Chapter 13 #3
“Then fix it now,” Voss says, like it’s simple. “Pay the woman off. Take the kid if you want her that bad.”
I stare down at the phone. “Have you lost your mind?”
“What?”
“A mother comes to tell me I have a daughter, you slam the door in her face, and now your advice is I tear that same child out of her arms with a check.” My voice drops. “Say one more word like that. I dare you.”
Voss says nothing for a few seconds. “What do you want from me, Marcus?” He sounds tired now, cornered.
“I want to know when I slept with her.” I press in. “You ran my whole schedule. You had eyes on me every night of that stretch. So tell me why I don’t remember one second of it.”
“I don’t know.” His voice is dodgy now. “How am I supposed to remember a night you can’t?
If it slipped your mind, what do you want from mine?
” A breath. “And I’ll tell you, I still don’t buy that the kid’s yours.
The woman’s probably playing you. How would she even know?
We don’t have paternity labs in our world. ”
“If I could come through this phone, I’d put you into the floor.” I don’t raise my voice. The quiet does more than shouting would. “The week she’d have gotten pregnant was my last in that city. Think. What do you remember about those nights?”
A sigh. “I don’t keep a diary of every evening, Marc. Maybe you bedded her and forgot. It happens.”
“I don’t forget. Not unless something’s wrong.” The cold spreads under my ribs. “Was I drinking past sense? Was I slipped something? Because I’ve got a hole where those few days should be, and holes don’t just happen.”
“To be straight with you,” Voss says, “I didn’t like the look of her. Shifty. Wouldn’t shock me if she’s the one who dosed you and walked you up to a room.”
“You’re still lying to me.” I’m sure of it now, sure as I’ve been of anything. “I can hear it.”
“I’m telling you what I know.”
“Then you’ll write it down. Every place I went those last nights, every room, every name. I want a log.”
“That was a decade ago. What do you want me to—”
“Do it.” I snarl. “Tonight starts the clock.”
Adrian leans into the phone. “That list is on my desk in twenty-four hours, Voss, or I make the rest of your year very hard. We clear?”
“Fine.” The word’s clipped. The line dies.
Adrian lowers the phone and looks at me. “That’s the whole reason you need to take your seat back.” His jaw is tight. “Bella’s growing up. And a man like that, talking to you like you’re nothing. You’re blood-born, Marc. Even without the seat, he should crawl before you.”
“I don’t care about the seat.” I push off the rail. “He turned her away. He stood at a door and sent her off pregnant and alone, and the way he did… that’s why she never came looking again.” I drag a hand over my mouth. “This one’s on me. I did this to her without even knowing I did it.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“Focus on the hunters for now. Drop everything else and find the man from tonight.” I start to pace the boards.
“It sounded like Leroy, but there’s no reason on Earth for him to stand in that crowd with poisoned candy unless he meant for both girls to take it.
Which means he knew what Mia is. Somebody out there knows she’s a hybrid.
Somebody knew she’s mine before I even knew it myself.
That makes the two of them targets every day they breathe. ”
“Why would they come at you, though?” Adrian frowns. “Nothing like this has happened before.”
“It happened the same month I started turning over the hunters.” I stop pacing. “And the man Bella described matches Leroy, the one who runs muscle for the local syndicate. I don’t think I’ve ever crossed him face to face. But if he’s putting hands on my family, I want him handled.”
“I’ll dig.” Adrian nods slowly. Then, carefully, “And the woman. The night the two of you had.”
I’m quiet. “Voss is sitting on something,” I say at last. “Put people on the old ground. Footage from those weeks, ten years back, every place I stayed.”
“That’s near impossible, Marcus.”
“Then a person. Somebody over there remembers me, footage or not. A bartender, a desk clerk, somebody.” I meet his eyes. “Find them.”
“You’re right.” He gets up. “There’ll be someone.”
He’s halfway to the steps when I stop him. “My uncle. How’s he handling the investigation?”
Adrian goes still. He takes a second too long to answer. “He isn’t. I raised it with him. He says Bella had an allergic reaction, nothing more. He says it couldn’t have been wolfsbane.”
Neither of us says anything for a moment.
“You want to take this update to him?” Adrian asks.
I think about it and then murmur, “No. I’d rather he didn’t know about Mia.
Not yet.” I look back toward the dark house, where my daughter and her mother are both asleep under my roof.
“Stay on this. Pull in your most trusted men and women. This is too much for one set of hands. But everything comes back to me first.”
Adrian holds my gaze a beat. Then he dips his head.
“Yes, Alpha.”
For the first time in ten years, I don’t correct him.