”

  “The Prince’s Winter Ball is tomorrow night,” she told him.

  “That will be a good distraction. We might do it then.” Raphael said.

  “Pierre expects me to go. He says that I have to do the first dance with him.”

  “Did you tell him you’re pregnant?”

  “I had to. The doctors were going to tell him, anyway.”

  “Act like nothing is happening. Act like you have no idea what’s going on when we come for you and Alina. We might take you out separately.”

  “I’m not leaving without Alina.”

  “Me, either.”

  “I don’t have any idea what’s going on. Is it going to be during the Winter Ball?”

  “I don’t know. I have to figure it out. I have to talk to Wulfram.”

  “He can’t help. He’s in the States.”

  “He’s in France.”