Page 31 of At Midnight

“They’re also fine, again as far as I know. This is not bad news of someone. This is—well, you should look at it.”

Sophie held the paper out to Flicka. The paper shivered like Sophie’s hand was trembling.

Flicka took it from her, and the papercontinued to rattle.

Black typing covered it, so it wasn’t a picture or something.

Flicka rotated the sheet in her hands.

At the top, a block of printing looked like email addresses.

Her eyes locked on something familiar.

The email address that the message had been sent to was her own. “Did you guys break into my email account?”

Sophie said, “Raphael gave us the password to monitor the accountin case there was something important. Valerian thought this didn’t rise to that level, but he brought it to me for a second opinion. I thought you needed to see it.”

Dammit, she’d been hoping if someone left a phone or a computer unattended, she might be able to get into her email account and shoot out a mass email that she was being detained, but they were watching it. “Does Valerian know you’regiving this to me?”

“He doesn’t need to know everything.”

“Right.”

She looked at whom the email was from and nearly dropped the damn paper.

Pierre Monaco.

The email was from His Serene Highness Pierre Grimaldi, her veryex-husband, the heir presumptive to the princely throne of Monaco.

But the email wasn’t from Pierre’s HSH account with his real name on it. He’d sent the message from hissecret, private account, which no one kept official records of.

Flicka almost laughed because this email, this one right here in her hand, was the very first time Pierre had ever emailed her from his secret account.

All their correspondence while they’d been friends, dating, and married had been through his official account and thus subject to official record-keeping regulations. Someday, everyone of his sweet but not sexy emails to her and her replies would be publicly available, though it would be some years after they were both dead.

She’d only discovered thePierre Monacoaccount when she’d been staying with her brother Wulfram and his wife, Rae, to keep her company while she was on bedrest due to some pregnancy complications. Wulfie had left his phone lying on a nightstand whenhe’d popped out of the bedroom. Flicka had walked by and glanced at an email open on the screen, something about an old business deal between the two of them that Wulfie was less than satisfied with, and so Wulfie would not be investing in any more of Pierre’s dealings.

Flicka hadn’t heard anything at all about the two of them having a business deal together, so she’d stopped and looked at itmore closely, and that’s when she’d noticed the odd email address Pierre had been corresponding from:Pierre Monaco.

Later, Flicka had discovered Pierre had used this secret account to communicate with his other wife, Abigai Caillemotte.

And now he was writing to Flicka from it.

Secretly.

Wow,nothing this guy did made her any less pissed off at him.

She almost called the housekeepers tostart a fire in the fireplace so she could burn the stupid email without even reading it.

A candle would do.

Or a match.

Or maybe Flicka could set the paper on fire with lasers from her eyes if she hated it hard enough.

She took a deep breath and read what her philandering husband and his wandering shlong wanted her to know.

My Dearest Flicka,