Twenty-Five
TWENTY-FIVE
Zalen
THE LAST THING I’D needed today was the sight of Melina Scalise and her pathetic excuse of a husband standing outside my office when I returned from lunch. Melina’s teenage son Tony was never far from my thoughts, even weeks after the police had stopped investigating his disappearance as a suspected runaway.
“Mrs. Scalise,” I said flatly, not willing to even pretend politeness with the predator standing next to her. “I didn’t expect to find you here today. Has there been news about your son?”
I tried to brace myself, aware that even if there was news, that didn’t mean it would be the good kind. The courts had failed to take action to protect Tony from his stepfather when the fifteen-year-old leveled allegations of long-term, ongoing sexual abuse. He’d disappeared without a trace soon after his request for emancipated minor status had been denied.
Although I hadn’t been able to confirm it, it seemed far too likely that he’d ended up with one of the many gangs in the area. If Tony had resurfaced after all this time, I desperately hoped it wasn’t as a drug overdose case or a gunshot victim.
“No, there has not been news,” Mrs. Scalise snapped. “My son is gone , and you’ve been nothing but obstructive about his disappearance since the day it happened! I want answers from you, not more claptrap about legal proceedings and baseless accusations against my husband!”
The woman standing before me with her fists balled up at her sides was a grieving mother, desperate for closure after her child’s disappearance. It should have been a basic exercise in self-control to let her words roll off me and dissipate into the ether like smoke.
It should have been.
But there was a monster standing next to her in my hallway, and Emiel’s words from last night still echoed in my ears. Luca needs someone who understands what happened to him , Emiel had said, as much as admitting that they had both undergone the same kind of abuse as Tony.
“I’ve already spoken with the police on two occasions, Mrs. Scalise,” I said in a cold tone, pointedly not inviting the pair into my office. “No one at the Hope Project has seen or heard from Tony since he disappeared. As much as I and my colleagues might wish that we could help your son, it’s out of our hands. I would direct you back to the police, since they’re the ones with the resources to reopen the investigation.”
And that should have been the end of it. Again... should have .
Tony’s stepfather took an aggressive step into my personal space. He was a big man. Physically intimidating; or at least he would be to a scrawny fifteen-year-old boy who hadn’t come into his final growth spurt yet, and who didn’t have a mean bone anywhere in his body.
“If I find out you’ve been hiding that little shit,” David Scalise spat, “I’ll bring the police down so hard on your Black ass that you’ll wish you’d never heard of me. I know people in the department, d’you hear? People who’ve got no love for uppity punks like you that think they’re better than everyone else.”
The sudden, white-hot urge to pull my fist back and punch this sick fuck in the mouth so hard that teeth went flying nearly took my breath away.
You’d be doing the world a favor , whispered a little voice that sounded too much like my own for comfort. It’s not like Tony’s going to get justice any other way—no more than Luca or Emiel ever did .
I stepped forward, closing the remaining distance between us, until our noses were only inches apart. Sour breath wafted in my face. A hint of alcohol was detectable beneath the stink of poor oral hygiene, despite the fact that it was barely past lunchtime. Blood thrummed through my veins, the nerves in my right hand twitching as they tried to curl my fingers into a fist without my permission.
“If I were hiding Tony,” I said, my voice absolutely flat, “then I wouldn’t have offered to let the police search the premises in the absence of a warrant. Since this visit is obviously a waste of both your time and mine, it would be best if you left now.”
“ Nobody talks to me like that ,” David snarled. He raised an arm, his hand clenched tightly. His knuckles were twisted with scar tissue from years of slamming them into things.
My lips pulled back, baring my teeth as a low growl rumbled up from my chest. Do it , I wanted to urge him, even though the rational part of me knew that whatever happened next, it wouldn’t be good for me personally, or for the Hope Project.
But Melina Scalise grabbed her husband’s arm, tugging at it fitfully. “David, don’t!” she whined, her voice going high and plaintive. “He’s an alpha, baby! You know how dangerous they are! Like animals !”
David sneered at his wife, but he reluctantly allowed himself to be pulled away. I didn’t like how disappointed that made me.
“Fuckin’ knotheads,” he muttered, eyeing me up and down with theatrical disdain. “Buncha stupid, chattering gorillas.”
“Sure. Barely one step up from assholes who rape children,” I said, feeling faintly dizzy from the amount of adrenaline churning through my veins like crack cocaine. I stood unmoving, my self-control hanging by a thread as Mrs. Scalise continued to tug her husband away one reluctant step at a time.
She was visibly pale and shaking as she leveled a finger at me, accusing. “I know you had something to do with him disappearing!” The shrill words echoed through the empty hallway.
My office was on the ground floor, thankfully, and any kids who were here this early should be in one of the classrooms upstairs at this time of day. I followed the pair at a distance, ensuring that they found the front entrance and left through it. Husband and wife got into a battered old sedan that had been illegally parked in the loading zone. I waited until the engine sputtered to life and the car pulled away before going back inside.
In my office, I came to a halt just inside the door and turned, overcome by the impulse to put my fist through the wall. I closed my eyes, taking deep breaths, because the wall in question was made of fucking cinderblock . Ten seconds later, my hands were still shaking, and my chest still felt like Emiel was standing on it.
I had two group sessions to lead later this afternoon, and I was standing here silently debating if it was a good idea to shatter my knuckles by attacking an inanimate object made of concrete. What the fuck was wrong with me?
Crossing to the desk on legs made unsteady with suppressed rage, I dropped into my chair and pulled out my phone.
Need to leave early today , I texted Byron. If no one can take my afternoon sessions, please reschedule them for tomorrow evening .
Byron was the least likely candidate to start asking probing questions like, ‘ What the fuck, Zalen? ’ And sure enough, a few seconds later a text came through, reading, ‘ I should be able to take the second one. I’ll let you know about the earlier session .’
‘Thanks ,’ I replied, and walked out of the building like a shambling zombie with anger management issues.
My silver Bronco was waiting patiently where I’d parked it that morning. I wasn’t sure where I was going until I found myself pulling into the meandering driveway back at the house in Ladue. Static buzzed in my ears, somehow completely failing to drown out the internal litany of ‘ you couldn’t save Tony, you couldn’t save Julie, you can’t save any of them .’
I only realized I wasn’t alone when I zombie-walked into the kitchen. Inside, Mia was pacing back and forth in front of the breakfast bar, tension radiating from her shoulders and tightly crossed arms. I was even more out of it than I’d known. Thinking back, her car had been parked in the circle drive, and I hadn’t even registered it as I pulled in.
She stopped in midstride, visibly startled by my sudden appearance. Apparently, she was distracted, too—I hadn’t exactly been stealthy when I’d come in from the garage.
“Zalen!” she said, her sweet scent reaching out to surround me like a cloud. “What are you doing home? Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” I said, and it felt like someone else entirely was speaking. “What about you? What’s wrong?”
She waved the words away like buzzing insects. “No, it’s not... I mean... nothing’s wrong . It’s the restaurant. We’re reopening a week from tomorrow. But now there’s nothing else that actually needs to get done today, and I’m kind of freaking out, to be honest.”
“Oh,” I said, because it was good that her restaurant was opening again, but not so good that she was freaking out about it.
She peered at me, her mahogany eyebrows crinkling into a worried frown. “Zalen, what’s wrong? Something happened. I can tell.”
The words poured out into the open before I’d really made a decision to start speaking. “Tony’s parents showed up at the Hope Project again, demanding information I don’t have. It, um, didn’t go well.”
I was still stuck in that strange third-person perspective, looking at myself standing just inside the kitchen entryway, clearly a hairsbreadth away from losing my proverbial shit. Meanwhile, Mia hovered halfway between the door and the barstools by the breakfast counter.
“Tony?” she echoed. “He’s the missing teen, right? Wait, you said both his parents were there?” Her complexion paled. “You talked to his stepdad?”
I nodded, swaying a bit. “I almost hit him,” I said distantly. “I wanted to. Still do, actually. I wanted to break his jaw.”
Suddenly, Mia was standing right in front of me. Her small hand closed around my arm. I hadn’t seen her approach.
“Think you might need to stand in line for that,” she muttered. “Come sit down for a minute, okay? You don’t look so good.”
I allowed her to guide me to one of the barstools. She didn’t let go of my arm, her slender fingers sending a hint of warmth radiating outward from the contact... chasing away the ice in my veins.
“It’s just... I suddenly realized how utterly shit I’ve been about protecting the people in my life,” I said slowly. “I don’t know how to stop any of this from happening. I don’t know how to make it better.” I blinked rapidly, forcing myself to focus on Mia’s lovely features. “I’m sorry. You’re worried about your restaurant and I shouldn’t be dumping all of this on you—”
She leaned forward, her lips pressing against mine. Abruptly, I slammed fully back into my body, still brimming with its cocktail of anger, grief, sadness, and slowly souring adrenaline.
“No.” The word puffed against my lips as she pulled back. “Zalen, you’re—”
Sudden, terrible need ripped through me, cutting through the awfulness of it all. This amazing omega had crashed into our lives like a gift from above, and like an idiot I’d held her at arm’s length for fear of reopening the old wound that was Julie’s broken mate bond.
But Mia wasn’t Julie; she never had been.
“Mia,” I breathed, hooking a hand gently around the nape of her neck.
She shivered, her brown eyes wide and dark as I reeled her in close, covering her full lips in a scorching kiss. Her hands clasped my shoulders like a lifeline, a desperate whimper escaping her throat as she practically climbed into my lap. Between one heartbeat and the next, all thoughts of distance fled; two lost souls in free fall, with nothing to hold onto... except each other.