Chapter 30
I had expected Callie to be curled up in the nest with Kai when I emerged from the shower, but the room was empty, and the nest looked a little sparser than usual. I pulled on a pair of lounge pants and went to check Kai’s room, hearing his shower running, but saw no sign of Callie. Checking with Miles and Amir as well, I found both of their rooms also devoid of our omega.
I paused outside her room on the main level, finding the door closed and the soft sounds of her crying coming through it. The door was locked, so I knocked and waited.
“Go away.”
“Precious, what’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer, and I wasn’t about to pick the lock if she didn’t want to see me, as much as that would’ve been my preference. Since I couldn’t comfort Callie, I backtracked toward Kai’s room. He looked absolutely miserable when we crossed paths at the top of the stairs.
“She’s so upset,” he said quietly.
“Her door’s locked. She doesn’t want to see anybody.”
“What happened?”
“I have no idea. She was totally fine the last time I saw her.”
“It feels wrong to think about going to sleep when she needs us.” Kai pulled a hand through his damp hair with a sigh.
“She might need us, but she doesn’t want us right now.”
“I have to try before I can go to bed,” he insisted.
I followed him back down on the off chance that she would actually open the door for him.
“Little dove, what’s wrong? What do you need?” He knocked and waited.
“ Please, go away.”
Kai looked over to me and I could only shrug. If she wasn’t going to let us in, we couldn’t do anything until she wanted to come out. Theoretically we could break into the room, but I wasn’t sure if we would recover from that breach of trust. She needed a space that was safe and belonged to only her, even if she was going to use it to lock us out.
“I hate this,” said Kai.
“Same. She took some of the nest in there with her. At least it wasn’t the entire thing, but that can’t be a good sign, can it?”
“Definitely doesn’t feel like a good sign.”
“Well,” I sighed, “our choices are to wait up to see if she emerges, or go to sleep right now and wait for her to come out in the morning.”
Kai stared longingly at the door, his palm on his chest. “I guess it might be overstepping if I just grabbed some couch cushions and lay down right here?”
“Considering we don’t know what kind of mood she’s going to come out in, probably. Let’s get some sleep and hope everything looks better in the morning.”
Kai reluctantly agreed and followed me up to the nest. “Can I stay here tonight?”
“Of course you can. Until all the nest is gone, this is communal sleeping space.”
Kai blow-dried his hair before climbing in, stretching across the pink expanse that held Callie’s rich candied apple scent. It was weird as hell to sleep in the nest without her, but it was better than sleeping somewhere I couldn’t smell her. Kai was staring up at the ceiling, moving his palm in a slow circle over his chest.
“Is that where you feel her distress?”
“Yeah. Just a dull ache right here.”
“If you want, we could spoon a bit. Shove your face into the nest to breathe her in and pretend it’s her hugging you.”
Kai laughed quietly. “I wouldn’t say no.”
He got himself comfortable, wedging some pillows against his chest and put his head beneath one of the blankets before I tucked myself against him. We had gotten much closer plenty of times, and since Callie had joined us, we had ended up in some manner of tangled up multiple times, so it felt like the most natural thing in the world to offer him this comfort. I nudged his hand out of the way and replaced it with my own, feeling the beat of his heart against my palm.
Eventually his breathing evened out and he fell asleep. It took me a while longer, and I woke to Miles kneeling on the nest, his hand on my shoulder.
“Pack meeting in the courtyard,” he said.
“Okay. I’ll go see if Callie wants to join,” I mumbled sleepily.
“No. This one is just for us.”
I raised one questioning eyebrow, but Miles was already leaving. I nudged Kai awake and he groaned, burying his face deeper into the nest.
“More sleep.”
“We have a pack meeting. You have to wake up.”
“Why can’t we do that in the afternoon?” Kai grumbled and sat up slowly with a yawn.
I didn’t bother getting fully dressed, heading downstairs in just my lounge pants and stopping to see that Callie’s door was still closed and firmly locked. Kai looked longingly at it as we passed, and I pulled him along to grab our coffees before joining Amir and Miles in the courtyard.
“Why are we awake so early for this?” I asked.
“I wanted a chance to discuss everything with you before Callie woke up,” said Miles.
“What’s the meeting about?” Kai took a sip of his coffee.
“Callie came to me yesterday and said her account was empty.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Why would her account be empty?” Amir asked. “She hasn’t had to pay for a single thing since the bonding.”
“It shouldn’t be,” replied Miles. “I looked into everything with the company. Everything she was owed was deposited into the account she gave us, but she’s telling us she never got paid.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would she lie about that?”
Miles shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“That’s such an easy thing to check, though. If she were lying, shouldn’t she know we would be able to tell?”
“As someone who has dealt with a lot of liars in my life,” said Miles, “not all of them are that smart.”
“Watch it,” growled Kai.
“I’m not calling Callie stupid, and I’m not saying she’s lying,” Miles defended. “But the fact remains the company did pay her.”
I could practically see the walls Amir had lowered around her snap back into place, and Kai looked lost, eyes unfocused as he stared past us.
“Have you talked to Callie about this yet?” I asked.
Miles shook his head. “Not yet. I wanted to talk to all of you.”
“I’d like to look her in the eye when she tells you she didn’t get paid,” Amir said.
I couldn’t wrap my head around why Callie would lie about something like this. If she was trying to get more out of the company, she had to know they weren’t going to pay any more than they had to. Financial records said they’d paid what they owed, and that was that.
The four of us slipped back into the kitchen, and at some point during our meeting, Callie had emerged and was making herself a cup of tea. She looked rough with purple shadows under her eyes.
Callie turned toward us, immediately clocking that something was wrong. “Why are you guys looking so ominous coming in here like that?”
“Callie,” Miles hesitated.
“Okay, the vibes are seriously off. What’s going on? Is this because I locked everyone out last night?”
“No,” I said, though I certainly hadn’t enjoyed that part. “You’re more than entitled to your own space whenever you want it.”
Miles stepped forward. “The company records show all five payments going through and being deposited.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “Well, their records are wrong because nothing’s in my account.”
“They contacted the bank to make sure. All the payments cleared.”
Her hackles went up. “Well, they’re lying, then. Or there was a glitch.” Callie snatched up her phone and poked at her screen before eventually turning it toward Miles. “Nothing’s there! And there’s nothing in the account history, so wherever they sent it, it wasn’t to me.”
“Can I have a look?” I asked.
She leveled a glare on me and slid her phone across the counter toward me. “Loving the level of trust here.”
“Sweetheart…” Miles began.
“Don’t you sweetheart me. If you think I’m trying to swindle the company, just say it.”
“It’s not…that. But there’s only so many explanations.”
Fury radiated off her. “Well, here’s another explanation for you.” She flipped him the bird, spun on her heel, and stalked back into her bedroom, where she slammed the door, the lock audibly clicking.
“Fucking hell,” Miles lamented quietly.
“It had to be asked,” Amir said. “Either Callie or the company is lying, and we’ve never had anyone come back saying they weren’t paid.”
“Can I see the deposit info on your end?” I asked.
Miles pulled it up on the tablet and set it on the counter. I read through everything on both screens and then laid her phone on the tablet, carefully comparing the account numbers.
“Oh, shit.”
“What?” Kai asked, leaning over my shoulder.
“They’re both telling the truth. The company paid out into the account she gave, but that account number isn’t hers. One second.” I risked knocking on Callie’s door, and even though she told me to fuck off, I asked anyway. “Precious, do you know the account number of your joint account?”
The door whipped open. “Why are you asking?”
“Come sit with us, just for a moment. The account number you gave the company isn’t the one that you’re showing us on your phone.”
“What are you talking about? What other account would I have given?” Her face blanched, all of the color leaching out of her cheeks. “Oh my god.”
She raced out into the kitchen and grabbed her phone, opening an account statement record and holding it up next to the payment record that was still open on the tablet.
“Son of a bitch!”
Kai was at her side in a second. “Did the money go into the wrong account?”
Callie dropped her face into her hands and started sobbing.
“Precious, is the money not in your joint account either?”
“I don’t know!” she sobbed. “I don’t have access to it anymore.”
“How the hell would you not have access to it?” Amir asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine. It’s not listed under my accounts anymore.”
“Okay, let’s all take a breath,” I suggested. “Callie, you need to get in contact with your bank and find out why you don’t have account access anymore. The company isn’t going to pay out another dollar, but maybe we can still get you back onto that account.”
She made the most miserable sound, sinking all the way to the floor. “He probably took everything.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” I assured her. “For right now, we need to find out what happened.”
“Maybe breakfast first?” Kai offered.
“No.” She shook her head. “The sooner I figure it out, the better.”
I wrote down both of her account numbers for her so she didn’t have to worry about flipping through screens while on a call, and we got her situated at the table. The bank itself wouldn’t be open just yet, but they had a twenty-four-hour line she could call in the meantime.
Amir fetched her cup of tea and got fresh coffee for the rest of us while we hovered awkwardly around the kitchen, waiting for her to get through the automated menus and electronic voices until finally a person answered.
“Hello there, how can I help you today?”
“I’m not able to access my account and I’m not sure why. It’s not listed at all anymore.”
“Oh dear. Let’s see what we can uncover. Do you have your account information?”
Callie gave the woman everything she was asked for, and eventually we got the answer.
“It looks like a few days ago you came in and authorized the transfer of the joint account into the sole possession of Jerry McIntosh, which is why it’s no longer visible for you online.”
“Excuse me?” she hissed. “I did no such thing.”
“That’s what our records say. There’s paperwork on file about the transfer.”
“Well, that’s impossible because I never authorized anything.”
“Transfer us to the fraud department,” I ordered, taking up a seat next to her. “Please.”
“Of course. One moment.”
It took a few minutes more before we made it to another human and Callie shoved the phone toward me, spilling into tears once more.
“We need to initiate a fraud check on the following account,” I told them, giving them the account number. “We were told Callie Price authorized the transfer of a joint account into the sole possession of Jerry McIntosh, and that is not the case.”
“Let me get a file set up.”
We gave them as much information as we could and told them Callie had not been in Los Angeles at all except for when she was in our presence, and hadn’t visited a bank or discussed any paperwork with anyone. I wasn’t under any illusions that it would get resolved immediately, but they promised to look into it, interview the bank associates who had approved everything, and check the on-site cameras.
Callie screamed into her hands when the call was over. “This is so fucking fucked. I went through all of that just for Jerry to steal everything?”
I didn’t know how to fix anything, but we had taken the steps to start. First we had to rebuild some of the trust we’d broken by not believing her from the start.
Amir growled and sat down across from her. “I know you don’t know me that well yet, but I’m not going to let him screw you over twice. I’ve never gotten to tell someone that they would rue the day before, but that fucker is absolutely going to.”