Page 29 of Happily Ever After

“Snipers, machine gun nests, and various noxious chemicals,” Raphael told him. “Plus spotlightsand helicopters with the same.”

Luca leaned forward. “No one’s getting out of there alive.”

Beside him, sitting at the end of the table, Julien was frowning, too. “This is a suicide mission.”

“This is just the meeting for one of the offensive branches of the operation,” Raphael said, “And every aspect of this mission is on a need-to-know basis only, just in case someone has loose lips.”

Becausesomeone definitely did, and they were very likely on that plane.

He tapped his pen on his yellow pad. “We are anticipating their countermeasures. We will eliminate their defenses before theWelfenlegionsink their first anchors into the cliff and begin to climb. It’s not a suicide mission. Suicide missions are for SEALs.”

Julien dropped his pencil on a notepad, exasperated. “How is this only‘one branch’ of the operation? The wholeWelfenlegionis going, and you traded your Rogue Security teams for us. You don’t have anybody else.”

Raphael smiled at him. “Julien, I might have taken the wholeWelfenlegion,but there are many more of my operators out there, waiting for us. Rogue Security has grown quickly since I quit theWelfenlegion.We have far more work than I can accept, eventhough I’ve hired a lot of people. If I had more capital, I could hire and outfit a thousand more men, plus heavy equipment.”

Across the table, Wulfram’s blond eyebrows dipped. “I would have fronted you the capital.”

“I don’t want to take more of your money.”

“Finding good investments is difficult. I would have been pleased to fund more.”

“I also didn’t want it to grow too fast. Hiring newpeople is the main problem. I have strict criteria.”

Wulf nodded. “Fine.”

Matthias Williams sat in the last row of the plane, frowning. He wasn’t taking notes. He wasn’t from Raphael’s and Wulf’s days at ARD-10. They’d only known Matthias a few years, though he’d come highly recommended by mutual friends and had served five years on the American commando squad SEAL Team Six.

He was frowninga lot, and his lack of taking notes was unusual. When Theo and Noah had tried their little ruse, Matthias had taken the swing at Julien and started the free-for-all fistfight that had broken up the session.

Matthais might be at the very top of Raphael’s list of suspects.

In that Mousetrap session, perhaps Matthias had realized someone on a webcam was hunting for a mole and had started the brawlto sabotage them. Starting a melee was a great way to get out of larger trouble.

Sitting right beside Raphael, Friedhelm Vonlanthen wasn’t taking notes, either. His dark eyebrows were drawn down, and he had a tight grip on a ballpoint pen. A bead of sweat had formed on his tanned skin, near his dark hair. “This does seem like a suicide mission.”

“It’s not,” Raphael said. “We’ll go in hot, butthe plan is that everyone goes home. I’m not counting anyone as cannon fodder. Clausewitz said that ‘there are times when utmost daring is the height of wisdom,’ and this is one of those times.”

But he watched Friedhelm. When they’d been in the Swiss army together, Friedhelm had been the bravest at charging during operations, to the point where Raphael had wondered if he might have a death wish.Friedhelm liked to quote Clausewitz, too, but his favorite quote was,Courage, above all things, is the first quality of a warrior.Friedhelm had always counted himself a warrior.

This kind of reticence in the face of an assault wasoddfor Friedhelm.

Raphael would have bet that Friedhelm would have been the first one to sink an anchor into the cliff and begin climbing toward the Prince’s Palace,just for the fun and chaos of it. Raphael didn’t like odd, and he certainly didn’t like that Friedhelm Vonlanthen, his old friend who had mustered out of ARD-10 at the same time as he had, was the one beingodd.

Police Colonel Basch Favre had been an old army buddy from ARD-10, and he had betrayed Raphael to the Ilyin Bratva. Shared history didn’t confer ultimate loyalty. Raphael had learnedthat the hard way.

Indeed, as he watched Wulfram von Hannover’s dark blue eyes, Raphael and Wulf had a decades-old friendship, and Raphael had betrayed him so many times.

Raphael needed to tell Wulfram that he had married Flicka.

And his real name.