Page 11 of Happily Ever After

That was the year when the Grimaldi family’s mercenaries and henchmen overran the Prince’s Palace and took control of Monaco.Pierre always used1297as his pin number or password. Knowing that had come in handy several times.

His phone opened in Flicka’s hand.

Nice.

Texts popped up, some in all-caps.

Flicka didn’t even care she was snooping as she read them.

Evidently, Pierre and his real wife, Abigai Caillemotte, were fighting about how much time Pierre was spending at the palace in Monaco instead of with herand their children in France.

Hmmm, that must suck for her.

Flicka considered texting Abigai back as Pierre to throw a little jet fuel on that fire, but she refrained. Indeed, Abigai could have every bit of Pierre if it would get him out of Flicka’s life, though she knew that wasn’t possible.

She keyed in phone numbers with her thumbs.

The numbers to Raphael Mirabaud’s phones, his old numberthat he’d had for years and the one to his Las Vegas pawn shop phone, both buzzed a fast dial tone in her ear, disconnected.

Her hands shook. Pierre’s phone dropped from her cold fingertips.

Flicka scrambled after it, saving it just before it fell into the open toilet and short-circuited forever.

It didn’t mean anything, that Raphael’s phone numbers were disconnected.

He’d smashed his oldphone in Paris, so that number was probably gone. Rogue Security had probably nuked it when it had become apparent he was on the run.

Valerian Mirabaud and the Russianbratvaguards had taken the pawn shop phone, so they’d probably mined it for data and then disconnected it. That made sense. They wouldn’t have wanted him to have access to that communication channel if he had escaped.

Whenhehad escaped. Notif,Flicka told herself.

She forced herself to believe that Raphael was out there somewhere, that he wasn’t lying dead in a shallow grave somewhere near Geneva after being shot in the head in the warehouse two nights ago.

The world seemed very lonely, and she desperately wanted to wake Alina from her nap and hug her.

Flicka braced her arms on the vanity counter in the bathroomand stared into her own dark green eyes, deciding whom to call next.

Everyone knew she was in Monaco by now, as the palace’s PR department had slapped the selfie picture of her and Pierre onto her social media outlets later that same day.

Her older brother Wulfram, the man who had raised her from the time she was six and he was fifteen, would have surely seen the picture and would be franticto get in touch with her. Frantic in his own way under his steely Hannover facade, which would be imperceptible to just about everyone else. His wife Rae would probably notice something was amiss.

However, the PR department had commandeered Flicka’s phone, and the palace was evidently intercepting her phone calls. The lack of a call from Wulfie was ample evidence that the palace wasn’t allowingher to take phone calls.

She wanted to call him. She wanted to hear his deep voice and slightly Swiss-German accent telling her it would be all right and that he would come and get her.

Pierre’s threat from months before—that he had a spy in Wulfie’s private security force and would order them to hurt or kill Wulf, Rae, or the baby—haunted her.

It might not be true.

She couldn’t risk thatit was.

So, she didn’t call her Wulfie, though she missed him so very much.

But she was holding a phone.

She had communication freedom for a little while, right up until they figured out she had it.

Who next?