Flicka laughed. “There’s an old-fashioned word.”
“Or a friend asked you to care for the child while she’s indisposed. Or we just won’t explain at all because it’s no one else’s business.”
No, Alina needed to get out of Monaco and Europe and go somewhere safe. “She’s not my child. She should go to her next-of-kin.”
Pierre asked, “Is the child’s father alive?”
“He—” She couldn’t quite say it.
Quentin Sault cleared his throat. “Raphael Mirabaud, whose alias was Dieter Schwarz, was in the warehouse last night, and he did not leave with us. We heard gunfire and explosions as we evacuated.”
Flicka refused to allow her shiny Hannover shell to crack. “I’m not sure where her father is at this time.”
“I’ll have our lawyers look into the matter and see ifwe can find evidence of a will or trust for her. Whatever the real story, this will not pose a problem. I am the law in Monaco, and if I say she stays, she stays.”
“You can’t just kidnap a child away from her legal guardians to use as leverage. It’s immoral. Surely you wouldn’t stoop so low.”
“Do we know who her legal guardians are?” Pierre asked.
“Raphael assigned my brother and his wife,Wulfram and Rae, as her guardians if anything were to happen to him. She should go to them. His will specifying that is with the other paperwork in the Mirabaud house in Geneva.”
Pierre leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his desk, and he looked Flicka straight in her eyes. “Now why would he do that?”
Flicka refrained from rolling her eyes at the oh-so-obvious because she was a gracious, kindprincess. Really, she was. “Raphael and Wulfram served in the Swiss military together for several years. Raphael headed Wulf’s security team until very recently. They depended on each other for their very lives. They are best friends, though neither would admit such a drippy thing.”
Pierre didn’t blink his dark eyes as he stared at her. “I don’t think that’s the case at all, is it? You are adamantthat Alina is not your biological daughter, but her father has designatedyournext-of-kin, not his own, as her guardian. Can you explain that?”
She waved her fingers in the air, dispersing Pierre’s silly theories. “They’re like brothers, except they don’t fight like real siblings, like you and Maxence, say. Wulfie’s wife is a psychologist, and she has a theory about why Wulfie latched onto Raphaelso tightly. It has to do with Constantin.” Wulfram’s gray-eyed, older fraternal twin had been gunned down by a psychopathic murderer when they were nine. Flicka used Constantin’s murder to neg people, to make them uncomfortable with such a sensitive subject so she could gain the upper hand in conversations. “You remember that, right?”
“I was there,” Pierre said. “I watched it happen.”
“Oh.”How had Flicka not known that?
Pierre said, “I dove for cover behind a tree on the opposite side of the street when the assassin started shooting.”
Wulf’s childhood friend Yoshi had pulled Wulf under a car and saved his life, though another high-caliber bullet had nearly destroyed Yoshi’s arm in the process. “I didn’t know that.”
Pierre sat back in his chair and regarded her, like he was analyzingjust how green her eyes really were.
Flicka bit her lip. Yoshi wouldn’t talk about that day. No one would. Constantin’s death was the reason that she had been born at all, because the Hannover dynasty needed another spare for its heir, and yet she knew little about it beyond the sterile news reporting and horrific footage of the funeral, plus one devastating conversation with her brother.
Shesaid to Pierre, “I have a question about that day.”
“Hasn’t Wulfram told you enough about it?”
“He only spoke about it once, and he never talked about it again.” She bit her lip. “This is going to sound odd. You’re sure that Constantin died that day, right?”
Quentin was watching Pierre from where he stood, back by the windows. One of his eyebrows lowered.
Pierre closed his eyes and leanedhis head against the high back of his chair. His eyelids creased. “Yes. Horribly. Bloodily. When that maniac couldn’t kill Wulfram because he had crawled under the car for cover, he kept shooting Constantin’s body. He must have pumped a dozen high-caliber bullets into his corpse, maybe more. He didn’t just kill Constantin. Hedestroyedhim. Constantin’s head burst open. He was torn apart. Thepolice wrapped him up in a sheet as they took his body away, but they missed pieces. It was easily the most terrible thing I’ve ever seen. Before that, when we were children, Constantin was more my friend than Wulfram was. Wulfram was quiet and amused at things. Constantin liked to ditch class and run around the playground, so you can see why he and I were thick as thieves. He was The Wild One.” Pierredrew a deep breath and swallowed hard, his eyes still closed and creased. “Why do you want to know?”
Because sometimes, when she had been little and Wulfram and Dieter had been young, blond, military men with identical haircuts and robust physiques, she had imagined Wulfram had found Constantin again. In her narrative, Constantin had survived and been raised by well-meaning, middle-class parentsor a blacksmith or wolves to hide him from the assassins, and he was out there somewhere, waiting for Flicka and Wulf to find him and bring him home.
Wulf and Dieter didn’t really look alike, of course. Wulfram looked very Germanic with a perfectly square jaw and cheekbones. Raphael did have a bit of the finer features of French men and the nearly Scandinavian looks of the Swiss. Raphael didn’tlook much like the pictures of Constantin that she’d seen, other than the gray eyes.
She’d just wanted to be absolutely, completely, totallycertainthat she hadn’t been inbreeding the Hannover royal family any more than it was. The branches of her family tree already crossed far too many times. “No reason.”
Psychologically, Wulf may have found his lost twin Constantin again, but not biologically.
