She sighed, the warmth of her breath brushing his neck. “We shouldn’t take anything, nothing at all.”
Flicka was trying to talk herself out of something. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t.”
“Flicka, you’re pregnant. If you knew a pregnant woman in your kitchen was hungry, what would you do?”
She argued, “But this lady isn’t here for us to ask, is she?”
Raphael grudgingly let her go and rummaged around in cabinets in the dark, using his fingertips to examine items.
Cans. Crisp cellophane. Squishy, crackly paper bag.
He said, “We’ll assume that this lady is as kind as you are because I generally don’t assume people are terrible human beings. Look, here’s some bread. It feels pretty fresh. They might have left this morning.” He opened the small fridge under the counter. Light glared out, and he moved to block its glow to the window. “And butter, cheese, and some fruit.”
“I don’t like this,” Flicka said.
He sliced the bread and washed the knife in the sink. “When I was in ARD-10, this was called ‘living off the land,’ though most of the time we ate wild berries and roots and stuff, too. We slept outside, though, and we did pack food in with us.”
She gasped, “You’ve broken into people’s houses before?”
He glanced at her, standing there with her hand near her mouth in the dark kitchen, and explained, “Sometimes, to accomplish the mission, you do what you have to.”
“Did you leave money or something?”
“When we could, yes. But we generally didn’t break in unless we had no other choice, and then we chose houses like this one,” he waved the knife around at the spacious kitchen and second floor above them, and the moonlight glanced off the steel, “where the owners could definitely afford to give up a few slices of bread and some cheese. Here, eat this.”
She took it from him, and her head dipped to eat a bite. “Did you send money to those people later?”
“Never,” Raphael said. “It might have been traced and exposed ARD-10’s involvement, or it might have gotten the residents shot as collaborators, even though they hadn’t done anything wrong.”
Flicka touched her mouth. “Oh my God.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, sometimes it was rough.”
“Are those grapes?” she asked.
He washed some grapes in cool water in the sink. “Here.”
She popped one in her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m just so hungry, and I feel so bad about it.”
“Don’t feel bad about a sandwich. If you want to send money later, I’ll write down the address.”
“This is just so utterly foreign to me. I mean, taking something is so beyond what I’m used to. I’m used to being the benefactor, the charity maven. I make things. I give things. I don’t break in and take things.” She shoved the sandwich in her mouth and chewed off a huge hunk.
Raphael nodded. Yeah, subverting your morals to accomplish a mission’s goals was hard, but he’d learned how to do that early in his life.
Flicka swallowed the bite. “Don’t you want something, too?”
His stomach growled, but he shrugged. “I’m fine. I’m not pregnant.”
She bustled up to the counter. “If I’m eating a sandwich, you have to, too. Otherwise, I’ll feel worse. Here, I’ll slice it up for you.” She did it while she ate grapes.
Raphael stole a few grapes while she made a sandwich for him, too, each one popping with sugary juice as he bit down.
She said, “When we get somewhere safe, I’m going to send these people some money, so we’ll just have to get over this and not feel bad about it. Can you imagine if we couldn’t? If we were hungry and exhausted and running away from a madman who wants to enslave or kill us, and we couldn’t even pay these people back? I’m dying right now.”
When Wulfram had been raising Flicka, he’d made sure that she knew she had a special life and that others had a far harder time than she did, but there’s nothing like living like a refugee for even a few hours to awaken a person. Raphael hadn’t understood how rich his family was until he’d lived in government homes for the few weeks before he’d enlisted in the Swiss army.
He said, “It would be even worse if we had Alina here,” and ate another grape.
Flicka shook her head, the moonlight shimmering on her pale curls while she ran the knife through the bread loaf. “I can’t imagine running like this with a baby. What if they cried when you were trying to hide? How would you take care of them while you were driving or walking hundreds of miles? When we were running through Monaco, I thought about how one of us would have had to carry Alina, if she’d been with us. Diapers and food would be crazy, and little babies need formula or nursing. But I wouldn’t leave her behind. I can’t even conceive of leaving a child behind. And if I had to get her out to save her life, I would find a way, even if it meant breaking into people’s houses and stealing food for her. I would have done anything and everything.”
Raphael watched this woman, the love of his life, as she came to terms with the terrible world. “You’ve already done a lot to help people.”
She handed him the sandwich in the dark and started washing the knife again. “Here, eat this. I can’t have you fainting from hunger while we’re trying to escape.”
Raphael didn’t think he’d ever fainted from hunger, not even during a hostage rescue with ARD-10 when he had sprinted through a fetid jungle for two solid days, no breaks, no sleep, no sitting down, on nothing but one canteen of water.
He ate a bite of the sandwich anyway. The cheese was phenomenal, creamy and dense, but they were in France. Of course, the cheese was good.
Flicka said, “Having Wulfie take custody of Alina was a stroke of genius, by the way.”
He looked down into the darkness near his feet. “Yeah.”
Her voice was gentle when she asked, “What did he say to you?”
Nothing he wanted to tell Flicka. “A lot.”
She filled some glasses with water, and they sat at the little kitchen table in the dark to finish eating. Her soft leg pressed against his as they sat side-by-side on a wooden bench. “Like what?”
Rescuing Flicka had taken all his attention for the past fifteen hours, but now thinking about what Wulfram had said felt like a knife in his chest all over again. “He found out that I’m Raphael Mirabaud, not Dieter Schwarz, and he said what I deserved to hear.”
Chewing sounds in the dark, then swallowing. She asked, “That rough, huh?”
The kitchen and the night seemed darker around them. “I can’t count how many times I’ve lied to him. My first words to him were a lie when I told him my name was Dieter Schwarz.”
“Wulf doesn’t handle dissembling well,” she said.
“No, he doesn’t.” Raphael had seen Wulfram withdraw, his eyes turning flat, over yet another betrayal in his life.
“It’s because, all his life, people have been lying and conniving to get close to him. They want what his wealth can do for them, not to be his friend. He’s been burned a few times.”
“Yeah, I was there when it happened.” When Rae Stone had come into Wulf’s life, Raphael had prayed that she wasn’t another gold digger because he wasn’t sure Wulf could handle yet another one.
Raphael hadn’t thought he could deal with Wulfram tearing himself apart over another fake girlfriend, either. He’d been sort of dating the women who had worked for him in an odd, no-strings way, and it had seemed to Raphael like an artificial and sterile arrangement.
Raphael shouldn’t judge, though. He’d married a woman in a shotgun wedding and lived in a loveless, sexless, marginally co-parenting relationship for a year and a half before Gretchen had stolen his business’s money and run off with one of his friends.
“I know you were there for him when he needed you,” Flicka said.
“It wasn’t enough.”
“You weren’t after hi
s money or power. You never lied to him to get something out of him, only to protect yourself from criminals coming after you. There’s a difference.”
“I lied when I told him I would protect you.”
“But you have protected me, all my life.” In the dark, her fingers tickled up his arm and found the cord of scar tissue across his biceps where the bullet had creased him at her wedding to Pierre. She traced the seam in his skin, and then her hand moved around and under his shirt in back, where she found another scar on his ribs where a knife-wielding assassin had stabbed him when he’d fought the guy away from Flicka. “You’ve always protected me.”
Her cool hand resting on his back soothed him. He said, “I screwed up this time.”
“I’m sitting here in a farmhouse in rural France with you, and I’m not imprisoned in Monaco by my delusional, two-timing ex-husband, who might rape me or beat me up again if he hears bad news. I’m pretty sure that makes this operation a success.”
His failure ate jagged holes in him. “You should have never been taken to Monaco. I should have protected you better.”
Her fingers squeezed his arm. “You were up against your family, a Russian crime syndicate, and an entire country—albeit a very small country—and you were without any back-up to speak of. I think you did a great job.”
“You rescued yourself,” he said, smiling in the dark, “and you saved Alina. I’ve never been so proud of you. You looked like a conquering queen, leading those troops out.”
“I didn’t manage to save you,” she whispered.
“But you created the diversion that saved the girls the human traffickers were going to sell. Once you, Alina, and the girls were gone, the Rogues could get me out. The operation to evacuate me required the success of your operation. You did save me.”
“But you taught me how,” she said. “I can’t count the number of times you taught me to use whatever was at my disposal, to perform a bump-pass, to make a weapon out of a pen or a cord, or how to fight, or when not to fight. Dieter Schwarz taught me those things.”
He shook his head. A cramp pained his neck from the running and long drive. “Dieter Schwarz never existed. He was a lie manufactured by a government to keep a bad kid from getting in trouble for crimes he’d committed. Dieter Schwarz is just another lie.”
Moonlight glistened on her blond hair as she tilted her head to the side. The curls were falling out of her bun from when she’d been sleeping in the car while he drove. “I don’t think you’re a lie.”
“I never stopped being Raphael Mirabaud. Dieter Schwarz was just a fake skin covering a hollow man. The last few weeks have taught me that.”
She found his fingers on the dark table. “Lieblingwächter—”
“No, it’s true. Raphael Mirabaud lied about who he was to escape punishment. Raphael Mirabaud would lie to someone like Wulf and never trust him with the truth, even after years. I never trusted you with the truth, either. If I had told either one of you who I was and what I was, Wulfram might have known where to find you in Geneva and rescued you.”
“You had your reasons, Raphael.” Her low voice was soft in his ears.
“Not enough reasons. I’ve always been a ruthless bastard. I lied to my best friend for years. I said that I could tell him anything, but I didn’t tell him the most important things. I didn’t tell him who I am, and I didn’t tell him that I am in love with you, that I have been for years, that you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. That’s exactly what Raphael Mirabaud would have done. I was fooling myself all those years, thinking a new name gave me a new soul.”
“It wasn’t the name that gave you a new soul, Dieter.”
The name Dieter stabbed through him like a scream. “Don’t call me that.”
“Yes, I will, even if I’m the only person who does. You are Dieter Schwarz.” She let go of his hand, and the silk of her dress rustled somewhere below the table. “As pure as the alpine ice, forged in the pristine snow of the Swiss Alps.”
That sounded so damned pretentious. “I never said it like that.”
“I’m embellishing. I’m a princess. I can embellish if I want to. You saved my life and Wulfram’s more times than I can count, not only by actually taking bullets and knives meant for us, but by keeping us out of situations where we would have been in danger. You did your best every day, every minute, to protect us. If you want to establish a bright line in your soul, then fine. Raphael Mirabaud wouldn’t have sacrificed himself to protect his friend and a child. Dieter Schwarz did.”
He grimaced and was glad she couldn’t see him wince. “I can’t think of you as a child. I’ve tucked that part of our lives away, deep in my head.”
“I turned thirteen pretty soon after we met.”
“Not helping.”
“All the time I was a teenager, I adored you. You were the shining example of an honorable and good man that I needed in my life.”
“Wulfram should have been that. He was that. He was your father, essentially.”
“But he was my big brother, and I was busy rebelling against whatever he said. God, the screaming fights.” Her voice rose. “‘You aren’t the boss of me!’” And her voice dropped to a manly-ish alto with a German accent. “I am, quite literally and legally, the boss of you.’ I tried to kill him more than once.”
Raphael chuckled. “I was there for most of them. I remember once, in the kitchen when you grabbed that round, wooden thing—”
“The rolling pin,” she said.
“Yeah, that, and I ended up holding you with your arms folded across your chest because you were going for him. You were going to take him out. And Wulf stood there and lectured you from across the room, the pompous ass. I’m surprised the bruises on my shins from where you were kicking me ever healed.”
“I remember that, too. I wanted to date—somebody. I don’t quite remember who.”
“I remember that you were fourteen, and the guy had a lot of stupid ideas about what his date ‘owed him.’ Wulfram threatened to lock you in a dungeon.”
“Yeah. He threatened that a lot.”
“He had good reasons.”
“But you never threatened that.”
“I wasn’t your father, or in loco parentis.”
“No, you sat with me after I calmed down—”
Raphael snorted. Sometimes it had taken her hours to calm down after a verbal knock-down, drag-out fight with Wulfram, but he didn’t need to mention that.
“—and then we had discussions about safety and the world. You remember those?”
Flicka had still been a puppy back then, and she’d begun the discussions curled in an angry ball on the other end of the couch, but she’d slowly unwound herself and listened to him. “I remember.”
“Operational security was your favorite lecture.”
“Of course, it was.”
“And most of the time, I ended up snuggled up next to you, your arm around me, while we discussed scenarios and how to survive them. All that time, even when I was seventeen and eighteen and nineteen, you were the soul of decorum, comforting me with no ulterior motive, and trying to protect me. I, however, lived for those stolen moments in your arms.”
He remembered child-Flicka as a fragile little bundle of bones and golden hair, like a fluffball kitten. Had she been pressed up against him like that? “Wulf accused me of taking advantage of you. Maybe he was right.”
“He wasn’t. You never took advantage of the fact that I was a teenager with more hormones than I knew what to do with. When I tried to kiss you when I was sixteen, you somersaulted backward over the end of the couch to get away from me and made a big joke of it.”
“I don’t remember that,” he said, wracking his brain for a time that he had flipped backward over a couch arm. Yeah, maybe it was there.
“You were as pure as the alpine snow, Dieter, a clear crystal of honor. You were a perfect, golden demi-god in every way, and I worshipped you. You treated a silly, spoiled blonde with respect and g
ood humor. When I developed that horrible methamphetamine habit when I was sixteen, after Wulfie ripped me apart emotionally that night in London, you held me while I cried it out, and then you talked to me about choosing the honorable way to live your life. I’ve never forgotten that.”
Neither had Dieter. That had been a rough night for all of them.
“It’s a good thing you married me, Dieter Schwarz, because no other man could have ever lived up to your example. Any other man would have lacked what you are, so effortlessly.”
Raphael’s eyes burned. He swallowed because his throat felt thick and hard. He ate another bite of the cheese sandwich to cover it up.
Her fingers found his hand where he clenched his water and pried his fingers away from the glass. She placed something in his palm, something sharp and fragile, like herself. “Here, take this. You said that it was the best part of you, that it symbolized that your soul had been washed clean in the alpine snow. It has comforted me all these years, but you need it now.”
In the dark, Raphael’s fingers closed around something delicate, fashioned from wires and silk. “My alpine mountaineering ribbon.”
“The one you had made into a gold-and-diamond pin for me. But more importantly, you earned that medal. There’s no other way to be awarded it. It’s not one of our silly royal honors that we bestow on each other to show others who is really in our favor. The police didn’t hand you that medal to help you hide. You completed the alpine mountaineering course. You excelled at it. You survived an insane regimen of winter warfare and survival, and all this was over and above your ARD-10 commando training. That day, you became a Swiss man, a guardian of the Alps, and you became Dieter Schwarz.”
“You took the pin when you left my father’s house in Geneva,” he said, his fingers wandering over the cool metal and solid fabric in the center, “and you have it still.”
Her dedication to it devastated him.
She said, “I’ve kept it with me all these years because Dieter Schwarz gave it to me. Dieter Schwarz, the silly, Germanic name for a man who mangles the noble German language.”
“Durchlauchtig,” he whispered, his fingers lightly holding the pin.
Happily Ever After (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 5) Page 17