129. Thea
Chapter 129
Thea
Three Weeks Later
T he front door swings open before I can put the code in. “Expecting a delivery?” I ask Finn as I step inside.
“The motion sensors went off, so I came to see who was out here.”
I glance behind me, then back at him. “Since when do we have motion sensors along the footpath?”
Following me inside, he says, “Holden installed them last week.”
“We’re back with another load.” I call out to Austin as I pass him in the hallway.
“On it.” He jogs towards the front of the house to grab some of the boxes Wolfe and Pax are unpacking from the moving van. I shove open the door at the end of the hallway, and place the box I’m carrying against the wall where the other ones are. There are a few more boxes left in my car, then all the computer equipment will be on site. We all agreed it would be better to get my office up and running right away, just in case I need to video chat or send secure messages while we’re unpacking.
Hanging up fancy clothes and bath towels can wait. Security systems and protecting people can’t. The guys have been moving stuff into our new home since nine this morning. I’m just getting here, because I had back-to-back meetings. Learning the ins and outs of managing a security team is tiring, and so is the process of getting officially recognized as a descendant of the fourth legacy bloodline.
A big chunk of that process is going through the guardian and historian archives and figuring out what resources were originally part of my family line and reallocating them back to me. Wolfe’s grandfather, Pops, has been a tremendous help in all of that. He and a few other loyal guardian families have kept records hidden all these years, just in case something like this happened. I’m not fooled by the just in case caveat. They knew it would happen, because members of those guardian families are the ones who saved Alexz on the bridge that day.
Ryland and Clayton have been helping out, too. They’ve exhibited zero amounts of patience when it comes to getting the paperwork signed and transferring ownership of assets. There are a lot of empty and half constructed buildings on land I own. I’ve offered to let the current owners remain at an increased fee to their existing leasing agreement. Most refuse, because they think the deal they negotiated with Evan Bishop was already expensive enough. Too bad he wasn’t the rightful owner. The lawyers have informed them they’ll likely have to go through the courts to get their money back. I don’t see that turning out in their favor.
There’s a building in Red Cliff that I think would be perfect for a second Wolfe Pack location, when Wolfe decides he’s ready to expand. There’s also an apartment building a few blocks away from the subdivision Finn found along the backside of Canyon Falls. That neighborhood is the only thing out there so far, and it housed guardians in cahoots with councilman Sherman. I’m gonna finish construction on the apartment building and designate it as an Independent Living apartment complex. Foster children aging out of the system deserve luxury housing choices.
I walk out to my car and retrieve another load of boxes, as I mentally check things off my to do list. I’m meeting Scott and Moira for lunch tomorrow to give them an update. Apparently, the Adrianakis gene pool excels at making girl babies. Scott is the most recent male born, but he isn’t a league member, and by some fucked up twist of fate, I wound up as the de facto head of a family line. The League is dealing with me, but this is Scott’s inheritance, too.
That line of thinking brings me to Alexz. He’s setting up a satellite office in Palisade Shores. I’ve seen the blueprints for the mini-hub and think whoever works there will be very happy with the layout and amenities. He’s also opening an office for his PI business in Red Cliffs to help bring jobs back to the community that The League decimated over the years. I place the box I’m carrying beside the desk and start unpacking.
I’m nervous about this cohabitation thing, but the condo isn’t big enough for the five of us. The guys refuse to sleep in the dorms, insisting my safety is their responsibility, even though Pops’ security company and Phoenix agents are literally camped out all over the place.
Then, Pax mentioned needing a place to stay when he moves out of the dorms at the end of the semester, because his parent’s house isn’t an option. Once he started looking, Finn and Holden gave their inputs. Then Delta Team had to weigh in, because of safety and logistic reasons for if I wanted to visit them. Another week of back and forth, and I finally decided I would just find a bigger place and let them move in with me. Now, here we are, in a house on the south side of town, a few miles from the beach and my favorite diner.
I thought Pax, Finn and Holden were gonna have heart attacks on the spot when they saw the place. It’s a far cry from the cushy mansions they’ve grown up in. This old house wasn’t much to look at from the outside, and the inside needed a major update, but I just loved the feel of it. As soon as I saw it, I knew this was the right place.
The kitchen and bathrooms were remodeled, there’s a new roof and paint on the walls and the barren patch of dirt around the house has been re-sodded with grass. A stone cobbled footpath with recessed lighting leads from the driveway to the front door. The landscaper is still working on the flower beds and borders, and was instructed to just haul away the trash from the backyard. That space is for Holden’s garden and he gets to set it up however he wants.
“There’s mail on the kitchen counter for you.” Wolfe says, popping his head into the office.
“Probably more stuff from league affiliated lawyers.” Those dudes are the worst. They don’t seem to understand why they’re the last people I want advising me on shit.
“It’s from the University of Colorado.”
“Thick or thin?”
“That doesn’t really matter in the digital age.”
He’s right, it doesn’t. A copy of whatever it is, is probably already in my email inbox and I haven’t read it yet. I’ve also got unopened mail from Yale, Boston University, and schools in France, the UK, and Spain. I’m still not sold on staying in Canyon Falls long term, but I’m also not sure where I’d like to go when I finally graduate. I have a year to figure that out.
The League is going through a major upheaval. Three other families are fighting to reclaim their status as the primary bloodline, and half a dozen council members, in addition to Malcolm, Burke, Grant and Sherman, were relieved from their positions for their involvement in the fraud and trafficking cases.
The missing league family members weren’t chosen at random. They all posed some kind of threat to a prominent legacy family. They either had potential claims to a family line or were in Romeo and Juliet type relationships. I was shocked to hear just how many higher ranked legacy heirs were secretly dating people from lower legacy families, or who didn’t come from legacy families at all.
The heads of those families ruined lives just for optics. Formal charges are pending for all of them, and even though the FBI is working the case, I feel better knowing Alexz has people looking for the victims. That includes my mother. I brush my hand over the picture of her I have hanging on the wall. None of the men in custody have admitted to locking her away in Rock Mountain, and we still have no leads to where she is now, but I trust Alexz will get me answers, even if it’s not the outcome I’m hoping for.
Things on campus haven’t changed. I get just as much hate and vitriol as I ever have and Eloise is still at the head of it all, only now it really is personal. With Delta Team’s tech guy’s help, Holden found a company to bankrupt, with direct ties to the parents of a Zeta Nu. The family had watched how things were playing out last semester, so once their finances were impacted, they were all too happy to convince their daughter to turn over the video evidence she had from Mayhem Night.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch it, but according to the guys, Eloise is in the video telling the group that I’d been spotted in the cemetery. When one brave soul asked if they were just gonna throw me in the pool or shave my head, she reminded them that if they caught me, they could do whatever they wanted. Michael was standing right next to her when he said if he caught me, he’d teach me I wasn’t as tough as I thought I was.
They said the video skips to her getting a call that I’d been caught in the tunnel, and her gleefully saying it was time to have some fun, and to make sure they crushed me so badly, that I’d never show my face on campus again. The next segment of videos is the attack. Afterwards, Eloise made a phone call, then told everyone to leave, with the exception of Mikey and his buddies.
According to the guys, the final stretch of video was taken from quite a distance away, as if the person was hiding and secretly recording. The video starts with Mikey and his buddies dragging me to the cemetery. There are two people already standing near the empty coffin when they drop me into. One of the guys enters the video frame and says, “Ya’ll really fucked her up.”
To which Mikey says, “She deserved it.”
The person they think was in charge said, told them nobody could ever know about what happened and that they needed to make the problem go away, permanently. The problem being me. He doused the coffin in lighter fluid and struck the match while Mikey and Eloise watched.
They showed me a picture of the men. One of them was Liam Charles. The one who set the coffin on fire was Slim, the guy with Mikey the day they caught me in Skullz’ territory. I knew Saint had disloyal asshats in his organization, but I didn’t think they’d lead back to The League.
Even with all the evidence, Eloise somehow wiggled her way out of taking responsibility for her part in what happened to me. She says she and her father were victims too. High councilman Sherman gave the orders, including who to befriend on campus, and her father told her she had no choice but to carry them out. She did it, without question or reservation, because she’s a good legacy daughter .
She’s also a legacy daughter without a Truim companion to protect her. The first thing Pax did after we confronted the council was to withdraw his petition to marry and end his designation as Eloise’s companion.
I’m still not eligible to be a companion, or even interested in being assigned as one, but that hasn’t stopped Pax, Finn, and Holden from acting like we’ve been matched.
Eloise thinks she’s untouchable, but she’ll get what’s coming to her. She’s got a temporary reprieve, because right now, I’m focused on the people much higher on my revenge list.