“None of them quit on you en masse during those ten years. You never had a Samantha Rainford before either. She’s the glue that kept them all together. They’re on her side. Furthermore, why do you care? You have your resignation ready to go,” Kyros said.

“I’m still on the payroll until they get here tonight. I just received an email saying they moved up the meeting from tomorrow to tonight. All of this,” Pappy said, pointing to the Blackberry, “has to go on the final report. And my gut tells me Samantha Rainford is in it up to her ears.”

Kyros chuckled. “Son, maybe, just maybe, you created a monster.”

Pappy didn’t think it was funny at all. He scowled at his father. Then he wondered if his father was right. If he was, there wasn’t a damn thing Pappy could do about it.

Or was there?

Pappy felt naked without Alpha at his side. He tried to shrug off the feeling as he waited for the cable car to arrive. The sound of the car’s ascent made his nerves twitch. He was not looking forward to this meeting.

The men shook hands, commented on the warm summer evening, then fell into step with Pappy as he led them to his quarters. Once inside, when everyone was comfortably seated, he handed out drinks. Somehow the immaculately dressed men looked even older than they were. They also looked arrogant, as only the truly rich could, in his opinion. Everything these men did in their lives was somehow involved with money. Back in the beginning, ten years ago, he realized that of the five men, four of them worshipped money. He didn’t like them then, and he didn’t like them now. But he’d accepted it because the espionage game was his life’s blood.

Pappy handed out his final reports, then he handed the oldest of the four his resignation. He watched through narrowed eyes as the man passed the crackly sheet of paper to his colleagues.

The man dressed in a dove gray suit looked up at Pappy with expressionless eyes. “Why?” he asked curtly.

Pappy took his time as he let his gaze go from one man to the other. “Because I’m burned out. And because I don’t believe in the sanction you want executed. Contrary to what you might want to believe, I take a sanction seriously. There is nothing in this man’s record to warrant such drastic measures. We all agreed at the outset that I had the final say on a sanction. If this is some petty, internal vendetta among yourselves, get over it. I have nothing further to say on the matter.”

A man with snow-white hair and a scrawny neck fixed his intent gaze on Pappy. “It’s unacceptable, Kollar. Totally unacceptable. We can’t allow you to…ah, desert us.”