Ten
TEN
Nat
I’D EXPECTED MIA TO be upset. I mean, who wouldn’t be? Joe hadn’t been an employee for that long in the grand scheme of things, but it still hurt when someone whose paycheck you signed randomly knifed you in the back for no reason.
However, I hadn’t expected her to shoot to her feet, swaying alarmingly as all the blood drained from her face in a heartbeat. I reached out before my brain could catch up, steadying her with a hand on her shoulder.
“Mia? What is it? Are you all right?”
She shook her head frantically, her eyes wide and unblinking.
“We have to take this to the police, Nat,” she said, forcing the words out in a choked rasp. “There’s more going on here than you know about.”
I didn’t understand what had caused such a violent reaction, but her distress was already crawling behind my ribcage, sending a jolt of sour adrenaline through my veins.
“Here,” I said, pressing lightly on her shoulder. “Let’s sit down.” I waited until she sank back to the sofa, perching on the edge of the seat as though she could barely stay still. I sat down at the other end, half-facing her. “I agree we should press charges. Not because I expect to get anywhere with it, but because it might go some way toward restoring the restaurant’s reputation.”
She was still shaking her head slowly back and forth. “No, you don’t understand, Nat. This is way more than one disgruntled employee playing dangerous pranks.”
“How do you mean?” I asked. “What else do you know about this?”
Mia took a deep breath and let it hiss out through her teeth, visibly trying to rein in her emotions. Her brown eyes were huge and scared as she met my gaze and held it.
“I can’t offer any proof, as such,” she began. “It’s all circumstantial. But Joe has a tattoo. A gang tattoo, although I didn’t realize what it was when I hired him. And even if I had, just because someone made bad choices when they were younger shouldn’t mean they have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.”
She sounded oddly defensive, like this declaration was something personal, and she expected me to protest.
“Agreed,” I replied carefully. “And regardless, that seems like quite a stretch. Even if Joe was still in a gang, there’s no reason a bunch of street rats from the ‘hood would want to sabotage a random high-end restaurant in Soulard.”
Mia looked ill. “They might if they were operating a rival restaurant down the block and using it to launder their drug money.”
I blinked at her stupidly. “You mean...”
“The Bella Vita,” she said flatly. “The owner has a tattoo as well. So do several of the staff. A... friend of mine pointed it out when we went there for lunch once.”
I heard the way she stumbled over the word ‘friend.’ There was no way I could stop the dip and roll of my stomach in response. The best I could do was not to let it show. I tried to focus on the subject at hand.
“You said you didn’t have any proof, though?” I asked. “How sure are you that this place is laundering money? And... even if they are, why would they try to put us out of business? They can still launder all the money they want, whether there’s competition down the street or not.”
“I don’t think they can , though,” Mia said. She clasped her hands in her lap, wringing them together anxiously. “Like I said, I went there. The food’s okay. Nothing to write home about. They’re getting people in the door by undercharging, since they don’t need to make a profit on their diners. But the way the whole thing works, they have to have a certain volume of business to make it seem plausible that their cash receipts are as high as they are. And if we’re taking most of the business in the area, they may not be getting that much volume.”
I tried to follow along with the logic. “So, you’re saying they’ve got a certain amount of drug cash that they have to run through the business, and they need to get enough customers through the doors to account for all of it without raising any red flags with the IRS?”
“Or with their bank,” she agreed. “And I know most people’s first thought wouldn’t be, ‘hey, let’s plant a mole and see if we can injure our competition’s employees, or maybe get the health department to shut the place down’—”
“Not really, no,” I said, taken aback.
“—but from what I’ve learned about this gang, I wouldn’t put it past them,” she finished.
My mind was spinning. Even so, something about that statement stuck in my head.
“Mia... why do you know all this?” The queasy dip and roll of my stomach intensified. “You said, ‘from what you’ve learned.’ This can’t just be because some people at the Bella Vita had tattoos, can it?”
She looked startled, and for a long moment, I got the distinct impression she was silently arguing with herself about how much to say. I didn’t like that look one little bit—and the worst part was, I knew I was one-hundred percent responsible for putting it there.
The heavy feeling in my chest deepened when she visibly drew a veil across her emotions, putting on a neutral facade.
She lifted her chin. “I told you before, the guys I’m staying with run a youth center in East St. Louis. Keeping kids away from the gangs is a big part of what they do, so they know a lot about what goes on.”
There was more to it than that, I was sure. I fought my own internal war over whether to push, knowing I didn’t really have the right. And yet...
“Those alphas aren’t dragging you into anything dangerous, are they?” I demanded.
Sure enough, her eyes sparked with the light of battle.
“They aren’t dragging me into anything, Nat,” she snapped. “Unlike some people, they don’t make decisions that affect me without asking me first.”
It was a good thing I was already sitting down, because the floor dropped out from beneath me. The instinct to snap back—to match her anger and then some—flared. It was an instinct that had been pounded into me throughout my childhood. Ever since I’d been a vulnerable toddler, in fact—watching uncomprehendingly as my adoptive father roared abuse at my adoptive mother, steamrolling her whenever he didn’t like what she had to say.
Familiar nausea followed close on its heels as I swallowed all of it down, shoving the ugly feelings into the pit beneath my heart. I hated that those old impulses were still there, despite the fact that I would never, ever allow myself to act on them. Despite my decades-long efforts to pretend they didn’t exist... to push them down so far that they disappeared for good.
“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “I know I’ve given up any rights to interrogate you about your relationships with other people. I still worry, though.”
The martial posture of her shoulders slumped.
“No.” She leaned forward on the couch, dragging a shaking hand down her face. “I’m sorry, too. That part about gangs and the youth center wasn’t the whole truth. It’s just... there are other people whose privacy I need to consider.”
I made myself move past my feelings of frustration and worry, in order to properly take that information on board. The implication was that someone in Mia’s orbit had more direct knowledge of the gang that was purportedly running the Bella Vita, and what they were capable of.
Mia’s new alphas were financially well off. On the few occasions I’d seen them in person, they’d always been professionally dressed, and she’d said herself that they worked with young people. I could understand that having a background tied in with gang life might be considered sensitive information—not the kind of thing they’d want someone randomly blabbing about to a virtual stranger.
“Okay,” I said. “So, this gang is running the Bella Vita, and we have reason to believe they’ll go to dangerous lengths to put us out of business—” I caught my breath as a fresh realization hit me.
“What?” Mia asked, alarmed.
“Something else just occurred to me.” My voice sounded hoarse. I paused and cleared my throat before continuing. “Joe’s a beta, but some of the staff are omegas.”
She frowned. “And?”
“The mail theft,” I said.
She looked blank.
I shook my head sharply, trying to get my thoughts organized. “The omegas would have been able to smell it when your heat got close. If any of them gossiped with Joe, he would have known, too. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you might have a blocker pill coming in the mail. He could have passed the information on to this gang—”
“And they could have sent some goons to trash all our mail in hopes of stopping me getting it, and putting me out of commission for almost a week,” she finished faintly. “Which, in the end, they did.”
“No Michelin star chef, no draw for the Michelin star restaurant,” I said, my tone grim.
She gave an ugly, choked laugh. “Could’ve saved themselves the trouble and just waited a few months for the new guide to publish.”
I didn’t bother to point out that at this rate, the Elderflower Inn would be lucky to still exist in a few months’ time.
Instead, I said, “You’re right. We should go to the police. The problem is, beyond grainy video footage of an employee dumping something out of a container, this is all speculation. I’m not sure how far we’re likely to get with the law.”
“Yeah.” Mia looked ill again. She swallowed and lifted her chin, squaring her shoulders with the air of a condemned prisoner about to walk to the gallows. “I, um... I think maybe you should come talk to my housemates in person. It’s possible they might be able to... provide more information, or suggest a better plan of action.”
I flashed back to the impassive face of the massive alpha who’d brought Mia down to see me when I’d showed up at their door last week. There were very few things I wanted to do less than take her up on that offer. She was also absolutely right that it was the next logical step for us to take.
“All right,” I told her. “Assuming they’re okay with it, of course. Let me know where and when.” I hesitated, having to force the next words past my lips. “Also... there’s something else we need to talk about soon. When the immediate crisis with the restaurant is past, I mean.”
Her gaze flew to mine, and I got the feeling she knew exactly what subject I was referring to. We’d only been separated for a few weeks, but seeing her cradled in an alpha’s arms, blissed out from being fucked by other men, had brought home to me that she’d moved on, even if I hadn’t. Continuing as we were, in this undefined limbo, wasn’t fair to her.
“Yes,” she breathed. “When the current mess is under control, like you said.”
Three days later, I pulled up to the posh Ladue mansion with its neat circle drive, fighting a crippling sense of déjà vu.
Mia had begged a few extra days for everyone to recover from her recent heat. I’d assumed it was proof that she was putting the meeting off... that despite being the one to suggest it in the first place, she didn’t really want me here. Which was more than fair, since I didn’t particularly want to be here either.
But, with the restaurant still closed after multiple expensive rounds of pest control treatments that we couldn’t actually afford, I didn’t have a good excuse not to come. The passage of time only made the whole theory about the Bella Vita feel even more unlikely. And yet, it fit the facts. If this houseful of alphas could shed additional light on the subject, I needed to be open to it.
I parked the Jeep and got out, walking up to the front door. The doorbell buzzed beneath my finger.
Thirty seconds passed.
Forty-five.
I heard the click of a lock disengaging, and the door swung open, revealing a painfully handsome blond alpha with sharp gray eyes and tattoos twining up his exposed neck above an unbuttoned collar. The scent of aniseed and fennel wafted around him in a cloud. We stared at each other, both of us frozen on opposite sides of the doorway for a long, terrible moment.
“Oh, fuck , no,” said my secret gay hookup from the nightclub.