Page 97 of Happily Ever After

A Public Statement

Flicka von Hannover

It was an act of desperation

and of love.

The next morning, back in the sitting room inSchloss Marienburg,Flicka looked into the lens of the phone Dieter Schwarz held. He was holding it out and away from his face at eye level, which was slightly above the top of her head.

Good.

If you hate someone and want to sabotage a pictureof them, want them to look truly hideous and make it look as if they have gained fifty pounds or more, drop your camera below their chin. It makes everyone look like a goblin. That’s why everyone who knows what they’re doing takes selfies with their arm raised in the air and to the side.

Dieter asked, “Are you ready for this?”

Flicka took a deep breath and shook her shoulders a little, tryingto release the tension. “Yes.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes.” She stared straight at him. “It’s time to burn it all down.”

They had set up a chair in her father’s sitting room near the windows, where the morning sunlight would glow on her skin. She knew selfie tricks like that. Instead, the sunlight caught the gold and amber highlights in Dieter’s hair and short beard and caressedhis tanned skin, distracting her utterly from thinking about what she was going to say.

Behind her, the camera shot would include the sunlight striking the opulent excess of the sitting room: the gold-leafed chairs, the sumptuous velvets and silks, and the oil paintings displayed in gold frames so ornate that they looked more like royal crowns than an edged platform to hold a painting onto awall.

“Okay.” Dieter tapped the phone screen and held it with both hands, trying to keep it perfectly still. “It’s connecting.”

Flicka lifted her chin.

Dieter nodded, signifying that the video was going out live.

She waited three seconds to allow some blank space at the beginning, and then said, “Friends, I have a lot to tell you. Stay with me to the end because it’s all important.”

She drewa deep breath, straining the tiny buttons on her blouse. Some of her clothes had turned up in her closet that morning. She must have left them at Schloss Marienburg during a previous trip, maybe as far back as college, but unaccountably, she was more bosomy than the last time she’d worn the top.

Dieter nodded at Flicka and smiled, though he was watching her through the screen.

She continued,“I know I sent out some conflicting and disturbing posts on social media lately, and now I need to set the story straight.

“The first thing you need to know is that I have left my ex-husband, Crown Prince Pierre Grimaldi of Monaco. I divorced him in Las Vegas early last month as specified in the prenuptial agreement that we both signed. Lawyers from both our sides hammered out that thing formonths. We both knew everything that was in it. No matter what his kangaroo court in Monaco says, I have divorced him, and that legal divorce is final.

“I understand you’re sad that it didn’t work out. I am, too. I wanted to be with a man I loved and who loved me, but that isn’t Pierre Grimaldi.

“I left Pierre because he has a family and four children with another woman, and he loves her. Theywere married in a church by a priest, though they never filed a legal marriage license. When I found out and confronted him with evidence that he was already married, first he lied about it and denied they were married, saying that she was nothing to him. He said she was just a woman he’d screwed who was making up stories about him being the father of her four children. He didn’t stand up for her.He didn’t stand up for their children. I had been given more evidence, though. When I showed him the pictures of him present at the birth of one of their children within the last year, after he and I were engaged—”

Flicka sucked in a very deep breath because she wasn’t sure she wanted to say this on camera, but it was the truth and it was hardly a unique truth. Too many of her women friends wouldwhisper to her that they understoodexactlywhat Flicka had felt.

“—Pierre Grimaldi beat me and raped me.”

And there it was. It was out. It was an accusation of a crime that she couldn’t take back, but it was the hard truth.

“He held me prisoner in Monaco, and I willneverwillingly go back to him. He tried to kidnap me after the court hearing in Nevada. You might have seen the video of thesoldiers swarming us as we tried to leave.

“Even these last few weeks, when I was in Monaco, he was holding me prisoner. I had asked for his help to get out of a different bad situation—like I said, I have a lot to tell you—and he sent soldiers to help me. But then, he had them take me to Monaco, and he locked me up. Guards constantly surrounded me so that I couldn’t leave the palace. He controlledall my social media, phone calls, and contact with everyone.

“When I went missing these last few months, I was in the company of my bodyguard, Dieter Schwarz, who owns the private security company, Rogue Security.”

Dieter leaned out from behind where he held the camera and frowned.