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

by Blair Babylon

  Flicka wanted to laugh because she had understood the psychology of the architecture and design the moment she’d seen it. Schloss Marienburg, the seat of the House of Hannover in Germany where she had toddled around as a baby, had a similar set of connecting chambers, and she’d stayed with her cousins at Buckingham Palace in England, where each of the State Rooms and drawing rooms is more regal than the previous one. Even the enormous furniture and larger-than-life portraits appeared tiny in those high-ceilinged spaces.

  Flicka strolled through the rooms, checking the preparations and discussing the agenda with the staff. She’d planned the Prince’s Winter Ball six months before, when she’d still been the chatelaine of the Prince’s Palace, directly after her own spectacle of a wedding and while she was planning Wulfram and Rae’s wedding in Montreux. Her palace staff had continued in her absence, working from her sketches, notes, and specifications.

  The conversation groups of couches and cocktail tables that usually occupied these drawing rooms had been replaced with a staggered pattern of round supper tables on the inlaid marble floors. Thickets of gigantic Christmas trees filled the corners of the rooms, drenched in gold and silver decorations. White tulle draped the walls like the snow that only dusted Monaco once a decade or so.

  She noted that all this preparation had been accomplished in her absence when she had been entirely incommunicado, and everything was fine.

  On the infinitesimal chance that she did not escape from Monaco and Pierre, she was going to rest far more event planning responsibility on her staff. They did not need Flicka running interference for them every thirty damned seconds.

  In the throne room, where the most important guests would dine that evening, Pierre stood among the white-covered tables with Quentin Sault and several other of his Secret Service officers. Flicka knew most of them: Claude Brousseau, Mathys Vitale, and Jordan Defrancesco. They’d bustled around her for a year or longer, ever since her engagement to Pierre.

  Jordan Defrancesco caught her eye when she strode into the throne room, her high heels clicking on the tile as the afternoon sunlight shone in the windows.

  One of the burly men didn’t look up at her but continued to work on a tablet. His auburn hair was cropped close to his head. If he had looked up, Flicka knew his eyes would be wintry blue. His voice would be a deep growl, but she didn’t know if he would speak English with a strong Scottish burr or Monegasque with a native accent.

  Aiden Grier was his name, and she wasn’t sure which side he was on. It seemed oddly possible that he was one of Pierre’s Secret Service men who had infiltrated Rogue Security by faking a Scottish accent and a past.

  Quentin Sault announced to the group of them, “The roster is final. None of you bastards can get out of working tonight now.”

  Pierre stood with his arms crossed, vaguely surveying the discussion. He liked to know who was on duty for large events, though he didn’t interest himself in the granular details of his security like Wulf always had. Pierre asked, “How many men do we have for the Princess’s personal detail?”

  “Six,” Quentin said.

  “I’m sure I don’t need that many,” Flicka told Quentin. “Six men hovering around me would look conspicuous.”

  “It might be necessary,” Pierre said. He didn’t look at her.

  “It’s overkill,” she argued. “People would talk.”

  “It’s for your protection. We do it all the time.” Quentin said, trying to sound like six men in a phalanx around her at a social event was routine.

  “Inside the palace, I’m sure that I won’t need more than two agents,” Flicka said. “I probably don’t need any at all.”

  Pierre glanced up at her. His dark eyes were tight around the corners with anger. “We’ve received some information about an operation planned for tonight.”

  Quentin Sault looked up from his tablet and frowned at Pierre. “Your Highness, divulging information endangers the source.”

  Pierre shrugged and turned to Flicka. “Tell your brother to stop his financial pyramid scheme, and then tell Raphael Mirabaud not to plan an assault like this one that is designed to kidnap you late tonight after the ball. They’ve got a damned yacht in the Port de Fontvieille at the base of Le Rocher, and they’re going to climb the cliff face like it’s El Capitan. We added searchlights and machine guns to the battlements of the castle. It’ll be a massacre. We’ll gun them down like rats. If they come in with helicopters, and I’ve heard about those, too, we’ve got anti-aircraft weapons up there now. We’re better armed than we have been in a century, thanks to Raphael Mirabaud’s stupid plan to kidnap the Princess of Monaco.”

  Damn it, Pierre knew somehow that Raphael had moved up the timetable to that night, but she didn’t think he was talking about a frontal assault with helicopters or climbing the cliff face. If anything, surely Raphael would stage a covert attack.

  She didn’t tell Pierre that, though. “Well, it sounds as if you’ve thought of everything.”

  Pierre scoffed, “I’m a damned country, Flicka. I have an intelligence service, and my spies liaise with France’s intelligence services. None of that shit he’s planning will work, and you don’t want me to get angry, do you? Tell them to knock that shit off.”

  Flicka lifted her chin, refusing to show the tremors in her hands. “I don’t have any way of contacting anyone. You won’t allow me a cell phone.”

  Pierre’s face stiffened. “If they cause a scene at the Winter Ball, you’ll regret it. The Council of Nobles meets tomorrow. If there’s a commotion tonight, it might influence the votes tomorrow.”

  Flicka shrugged. “Not my problem.”

  “It’s my problem, so it is your problem.” He spun on his heel to face Quentin. “I want eight men around her. I don’t want one of Mirabaud’s mercenaries to get within ten feet of her. I don’t want them to be able to shout at her. I want the whole event locked down tight. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Quentin said, still unruffled. “That has been the plan all along. Eight men might be excessive, but we can spare them. I’ll have to call in some men, though. I guess the duty roster isn’t final, after all. In addition to Jordan and Mathys, we’ll add a few more to Her Highness’s entourage.”

  “Do it,” Pierre said.

  Quentin glared at his tablet and looked up at Aiden Grier. “Tristan, you’re free tonight, right?”

  Aiden, or Tristan, nodded. “I’ll add myself to the schedule.”

  Flicka blinked. His accent was that slightly odd variant of an Italian accent like all the other Monegasques. She’d heard that accent a lot in her life, and he spoke the Monegasque dialect perfectly.

  Quentin held up his tablet. “I’m in the duty roster spreadsheet. I’ll add you.”

  Aiden tapped his tablet with his thick finger. “I’ve got it.”

  “No, no. I’m in the roster right now.” Quentin frowned. “It’s De Rossi, right? Tristan De Rossi? Are you under D or R in the listings?”

  “Under D,” Aiden said. He swiped his tablet, flinging a window aside. “What the hell is wrong with this thing? Are we having a cyber attack?”

  “I don’t see your name, and I’m in the duty roster,” Quentin groused. “Are you sure you’re not under R for Rossi?”

  “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with this software,” Aiden said. “It’s always glitching. Did the government farm it out to the lowest bidder or the French?”

  “Brousseau, Vitale, and Defrancesco are all in here. My name is where it’s supposed to be. Can we sort it by first names?”

  “I don’t know,” Aiden said. “Maybe someone thought I quit when the—uh—when some people reconsidered their career choices a few months ago.”

  Pierre glared at all of them, instantly pissed off.

  Flicka kept her eyebrows where they were, but she wondered if the Secret Service agents who had quit did so after she went missing and the stories got around about why, or whether it was earlier, a response to Pierre punching o
ne of them and firing the rest after the incident in Paris, when Raphael had been shot.

  “Have you been getting paid?” Quentin asked Aiden.

  “Of course. You think I would volunteer to stop a bullet for him if you weren’t paying me?”

  “Let’s go through payroll then and get your employee number. We can add you to the duty roster manually with that.” Quentin tapped on the tablet that he held in his other hand. “That’s weird, Tristan. There’s no record of you in payroll, either. Not even from before the unfortunate incident. Are you sure you’re—”

  Aiden dropped his tablet and sprinted out of the throne room.

  “Stop him!” Quentin shouted and raced after him.

  Flicka touched her chest as if she were surprised and horrified.

  She stuck a foot out.

  Mathys Vitale tripped over it, but the other Secret Service agents chased Aiden from the throne room.

  Pierre turned on her. “We’ll get him. He can’t get out of the palace. When we do, he’ll tell us everything about the plan to take you out tonight, and we’ll be even better prepared than before.”

  Flicka stared back at him, keeping herself calm. “If that’s what happens, then it happens. I have an appointment in five minutes to have my make-up done. Good afternoon, Pierre. I’ll see you for the first dance tonight, and then I’ll retire to my room for the night.”

  “No, you won’t. You’ll stay at the damned party and act like you’re having a grand time, like the Princess of Monaco is supposed to. You’ll fulfill all your duties, and then you’ll take that damned medicine tomorrow if I have to have Quentin hold you down and force it down your throat.”

  The doctor had given Pierre the abortion drugs.

  “If you say so, Pierre.” She strolled out of the throne room toward the Princess Grace suite.

  When she got to her rooms, the silence overwhelmed her.

  She started walking toward Alina’s bedroom before she remembered that she was utterly alone in the Prince’s Palace.

  She sat on the couch in the living room and stared at the swimming pool, willing herself to keep her composure.

  A few minutes later, a knock on her door preceded a cart being pushed into the room.

  “Your Highness,” the man pushing the cart said, “Your lunch.”

  Flicka looked up from the crumpled tissue in her hands and into the ice-blue eyes of Magnus Jensen, the Rogue Security guy who’d been outside the church at Rainier’s funeral. “Magnus.”

  He held his finger to his lips. “Your lunch, as you ordered.”

  Under the silver dome, three hard-boiled eggs, still in their shells, sat with a selection of bananas, and a brown tablet.

  Odd.

  Except that it would be exceedingly difficult to sprinkle abortion-inducing drugs on an unpeeled banana or egg.

  Flicka almost laughed.

  Magnus winked and said, “The vitamin pill is from us, so it’s safe. Be ready.”

  Organization Time

  Raphael Mirabaud

  Marching orders.

  In the small hotel room, ten Rogue Security operators and Welfenlegion staff sat on chairs, on the bed but not too close together, or stood.

  Magnus Jensen leaned against the wall by the door, looking out the window at the afternoon clouds and the traffic on the street below. His ice-blue eyes missed nothing: not the birds swooping from the gutters above, not the swerve of a black van in the traffic, and not the twitch of any one of the operators in the room. He glanced at the paper Raphael had handed him when he’d walked in, folded it a few times, and placed it in his shirt pocket.

  Aiden Grier had a bruise swelling on his eye, and his knuckles were still bloody. He grinned like a maniac, and violence lit his blue eyes. He held a piece of paper clenched in his fist.

  Luca Wyss sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard. He’d kicked off his shoes, and his olive green tee shirt looked a size too small. The sleeves looked uncomfortably tight around his biceps as he laced his fingers behind his head. His piece of paper was folded over and resting on his jeans.

  Raphael stood in front of the television, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He held a clipboard, an old-fashioned plank with a piece of paper on it.

  Yes, everyone on his list of team leaders had arrived and been given their orders.

  Good.

  Raphael said, “You’ve received a list of the operators assigned to your team and their contact information. All are awaiting your instructions. Due to the nature of the mission and the concern about operational security, everyone is on a need-to-know basis only. You and your teams will perform the tasks in order and then evacuate unless contacted for further operations.

  “Good luck. Infiltration begins in an hour.”

  Magnus was the first one out of the room.

  Different, This Time

  Raphael Mirabaud

  “The backbone of surprise is fusing speed

  with secrecy.”

  ~~Carl von Clausewitz

  It was different, this time, Raphael thought as the car bounced down the road.

  Other vehicles transported more Rogue Security and Welfenlegion personnel, all heading from France to Monaco. More rode the train.

  Usually, before the start of an operation, excitement zinged along Raphael’s nerves, keying him up so that he could hardly sit and wait to start.

  Chaos called him. Violence drew him closer.

  This time, for the operation to free Flicka from the Prince’s Palace, grim determination crowded out anticipation. The job was to walk in with guns and walk out with Flicka, safe in his arms. Anything that happened inside wasn’t important. Only the outcome mattered.

  Only Flicka mattered to him.

  In the front seat, Julien Bodilsen watched out the passenger-side window as Luca Wyss drove them through Monaco.

  Raphael asked, “Julien, when we were in ARD-10, did I ever seem like a psychopath to you?”

  “What, you’re not asking me?” Luca asked and turned the steering wheel, whipping the car around a tight corner.

  “I know what you’ll say, asshole,” Raphael said. Luca would have heartily agreed with him just to make a joke. Julien would give him a straight answer, or at least a more carefully considered one.

  Luca laughed and piloted the car through the heavy traffic.

  Julien sucked in a derisive snort and looked out the passenger-side window. His dark hair curled over his suit jacket collar. “We’re all at least a little bit psycho, Dieter. We enlisted in the army to shoot big guns, destroy property, and kill people. We were selected for ARD-10 because we were the best at it. We went all over the world with the special forces unit, breaking things and murdering people. We’re all hired murderers, except that we signed up to kill for our government rather than being highly paid assassins or serial killers who just do it for sport. So yeah, no one should trust any of us, ever.”

  “No, I mean—” Raphael thought for a minute, “did it ever seem like I liked it too much?”

  “I’m telling you, we all did, and we all still do.” Julien wrenched himself around in the car seat to stare at Raphael in the back. The light in his dark eyes and the hard set of his mouth seemed almost angry. “What’s up with you, Dieter? You sound like you want to say something.”

  “I’ve just been thinking about those days in ARD-10, lately.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” Julien said, turning back around and continuing to survey people walking on the crowded sidewalks as the car inched through the traffic. “Those days of killing for our country are over, and we’re mercenaries now. Rogue Security is paid to do the dirty work that other people are too lightweight to do. We’ve gone rogue. That’s how you came up with the name, right? We’re all rogues now, mercenaries like the Swiss men of centuries ago, cannon fodder to be bought by the richest nobleman.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Luca told Julien. “I’m still in the Swiss reserves. If my country calls, I’ll answer and defe
nd every inch of snow and rocks with my blood and bones.”

  Raphael said, “We still have our honor. We’re still Swiss citizens, and we were forged in the ice of the Alps.” That sentence had fallen from his lips like habit, but it felt hollow.

  Julien shrugged. “I never took the mountaineering course.”

  Luca said to Raphael, “We’ve arrived. Wait until I open your door.”

  An overhead streetlamp shone through the car’s window, illuminating the back seat.

  Raphael waited for Luca to play chauffeur and stared at his marred knuckles where his hands rested on the black fabric of his costume, his bones and skin thickened from so many fights. Not only had the wounds left scars on his body—the gunshots, the knife attacks, the scrapes, and blows—but even his attacks had scarred him.

  Beside him, the car door opened.

  Raphael emerged from the car and stood, smoothing down the long, black cassock he wore that fell to the toes of his polished, black shoes. Scarlet piping stitched down the front of the black robe, and he had tied a wide, red sash around his narrow waist. He wore no honors, no military ribbons, no diamonds or jewels, unlike the glittering crowd of people stepping out of cars and walking into the Prince’s Palace around him.

  Luca said, “Monsignor.”

  Yes, Raphael was disguised as a priest. It had worked once in history.

  He held his fist in front of Luca’s face. “Kiss the ring.”

  “You’re not wearing a ring, Monsignor. Only bishops and higher get to wear ecclesiastical rings.”

  Raphael bobbed his fist at Luca’s face. “Come on. Kiss the ring. It’s worth fifty days of indulgences.”

  “You’re not wearing a ring, jackass, and you’d like it too much.”

  “So, what’s stopping you?”

  “Go to Hell, Schwarz.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Raphael dropped his hand and walked into the crowd that streamed toward the Prince’s Palace, chuckling.