Page 33 of Happily Ever After

Aiden mused, “I did, once. It started with a night of drinking with the lads and ended with the Honours of Scotland displayed in a pub. The crown jewels were all a-twinkling in the beer and scotch. The crown, sword, and scepter were first used as regalia for the coronationof the infant Mary, Queen of Scots in 1543.”

Raphael vaguely remembered that Flicka was related to Mary, Queen of Scots, like Mary was one of Flicka’s however-many-greats grandmother. Mary had had her husband killed when he didn’t suit her anymore and then remarried the assassin, yet another one of Wulfram’s stories about his bloodthirsty ancestors that had given Raphael pause that first nightwhen Flicka had settled herself on his thighs and kissed him.

He said, “All your stories start with ‘a night of drinking with the lads.’ I really should hire these ‘lads’ of yours.”

Aiden smirked. “A wee bonnie waitress wore the Crown of Scotland while she served us rounds of scotch that night. King James would have approved.”

“Pics or it didn’t happen,” Raphael laughed.

Aiden held up hisphone with what appeared to be a pretty waitress wearing a red velvet and gold crown on the screen. “We gave the crown jewels back the next morning when we sobered up. We did nae keep ‘em.”

“Edinburgh has a city around it to hide an operation until the last minute. The Prince’s Palace is on a bare cliff above deep water and will be a harder target.”

Aiden scoffed,“Och,it’s still a medievalcastle with inadequate preparations. A Scottish feral cat could take down the whole Prince’s Palace with nothing more than a thistle and his claws.”

Raphael chuckled. In Aiden’s world, the Scots should have repelled the English invaders and conquered all of Europe with their sheer bravado. “So, they’re not prepared for an assault.”

“Even with their shiny-new guns, the fannybaws are not preparedat all,” Aiden assured him. “They did nae order the correct ammunition for them. It’s so pathetic that I thought about giving the fuds a little warning, just to make it sporting. However, I don’t mind shooting Monegasque ducks in a barrel. I’ll buy them a round of good scotch whiskey when all this is over to make amends.”

Raphael dropped Aiden at a bar where he would doubtlessly be the toastof the crowd in an hour and one of his newfound friends would drive him back to Monaco later that night, because once you’ve met Aiden, you’ll do anything for such a great guy. After that, he drove to a small hotel in the eastern part of Nice, about a twenty-minute drive from the Prince’s Palace in Monaco.

He tossed the bag from Aiden in a closet of his hotel room and waited until night. He triedto sleep because he was still damned tired from sleeping only a few hours per night while sitting upright on planes.

One of theWelfenlegionhad been bought or bribed.

One of his friends had spied on him and passed information to someone who might kill Flicka or Wulfram and his family.

Adrenaline and anger surged in his veins, and he tossed on the hard bed, thoroughly awake as he reviewed everydamn person on von Hannover’s plane.

He came up with nothing but more conjectures and conflicting twitches.

Maybe Aiden had been wrong, Raphael mused. Maybe the Prince’s Palace’s new fortifications had been planned all along, and there was noWelfenlegionmole.

During the late afternoon, Raphael received a text from Jordan Defrancesco, Rogue Security’s information source inside Monaco’s SecretService, which said, “Expecting your attack at the new moon from yacht in the PdF. New defenses anti-aircraft, anti-personnel, chem.”

Well, that confirmed that theWelfenlegiondid, indeed, have a mole, a deeply embedded spy, who had been on von Hannover’s plane that day.

Dammit.