Page 10 of Happily Ever After

1297

Flicka von Hannover

I thought a phone would solve everything,

but it didn’t.

Over that day and the next, Flicka tried to figure out a way to tell people that she was being held in Monaco against her will and wanted to leave, but she had to do it subtly. If Pierre suspected that she would fly the coop the instant that she and Alina found an opening, he would lockher up so tightly that she wouldn’t ever be able to leave or tell anyone, not even after she’d birthed child after child for Monaco.

He would do it for spite, she believed, trapping her in sexual and reproductive slavery until she died. Pierre had pretty manners, but she did not fool herself into thinking that he cared about her as a human being at all. She was a walking, pedigreed uterus tohim, nothing more.

Her bedroom grew dim around the edges, the ornate crown moulding and blue velvet curtains around the bed fading from her view.

Breathe,she thought.

She bent over with her head between her knees for a moment to compose herself.

Her stomach twisted in a knife-edged cramp.

Breathe.

Escaping from palace-level security was her one superpower. If anyone could sidestep Pierre’sSecret Service, Flicka Augusta von Hannover could. After all, she’d done it many times.

This time, she just had to do it while toting an almost-two-year-old.

Piece of cake.

God, she wanted cake. Chocolate cake. Or lemon. Lemon cake sounded really good.

Her vision cleared as she thought about cake, and she stood.

There was no landline phone in the guest suite. Flicka found the connection boxeson the walls just above the thick, carved base moulding, but no phones were plugged in.

Whenever someone entered the guest suite—cleaning staff, admins, the manicurist that Alina did indeed love as they had side-by-side mani-pedis, people delivering books and toys Flicka requested but could not order herself, her personal trainer Mariah who sniffed her out and dragged her to the Palace gym foran immediate and emergency conditioning session, stylists bearing clothes for her approval or not—Flicka watched where they laid their phones.

She also noted that too many of them had their password set to facial recognition or the fingerprint scanner,dammit.Even if she did manage to snag one of their phones, she wouldn’t be able to get into it.

They also tended to notice when she ambled towardwhere they’d left their phones lying on end tables or when her hand strayed too close to their bags. She wasn’t good at sleight-of-hand.

As a teenager, while Flicka had been practicing slipping away from her bodyguards in crowds, some of her friends had become accomplished shoplifters, nicking jewelry or baubles for the thrill of it. Flicka wasn’t nearly as good as those little kleptomaniacs.Every time her fingers strayed near their phones, her admins and staff caught her.

Yes, the admins and staff were vigilant about their phones, but not everyone was.

Some people had been raised to be careless with expensive electronics, so when Pierre visited her in her suite one day to update her about his uncle’s impending death and plans for the funeral within days, Flicka was especially vigilant.She ordered tea and cookies, which neither of their trainers allowed them to touch. Alina scampered in and snagged a few cookies before bolting back to Flicka’s bedroom to wedge herself under the bed, as she always did when someone entered the suite. Her terror broke Flicka’s heart every hour.

Pierre watched the child sprint away, analyzing her blond hair, Nordic-pale skin, lithe little bodydespite a steady diet of cookies, and green eyes.

While Pierre stared after the retreating Alina, the afternoon sunlight dappling the chiseled planes of his face, Flicka dropped a napkin over his phone.

The napkin covered the phone for fifteen more minutes while they negotiated Flicka’s presence at various events.

Once again, as he had several times per day ever since she had arrived, Pierreasked, “And when is your appointment with the hospital?”

“In a few days,” Flicka said, touching her forehead to mime trauma to her very soul.

When Pierre left without his phone, she sneaked it under her leg and then to her bathroom.

Guessing his PIN number was easy:1297.