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.
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 that someday, another would probably take everything away from me, either by ending my own life or someone I loved.
Every damn day.
And yet, still, when both security teams broke formation for just a few seconds in the crowded hotel lobby and they couldn’t push their way through, I darted sideways through a cluster of talking people and around a corner.
I’m good at that. I can get away from anyone.
I’ve practiced my whole life.
After I gave them the slip, I met with the catering coordinator for more than three damn minutes to ascertain that suitable shrimp had been delivered that morning, that we had secured an alternate source of the problematic black truffles for the pheasant main course, and that the roses were indeed one-quarter opened.
Hallelujah. This reception might come off this evening as planned after all.
After that, I rounded up the cosmetics team by throwing out a mass text. We met in an alcove of the lobby to confirm the schedule for the bridesmaids’ and Rae’s hair, primary make-up application, and touch-ups. They had everything down pat and extra pots of all the necessary cosmetics. They had become a well-oiled machine.
Brilliant.
Planning the wedding for my older brother, Wulfram, and his wife Rae had occupied all my time for the last few months, and it was almost done. It had been delayed for a month due to his wife’s delicate condition, and the rescheduling had been an around-the-clock job.
But it was almost done.
And at three o’clock, four hours from now, it would begin, and it would be perfect.
By the sheer force of my willpower, I will make this wedding a spectacular success, even I have to bribe, threaten, or blackmail everyone in Montreux to do it. Wulfram deserves a perfect day.
He will remember every detail for the rest of his life.
Four more hours.
And then I will bend everyone to my will that’s what needs to be done, and it will be perfect.
But, for those few moments of freedom, I walked along a sidewalk in Montreux that passed in front of the grand hotel that Wulfram’s security team had commandeered for the wedding, ambling toward the concert halls that filled for the jazz and classical festivals here in the summer and fall.
Across the road, a park velveted in late-summer green stretched toward Lake Geneva, and the scent of mown grass crested the two buzzing lanes of traffic in the street. Shops lined the ground-level of the hotel—a jazz cafe, a coffee place, a boutique—all with their snapdragon-yellow shades retracted for the morning. In the afternoon, these shops and the hotel looked like a yellow tent, sheltered from the summer sun.
Farther down the avenue, a church spire poked into the sky, and some of the concert venues threw glass glares into the street.
More traffic blew by, ruffling my trousers and hair.
Maybe I would stay for the classical music festival. It was supposed to be soon, right? A friend of mine from Tanglewood—an elite performing arts camp that I had attended when I was sixteen—was supposed to play a piano concerto here. I would love to see her again.
Maybe next year, when all the weddings had settled down, maybe I could go back to performing, too. No matter what Pierre thinks, I won’t give up music. His family had managed to force Grace Kelly to give up her career, but that was a long time ago.
But this year, maybe I can just watch the recitals.
The sun lifted away from the eastern horizon, and the fiery clouds thinned. The sky turned the deep blue of my older brother’s eyes, a good portent. Surely, if anyone deserved a perfect wedding day, he did.
A black Volkswagen Touareg slid to a stop in the street beside the sidewalk.
I was just looking up at it, unconcerned because cars stop in front of hotels all the time.
Someone shoved my back.
I stumbled forward, trying to catch myself, but my high heel caught in a sidewalk crack.
The door in front of me gaped open as I stumbled, and he pushed me inside the car.
More hands grabbed me, holding me on the floor, no matter how I scratched at their hands and skin.
No. Not today.
I writhed, twisting, and managed a glance up.
The man holding my hands behind my back was in his late fifties or older, his face running to lines. Gray floated through his hair.
I had known him all my life.
I switched to German and asked, “Moritz? What are you doing?”
He glanced down at me. “Prinzessin, I am sorry.”