Chapter 12 Malachi #4
I stepped to the table and looked where she pointed. A subsidiary ledger line sat clean in the middle of legitimate movement, a single entry that pretended to be ordinary. The description was generic. The amount was not.
“Explain,” I said. “Slowly, and with the honesty that keeps people breathing.”
She swallowed once. “Northstar’s subsidiary is paying a vendor it shouldn’t have access to,” she said. “The vendor is coded, but the routing isn’t medical. It’s freight.”
Her fingers tapped the column headers, sharp and controlled.
“The invoices say supplements and restraints. The manifests say equipment. But the weights, temperature holds, and delivery windows match live cargo, not boxes. Someone is using Meridian’s lanes to move omegas, and they’re hiding it behind clinic supply codes. ”
My pulse did not change. My instincts did.
“That vendor is internal,” I said, and it was not a question.
Nyx’s eyes lifted to mine. “I don’t know the names behind your codes, but I know how systems work,” she replied. “You can’t route it that way without an internal key. Someone with clearance changed the classification after the payment posted, and they did it to hide the trail.”
She pointed to the timing column, and the calm in her voice thinned. “And it isn’t random. These payments spike right before suppressant shipments clear.They’re sedating omegas for transport, then burying the paper under a legitimate run.”
The air in the room sharpened. Her omega sensed the shift before she did, her scent tightening, her posture going rigid as if her body recognized danger and held its ground, anyway.
The spike hit me too, sweet turning sharp, fear, and defiance braided together.
My alpha flared at it with a reflex that was older than logic, a brutal urge to move her behind me and remove every variable from the room.
I did not do it. I stood still and let the irritation burn through my ribs, because an alpha who acted on reflex in front of an omega taught her exactly how to manipulate him.
“Why tell me,” I asked. “Why place this in my hands, unless you have already decided what you want from me.”
The question came out steadier than the heat that tried to rise under it. My alpha did not like the idea of omegas being moved through my structure without my permission, and it liked even less the way my body kept tracking her.
I leaned a fraction closer, not enough to touch, enough to remind her what I was. “And don’t insult me with half an answer,” I whispered. “You are too invested for this to be about greed.”
Nyx’s jaw tightened. Her eyes stayed on the screen.
“Talk,” I ordered, and the word was calm. That was the point. “Why does this matter to you like it is personal?”
Her scent spiked, sharp and controlled. “Because if someone inside your house is stealing, they’ll blame the outsider the moment you ask questions,” she said. “And because I’m not dying over somebody else’s business.”
I did not let her have that dodge. “Business,” I repeated, tasting the lie. “Or someone.”
Her throat bobbed once. Nothing else gave.
I straightened, letting the silence do what my hands didn’t. “Fine,” I said. “Keep your secrets for now. But understand this.” I tapped the timing column with one knuckle. “You brought me a war. You don’t get to act surprised when I want to know what you’re trying to retrieve from the battlefield.”
Smart. Ugly. Useful.
I leaned down, close enough that her omega reacted, not with heat, but with that instinctive flare of awareness that came when an alpha occupied space. “You are not dying tonight,” I said. “But you are also not leaving this room until you show me every path that entry touches.”
Nyx’s chin lifted. “Then stop standing there and look,” she said.
I did, and the deeper I traced the entry, the more it stank. The vendor code led into a chain of invoices that were almost perfect, timed to real shipments and real clinic distribution.
That was what made it dangerous. It was stitched into Meridian the enterprise so cleanly that it could move in plain sight, and it was timed to Pack Meridian’s routines so the men who should have noticed would look somewhere else.
It was the fraud that did not belong to amateurs.
It belonged to someone who knew Meridian’s paper well enough to counterfeit the rhythm and knew Pack Meridian’s habits well enough to time it.
My phone was in my hand before I finished reading.
“Lock down the ledger permissions on Northstar and every subsidiary it feeds,” I said when the security chief answered.
“Pull access logs, badge scans, and camera timestamps for anyone who touched classification codes in the last seventy-two hours. And do try not to alert the fox that the henhouse has noticed him.”
“Put an immediate hold in the transport system on every load coded clinic supply with temperature controls,” I added. “No releases. No reroutes. Quarantine them in our yard until I clear them personally.”
I kept my voice level because rage made sloppy leaders.
“I want shipping manifests, seal logs, temperature records, driver rosters, and a dock camera pulled for every run tied to those invoices,” I said.
“I want GPS pings, gatehouse badge scans, and the names of everyone who signed a handoff or stamped a release. If a single omega was moved through my lanes, I want the route, the handler, and the handoff point in front of me before sunrise.”
There was a pause on the line, the kind that meant he understood what I was saying without me needing to say the word traitor.
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
“Quiet,” I added. “If we spook him, he disappears, and I would prefer him alive long enough to tell me who taught him to be bold.”
Nyx watched me, eyes hard. “Is this going to make me safer or make me bait?”
“It is going to make you both,” I said. I let my gaze hold one beat longer than necessary, long enough for her omega to feel the weight of my attention and decide whether to fight it. “That is the point. Safe does not mean untouched. Safe means controlled.”
Her shoulders went rigid, but she did not look away. Good. She had the kind of bravery that got women hurt, and I needed her to learn the kind that kept her breathing.
“I just quarantined every clinic-coded load with temperature controls,” I continued.
“That buys us hours. It does not buy us the man. He will notice the silence in his pipeline, and when he does, he will either correct it or move to another lane.” I kept my voice steady.
Steady made violence feel inevitable, and inevitability made people obey.
Nyx’s mouth tightened. “So what do you do?”
“I give him a door,” I said. “One door. The kind he cannot resist walking through.” I leaned in slightly, not close enough to touch her, but close enough to make her body register the fact that I could. “Predators hate closed systems. They need an opening to prove they own the room.”
I lifted my phone again and spoke without waiting for her permission.
“Prepare one controlled release,” I said to security. “Clinic-coded. Temperature controlled. Tie it to the vendor Nyx flagged. Generate a decoy bill of lading with a clean seal number and a route that forces a handoff at our yard.”
I paced two steps, slow and deliberate, because I wanted the building to feel the decision to settle into its bones.
“Swap the driver with one of ours,” I added. “Bodycam.” I let the word land. “Tracker in the pallet. Two, actually. One we expect him to find. One we do not. Station eyes at Dock Two, the gatehouse, and the north service corridor.” I paused. “I want the moment he thinks he is clever.”
I lowered the phone and looked at Nyx.
“You are going to sit beside my security chief,” I said.
“You will watch the ledger in real time.” I let my tone sharpen, not angry, just absolute.
“The second that classification changes, you tell me whose credentials did it, which terminal, and the timestamp.” My gaze dropped to her hands, to the way she held herself too still. “You do not blink when it happens.”
Nyx’s brows knit. “And if they don’t touch it.”
“Then they let the decoy rot in our yard,” I replied. “And I learn they are patient.” I tilted my head slightly. “Patience is still a tell. It means he thinks he can outwit me, and men who believe that make mistakes.”
Her omega stirred, sharp with dislike. “You’re using me.”
“Yes,” I said. I didn’t soften it. Softness from men was always bait. “And you are alive enough to complain about it. That should tell you something.”
Nyx’s eyes narrowed. “It tells me you think you’re the one keeping me alive.”
“I am,” I said, and the simple certainty in my voice was the most honest thing I’d given her all night. “In this tower, you breathe because I decide you do.” I let the statement sit, then added the part that made it dangerous. “If you want that decision to stay mine, you follow the plan.”
Nyx’s gaze flicked back to the paper, to the numbers. She was angry, but she was not stupid. Her competence was the only reason she had not broken yet, and I respected competence the way other men respected prayers.
“It gets worse,” she said.
I looked down. Her finger traced a second entry, smaller, disguised as a correction.
“That’s a backdoor,” she said. “It’s not just skimming. It’s a switch.”
Her eyes stayed on the page, not on me. Smart. She was learning how to survive around alphas without giving them fuel.
“If you get suspicious and lock the vendor,” she continued, “whoever did this can flip the routing and dump everything onto a public-facing account.” Her voice tightened at the edge.
Not fear. Rage. “It would make it look like Meridian the enterprise is trafficking omegas in the open. It would invite the attention you can’t pay off. ”
A betrayal that invited attention was not greed. It was leverage.