Page 79 of Once Upon A Time

Jesus,it wasn’t like Dieter had rappelled from the ceiling or something.

Even if he had, they should have seen him coming.

He shook Wulf’s hand, aware their arrival signaled the end of Dieter’s few days with Flicka.

Wulfram and Rae would marry at the Lutheran church at four o’clock that afternoon, after which would be the evening reception, and then Flicka would fly back to Monaco with her husband.

His Serene Highness Pierre Grimaldi had arrived the day before.

Not that Dieter was jealous. Not that he had any right to be jealous.

It just meant that his Rogue Security personnel now contended with Pierre’s Monegasque Secret Service operators, which complicated the personal protection maneuvers.

That was all.

Nothing more.

Tomorrow, Dieter would go back to his daughter, Alina, and their very empty house.

He might not see Flicka again until Rae and Wulf’s child was born around Christmas.

Or maybe years.

Rae asked him, “Where’s Flicka? She said she would meet us here.”

Dieter plastered a grin on his face. “I’m sure she’s around somewhere. I haven’t seen her lately. Something to do with napkins.”

Kidnapped #1

Flicka von Hannover

I slipped away from my security teams one more time that early morning, just to walk through Montreux, just to get away from the wedding chaos that was compounded by security men constantly tugging me away from my friends and consultants and coordinators because I had been stationary in a common area for too long.

Quentin Sault was easy to lose. He was too arrogant about his observation skills, and one little side-step around a plant was enough to shake him.

Jordan Defrancesco, the guy who drove us around most of the time, was harder to lose, but I finally lost him by letting the elevator doors close before he got on. I always felt bad about ditching Jordan. He was younger than the other guys, somewhere around twenty-five, and the older Secret Service guys would probably rag on him for losing me. Jordan had smoldering dark eyes and wore his suit a little more closely cut to his muscular body than the older guys.

Not that I noticed.

Even Jordan Defrancesco was just another bodyguard to lose.

My whole life, black-suited security men have followed me like bats fluttering in my wake. They suffocate me, swirling in the air and isolating me from people and children and birds and air. Instead of being a fairy-tale princess, I have been a fairy-tale witch, trailing vampires and darkness.

Two teams surround me every day: the Grimaldi team from my new husband Pierre’s palace staff in Monaco, where he is the noble heir to the principality, and a Hannover team hired by my brother, who believes that Pierre’s team is either inadequate or might not defend me.

That very thing happened at our wedding.

A man with a gun shot white-hot bullets out of the crowd at us. Pierre’s team threw him into a car and sped away, even as Pierre reached back for me and shouted at them to return.

He fired half of his team afterward in a cold rage that I had never seen before and then apologized to me, swearing it would never happen again.

But I know better. His team answers to his uncle, Prince Rainier the Fourth, the reigning Prince of Monaco. He won’t let his heir be murdered.

The press would be awful.

Trust me, the press gets horrible when princes are murdered. Scathing. Blaming. Aggressive. I’ve read a lot about things like that.

Security threats are always present. I know that.Deeply.From the time that I was a toddler, I knew that I owed my very existence to an act of horrific violence, and someday, another would probably take everything away from me, either by ending my own life or killing someone I loved.