“Uh-huh.” That was my life all right.
“And remember how I kept telling you that you were special and you shouldn’t think of yourself that way? I used to call you my little Lithuanian princess, right?”
The pieces were beginning to fall into place. I couldn’t believe it was true. “Yes.”
“Well, I wasn’t lying. You
are
a Lithuanian princess.” Mama’s lower lip quivered as she fought back tears. “Not just mine, everyone’s. You are the only rightful living heir to the Lithuanian throne. You and you alone.”
I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say as I watched Genevieve carry her AK-47 from window to window, as the Secret Service men talked to one another through their microscopic mouthpieces.
It was true. I was a princess.
“And you?” I said to Stiletto.
Stiletto shrugged. “Interpol.”
“All along?”
He nodded slightly, a bittersweet half smile on his lips. “All along, Bubbles. I never was a photojournalist. That was just a cover.”
“But?” I searched his face, trying to find if he loved me or if our nights together and his marriage proposal had been him just doing his job. Part of the cover.
“Well, let’s not just sit here, people,” Genevieve hollered, throwing down her gun. “We have to hail our rightful monarch. We are in a place of worship, after all. Better crown her now while her head’s still on her shoulders.”
And before I could protest, Stiletto lifted me up so I was standing before a line of my first subjects—Mama, Genevieve and Jane—each in a curtsy.
Next to me, Stiletto opened a black velvet box, revealing a magnificent platinum tiara of sapphires and diamonds, which formed into a cross and an upside down M at the center. It was the jewelry I’d seen Stiletto pick up the other night for Sabina, though I never saw anything quite that magnificent in Musselman’s glass cases.
“The royal crest of King Mindaugas,” Stiletto said, placing the tiara on my head. “It is seven hundred years old and the one remaining piece of the missing crown jewels, worth an estimated seventy million dollars. It can be worn only by the one true heir to the Lithuanian throne.”
“It’s where it belongs,” Mama said quietly.
The tiara was so heavy on my head it was giving me a headache. Not anything like the plastic tiaras we used for dress up as kids.
“To Princess Bubbles!” Genevieve shouted. “All bow to Princess Bubbles!”
And so they did, even the Secret Service agents, even Stiletto, still naked from the waist up. That would be a royal decree when I took the throne, I decided, to insist that Stiletto—all good-looking men, for that matter—walk around naked from the waist up.
Oh, and that the official Lithuanian national anthem should be changed from
“Tautos Himnas”
to “Too Much Time on My Hands” by Styx and that hot pink would be the national color. Maybe funnel cake could be the national food. Either that or pierogies, though the Polish had stolen that one right off.
This was going to be fun!
As long as Kazys Grimzakas didn’t get to me first.