“Moritz,” she begged, “let me up. I’ll sit in the seat and won’t jump out or anything.”
Dennis Moritz looked down at her from where he sat in his half of the back seat, his dark eyes flickering to her bound wrists and ankles. The creases around his eyes and mouth deepened as he frowned, more lines than the last time she had seen him several years before. “I am sorry,Prinzessin.Your father was clear that he didn’t want anyone to see you in the car. We’ll be there very soon, I promise. It’s not far.”
He held her phone, which he had powered off. Dieter couldn’t track her signal with that intrusive software he used if it was off,damn it.
“We’re not going all the way to Germany, are we?” she asked. “I can’t miss Wulfram’s wedding. Please, Ican’tmiss it.”
Moritz leaned over and whispered, “Not Germany. A hotel here in Montreux.”
“He’s here?My father shouldn’t be in Montreux. He should be back in Germany, far away from Wulf and this wedding.” She hadn’t sent her father an invitation, and she was quite certain that Wulf wouldn’t have, either, not after the horrors that he had pulled like kidnapping Rae just over a month ago.
“He needs to talk to you,” Moritz said, “in person and without interruption. It won’t take long.”
“He’s trying to disrupt Wulfie’s wedding, isn’t he? Wulfram will come after me. He’ll find me. I know he will.”
And hopefully, Wulf would send Dieter to burn her father, his hotel, and this damned Touareg to the ground, and then the wedding would start on time.
“I don’t know about that,” Moritz said. “I only know he wanted to speak to you.” The SUV turned another corner, bumping Flicka’s shoulder against the side. Cement ceilings and darkness replaced the Swiss sunlight. He said, “We’re here.”
The Touareg pulled over, and the driver killed the engine.
The rear hatch door flew up, and two more of Flicka’s father’s security men, Rhyn and Forrer, stood there. Rhyn cut the plastic cord around her ankles. “Please,Prinzessin,if you would walk to the elevator.”
She scrambled out of the back of the SUV and struggled, trying to get away from them, yanking her arms to try to break their grip all the way to the elevator.
It didn’t work. The men, even though they were in their forties or fifties, were all stronger than Flicka, so her wiggling and flopping were fruitless. They hauled her past the cement pillars to the elevator.
She wasn’t trying to get away. There were too many of them fanned out around her, and she wouldn’t make it. Mostly, she wanted her struggling to alert anyone watching the internal security cameras that protruded from the ceiling of the parking garage.
As the elevator ascended and gravity dragged on Flicka’s feet, Moritz whispered, “Please, don’t make me hold you too tightly. I’ve known you since you were little, Flicka. You know that I would not let anyone hurt you.”
“Even my father?” she asked, watching the numbers change above the doors.
“Yes,” Moritz whispered.
She relaxed a little, but a small part of her brain worried that they wanted her to relax, to be less on her guard, because maybe her father did want to hurt her.
Around a month before, Flicka’s father had convinced the family of Wulf’s fiancée, Rae Stone, to kidnap her. Rae’s family had used terrible techniques that might have killed her or the baby she carried.
Maybe Flicka’s father had suggested those, too.
Flicka wasn’t sure just how far her father would go to disrupt Wulf’s wedding. She’d often thought that her father might be a psychopath, unable to love anyone and only using other people like disposable chess pieces.
It would explain a lot about her childhood.
Maybe her father would kill his daughter, defective because she was female and thus useless in the House of Hannover’s Salic lines of descent. She couldn’t inherit the title and power that went with it. She was, dynastically, a dead end.
Her father really,reallywanted to disrupt Wulf’s wedding. It might be the most important thing in his life, at the moment.
Her father might have decided to kill her to stop Wulf’s wedding. If her dead body washed up on the shores of Lake Geneva in front ofLe Montreux Palace hotel, Wulf wouldn’t be able to continue.
Flicka’s legs trembled, but she jerked her chin up, unwilling to let these men see weakness in her.
If her father did order them to kill her, her only chance might be to countermand the orders and make them believe she had the authority to do so asPrinzessin von Hannover und Cumberland,etc.
All power is an illusion, but sheneededthat illusion.
So she needed to be strong.
