Chapter 25 Ty #2
“You’re the one who dropped off the face of the earth, man.” I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice, but I couldn’t hide the edge to it.
“I’m sorry for the radio silence, Ty.” He sighed heavily into the phone.
Shit. That wasn’t a good sign.
“You’ll understand why it’s taken me so long to get back to you once you see what I found. I’m at the tech store.” My stomach churned. He wasn’t coming to meet me because more than once in history the messenger had not, due to rage inspired by his message, returned.
“On my way.” I tossed my phone onto the driver’s seat and made a U-turn in the driveway.
By the time I pulled into the parking lot of Techno Trends, I’d run every scenario I could imagine through my head.
Maybe he’d found information on Stone that would give me leverage.
Not just any type of leverage, though. I needed facts that would send Stone running with his fucking tail tucked between his legs, never to be seen in Presley Acres again.
I walked straight through to the office, and found Zephyr hunched over his multiple computer screens and keyboard.
“All right, what do you have for me?” I pulled up a chair and leaned forward, prepared for whatever news he had to give.
“Stone Black doesn’t exist.” Zephyr tossed a sheet of paper in my direction.
I picked it up and stared at a bunch of words that meant nothing to me. “What the hell do you mean?”
“I thought Stone Black sounded like a shady, shifty name. The kind someone would make up in one of those old, black-and-white detective movies.” Zephyr laughed like he’d told a joke, but I didn’t find it funny in the least. “And, sure enough, I was right. Stone’s real name is Castro Neal.”
“Does that mean he’s not from the Wylde pack?” I handed the sheet of paper back to Zephyr and he set it on a pile.
He held his hands up, then rooted through his pile for another page.
“Give me a second and I’ll explain it all.
” When he found the page, he scanned it, then looked up at me.
“His parents were Lillian and Foster Neal. They, too, originated from Denmark. Their families had a shit load of stocks in oil companies that left them loaded beyond comprehension.”
Why wasn’t I surprised that we were still dealing with rich motherfuckers? I could only imagine where the rest of their money had come from, considering the history of the Wylde pack. Of course, I couldn’t throw stones. My wealth had come far more nefariously than I wanted anyone to know.
Zephyr continued. “Lillian and Foster’s parents had been friends with Josef’s parents.”
“Remind me who Josef is again?” I couldn’t keep up with my own pack members’ names, not to mention the names of an annihilated pack.
“Josef was the alpha of the Wylde pack.”
“Ah, yes.” I slapped my forehead. The drugs-and-arms dealer that got our family into this mess. Zephyr didn’t need to know that… but he probably did. “Okay. I’m with you now.”
“All right, so when Josef’s parents decided to immigrate to the States, Lillian and Foster Neal’s families followed suit.
” Zephyr sat back in his chair, tossed the paper on the desk, and rested his hands behind his head.
“Foster had been Josef’s right-hand man.
On the business documents I managed to find, it seemed that Josef had a hand in a lot of business dealings outside of his supposed illegal activities. ”
The cameras alerted us of a customer bursting into the store, eyes wide with panic. “My laptop crashed again! I need help.”
Zephyr and I exchanged a knowing look—it was one of those days.
His computer store gave him a great coverup for the real work he did behind the scenes, but there were still actual customers that needed to be dealt with, and it had happened more than once that a customer showed up at the worst time. I needed to finish this business.
He quickly got up from his chair and exited the hidden workstation, greeting the woman with a warm smile. He ushered her over to his repair table and had her fill out a request form, leaving me to mull over what he’d told me.
So, there was even more money that hadn’t been accounted for from the Wylde pack. Where could it be? Dad had worked hard to bury everything about Heather Falls and the Wylde pack. Apparently, he hadn’t buried it deep enough since Zephyr had managed to dig it up.
Zephyr returned a few minutes later. “Sorry about that. There’s nothing more urgent than a housewife with a laptop issue. Now, where was I?”
“I have no damn clue, but why don’t we circle back to Stone?” I suggested.
He nodded. “Castro’s birth wasn’t documented anywhere.
It’s like the pack wanted to keep the births of the children a secret…
but I did manage to find the names of all the registered members of the Heather Falls residents.
I hit firewall after firewall trying to crack the code for the information.
Neither Castro nor Liza were registered. ”
“Then, how did you find Stone’s real name?”
Zephyr’s detective work never ceased to amaze me, but this particular case blew my mind.
“I only managed to find Castro’s information because when he turned eighteen, he returned to Denmark where he received a trust his family left for him under his birth name.
” That was why I trusted him. He was haggard.
A dog with a bone. Didn’t give up. Those were exactly the kind of traits one wanted in a PI.
“Money. Of course.” I scoffed. “Always follow the fucking money, right?”
“Exactly.” Zephyr picked up a new stack of paperwork and laid each piece out on his desk in front of me. “This is the paper trail Castro left behind. He spent an ass load of money on these reports.”
I examined the documents. It seemed Castro had been hiring private investigators every year up until about two years ago. All these documents were invoices.
I tapped the last document with my finger. “What happened after this?”
“At that point, Castro disappeared, but that’s also when a man named Stone Black started using new accounts.” Zephyr chuckled. “These sons of bitches think they’re so clever, but they always leave a fingerprint or a piece of paper along the way. No one is ever truly untraceable.”
“Interesting. What kind of activity did Stone get up to?”
He tapped his keyboard, then turned the monitor toward me. “This is a property deed purchased by Stone Black. It’s a massive amount of acreage. Do you recognize the location?”
I leaned in and squinted at the new tab Zephyr had opened. It was an aerial view of flat, wooded land. “Is that fucking Heather Falls?”
“Ding, ding, ding. Give this man a prize. We have a winner. Stone purchased the land exactly where Heather Falls had once hosted the Wylde pack. It seems he also spent a great deal of money to purchase it.”
Holy shit. That acreage wouldn’t have been cheap, which led me to believe Stone had a considerable amount of assets at his disposal. I couldn’t begin to guess how much, but it would not be a tiny sum.
He looked like some kind of fucking vagabond who roamed from town to town, owning only the shirt on his back. Well, looks were deceiving. “This is unbelievable.” And not fucking good, but it wasn’t Zephyr’s fault. “Great job.”
“There’s more.” Zephyr eyed me and lowered his voice. “Josef Wylde must have known something big was coming because he did the same thing the Neals did. They set their kid up with a fortune.” He tossed me another document.
My eyes bulged like a cartoon character as I stared at the massive numbers. There were a whole lot of zeros and commas on the left side of the decimal point.
I didn’t buy it.
“This can’t be right.”
“Bet your ass it’s right.” Zephyr chuckled.
“The account hasn’t been touched, so it’s accumulated a shit load of interest over the years.
” A shit load. Of course. There were about ten zeroes to that, too.
“An offshore account made auto deposits up until last year. And there’s a safety deposit box registered in their names.
” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “But the trust was left under the name Aliza Wylde.”
I’ll be damned. Dad had taken everything from Liza except her first name.
“The whole thing is fucked up, Ty.” Zephyr massaged his temples with both hands as if to stave off a headache.
“It was all heavily encrypted. Banking usually is, but this was over the fucking top. I had to quickly erase any backtrace that might lead to me. Whoever your father hired to cover his tracks did a damn good job of it.” He smugly smiled now.
“Unfortunately for them, I’m not the average hacker.
Either way, I didn’t want them to catch wind that I was on their trail or that I’d cracked their code, so to speak. ”
“Thank you for doing all of this, Zephyr.” It wasn’t like I didn’t pay him, but he’d given me a lot of information.
“No problem.” He paused. “I have to ask, what are you going to do now that you have all of this information?”
“Hell if I know.” I stood and pulled my wallet from my back pocket. “Here’s a deposit for all your hard work. I’ll wire the rest to your account tonight.”
I tossed a stack of cash onto the desk and gathered up the documents.
I walked to the car, trying to make sense of the information Zephyr had dumped in my lap. There was no way I could sit quietly after this. Liza had a fortune waiting for her. A fortune her parents had set up for her. A fortune that would see her, her kids, and her grandkids all set up for life.
I had no idea what my next move should be, but it seemed the decision was being made for me when a text message from Dad popped up on my phone screen.
We have a problem.
Instead of wasting time texting Dad back, I dialed his number and waited for him to answer. This was better done with a phone call.
“Hey, Ty. I know you’re at work and you have shit to do, but we have a situation.” I didn’t miss the urgency in his voice.
I sighed. “Yeah, Dad. I just got your text. What’s going on?” Whatever it was, I’d just add it to the list of shit I already had going on.
“Stone Black has made a move. I guess he’s tired of us dragging our feet.”
Well. Fuck. “What kind of move?” I buckled my seatbelt and pulled out onto the road, heading in the direction of the estate.
“I’ve just been made aware that the Heather Falls property is currently being developed.”
“Developed? Into what?” Not that it mattered.
Fuck! Stone’s mission was clear, which I should’ve expected. He’d said as much when we chatted outside the ice cream shop. Stone had big plans, and he wasn’t waiting around to move forward with them.
He was going to rebuild the Wylde pack and restore them to their former glory, and he couldn’t do that without Aliza, their omega princess.
This was going to get ugly.