55. Chapter 55
Chapter 55
Liam
I tore through the brush like a man possessed, nose to the wind, praying for even the faintest trace of Celeste’s scent. Panic clutched my chest, squeezing tighter with every second that passed. My body was shaking at the thought of her lost out here, needing our help… it was killing me.
Her phone must have died, and we couldn’t find her location. We’d spent nearly two hours scouring up and down the roads, stopping everywhere to see where she’d lost control of her car. Vigo had called in for extra help to find her, his voice frantic on the phone as he paced. Dante was in a state I’d never seen him in, tearing through the brush, his shirt torn as he screamed her name. We couldn’t lose her. We barely even had her.
I’d sent out an emergency alert to my entire staff, letting them know we’d need assistance soon.
Then my phone rang.
“Sir?” the voice on the other end said. It was the front gate guard; his tone chilled me. “She’s safe.”
I felt a rush of relief, followed by confusion. Why was she at home when she’d said she was near a lake?
“Where is she?” I barked, ready to tear the world apart to get to her.
“She left... of her own accord.”
“What do you mean she left? Was she injured? Does she need medical assistance?”
There was a pause. Hesitation.
“She said to tell you she’s fine... and not to contact her again.”
I froze.
“What?” I bellowed.
“She’s left your residence, sir.”
None of it made sense.
“Turn around,” I ordered as my pack stopped and ran to the car. “Try her phone again.”
We made it home in record time. I flung the doors open, catching the brief scent of her in the air. She was here. Not too long ago.
Then my phone buzzed.
"Do not try to find me. It’s over."
I stared at the message, my mind not comprehending what she meant. This didn’t make any sense. Despite everything we now knew, I still wanted to help her, fix her. We were just beginning - I was just beginning to fall in love with her. Maybe I had been for a while now. We couldn’t be over.
“What the fuck is this?” Vigo’s voice snapped me out of it. I followed his voice like a zombie, my mind whirring with too much to process. He stood in the kitchen, surrounded by a scatter of papers. My stomach dropped. She knew. She’d seen the evidence.
“Shit,” I muttered, recognizing the files we’d just pulled together.
“How?” Vigo barked out, gripping his hair. “We had that place locked tight!”
“No, we didn’t.” Dante said, shaking with adrenaline. “We left so quickly. I wasn’t thinking.”
I looked at the other papers, some of which I didn’t recognize. They were prints of text messages. I picked one up, reading through them. It didn’t take long for me to figure out what I was reading. Dante had stepped up beside us, his realization hitting at the same time as mine. I turned to him, holding the papers up to his face.
“Dante, is this real?” I asked, incredulously. The papers were prints of text messages between him and Elijah. Texts that very obviously showed that he knew more than we did about the plot at the Darlington Ball.
He’d planned an actual kidnapping with Elijah. Not only that, but he had Elijah pay a pack who he wasn’t sure was safe. Dante’s face was frozen, his dark eyes unreadable.
“I - yes.” Was all he could say. I stepped back from him, processing everything. Then anger surged up inside me, taking over my vision.
“How could you?” I growled, curling the paper up in my fist. “You lied!” My yell echoed throughout the house.
“Because we needed it to happen!” Dante yelled back, his palm slamming against the marble kitchen top as he faced me. “I had to make it happen! It was our only shot!” The regret in his voice reverberated through our bond.
“You lied to her! And to us! And now she’s gone !” Vigo yelled as he stood next to me, his lips snarled as he fought to control his alpha fury. Dante faced us, his own anger a cold simmer compared to Vigo’s red hot fury.
“Don’t pretend like you are innocent. It’s easy to claim moral superiority when you aren’t the ones to get your hands dirty.” He said as he moved a step closer to us. “You didn’t ask any questions when I told you she wouldn’t make it to the vote. You knew not to.” He jabbed his finger into my chest, and I growled a warning at him.
But damn him, he was right. I’d worked so hard to do things the right way, but it was impossible to make enough progress without resorting to Eastern Province tactics. When Dante said we had an option to remove Celeste as the head of Harringday Industries, we jumped at it. I just didn’t want to know the dirty details. Dante sensed my trepidation.
“And I thought it was the right thing to do at the time!” He said in a distraught voice, as Vigo and I bristled at his words. “Before we knew her - we had to stop her. Just because she’s our… our scent match, doesn’t mean she’s a good person.” His voice was nearly broken as he tried to reason with us. “We know that now. We know who she is, but she needs help. We have to step in and control this for any chance of stopping her and getting her in a place where she can’t hurt herself, or anyone else.” He was pleading now.
I knew Dante cared for her, otherwise he wouldn’t have any hesitation to use the proof we had to take down Celeste’s company. “We have to get through to her. Before she does anything drastic.” His face was anguished, and I looked down at the evidence she’d left along with Dante’s text message prints. It was just one paper. I peered closer, my heart racing from the ups and downs of the events in the last hour.
She left this here. But why? I looked down at it. It was one of the more innocuous documents we’d found, something to do with bribing a local official in one of the smaller counties. Her signature was on it, along with one of her beta staff as a witness. The date was circled with a highlighter.
She’d left this here for a reason. My mind struggled to think back to that day, just a few weeks back. I pulled out my phone to look at my calendar, the dawning realization hitting me. I remembered that day - she was supposed to go back home for errands, but I’d persuaded her to stay here with me instead. She’d barely left my bed. There was no way she could have made it all the way across town and signed these.
“Something isn’t right.” I growled as I looked at the paper. I knew for a fact that this date had to be incorrect, or…
Or Celeste wasn’t actually signing these. If we were wrong, and someone was going behind Celeste’s back…
“They are setting her up.” The words came out of my mouth as everything started to come together like a puzzle in my head. I felt Vigo step next to me to look at the document.
“What do you mean?” He snarled, his emotions still haywire after everything that had gone on.
“Don’t you see?” I turned to my packmates and held the paper out. “She can’t have signed this. She wasn’t physically there to do so.” I remembered that day, with Celeste exhausted and sleeping in my bed as I cared for her. “She was with me on this date. The entire day. But on her calendar, she was scheduled to be at her office that day.”
My mind raced as I realized why nothing made sense with her. I turned to look at the wine cellar. “How many times have you seen her drink?” I asked, feeling the confusion and stress of my pack through our bonds.
“What do you mean?” Dante asked, still glaring at us. I turned to face him, my anger barely contained after his admission that he’d known about the kidnapping all along.
“How many times have you seen her drink?” I asked through clenched teeth. “We stocked our kitchen and the wine cellar in preparation for her arrival. Our research on her drinking habits meant she should have been in here each night. She’s known to be a party girl, irresponsible and leaving her messes for other people in her organization to clean up.” My words came out laced with a bitterness, a dark realization that everything we knew about Celeste was wrong.
“I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve seen her drink, and it’s always been with us at an event. She never drinks on her own.” I said as the pieces started to come together. “She’s being sabotaged.”
Liam and Dante looked at me, their faces a mixture of pain and surprise. Dante slowly stepped forward, taking the paper and examining it.
“Who could forge her signature on something like this? Are you sure she doesn’t know about it?” He asked, and I could see his mind spinning with the new information.
“I don’t know!” I shouted, the frustration exploding out of me. “But don’t you see? Everything we were told was wrong. Nothing that she did when she was here made sense. How would she have time to do all this when she was here?” I asked, tossing the papers down and thinking of how often we’d been around her the last month.
Vigo’s eyes flashed as he ran a hand through his dark locks, gripping it halfway through as he had a realization. “She’s been hounded by the media for everything she does, even if we do the same thing.” He said. “She’s not who the media portrayed her as. The public knows her as an irresponsible, power hungry, shallow partier. And I think that’s intentional.”
Dante’s jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth, and I felt his emotions through the bond, his fury and regret building. “So you’re saying that - that she-” He couldn’t finish his sentence.
“I don’t think she’s behind all of this.” I said slowly. “I don’t think she even knew it was happening.” My mind flashed back to every time we’d gone out with her, for the press to focus on her in a negative or scandalous way. Every time she’d had to call and ask permission or argue with the board to get permission for something a CEO should never have to ask for. Every time I saw her come up with an idea, only to have it struck down and watch her try to hide her disappointment.
“Someone is trying to take her down. Think about the board. The ones who want to keep her, that we know of… They aren’t the ones against the improvements.” Vigo noted, and from what we knew, that was true. Reginald was an ethical man, and he’d been on her side from the beginning.
“So whoever is behind this, is making whatever changes they want, and using her name?” Vigo guessed, and I thought about it, and how it all would make sense.
“If any of these documents were made public, blame would fall on Celeste. She’s the CEO. But why put her name on all of it? Surely they can’t plan for this to work in the long run.” I said, scratching my chin as I thought back to every interaction in a new light.
“If this is true…” They don’t plan on her being around long term.” Vigo said, his tone cold as the implication set in. “They are pinning this on her for a reason.”
“And using her omega status against her.” I said, making the connections as my mind swirled with the information. Vigo slammed his fist down on the marble table, so hard I thought it might crack.
“We pushed her away. She trusted us, and now she knows we’re just another pack of alphas trying to sabotage her.” He growled out, his blue eyes wild.
“That’s because we are .” I said back to him, my skin pricking with the realization. “ We tried to push her out of her position. We set her up to look like she went on a bender and tried to have her kidnapped. We blackmailed her, and up until just now, we were trying to get her removed from her own company!” My voice cracked with despair. If we were right, then Celeste had enemies on all sides… and that included us.
I felt my body go weak. It was true. We thought we knew best. Even if our intentions were in the right place, we’d used her emotions and her attraction to us to hack into her company. We betrayed her.
Vigo’s eyes were bleary, and he leaned back, resting his hands on the table. “She isn’t the monster we thought. She never was.”
Dante looked down at the papers again, his hands trembling.
“Then who is?”
But the real question, which above all else scared me to my core, was whether we had just lost her for good.