Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Dayne sets down his fork and gets to his feet. “Let’s get this meeting started. Talis, Jeremy, Gavin, Blair, Luca, and Marshall, move.”
Talis raises her brow. “Move?”
Dayne reassesses his word choices when he sees the look on her face.
“Will the love of my love and the mother of my beautiful children please come to this meeting and not kick my ass later for daring to order her around,” he says, bending to touch his lips to hers in a sweeter gesture than I was expecting.
“Fine,” Talis says, glaring at him. “Tell me to move again, Blackshaw, and you’ll be sleeping with one eye open in the bathtub for the next two weeks. And I promise you, one of those times you will not be waking up dry.”
“Momma big mad,” Angel giggles.
“Momma is indeed big mad,” Dayne agrees. “And Daddy has learned his lesson.”
There are chuckles all around, and even Dayne is grinning, so this must be normal for them.
“Let me get the kids settled, and I’ll meet you down there,” Talis says to Dayne, picking up Angel.
“I’ll help with Patrick,” a brunette woman says, lifting him out of his high chair.
Vaden gets to his feet and helps me to mine. “Let’s figure out how to keep you safe, huh?” he says.
As we leave the kitchen, the rest of the pack is cleaning up the mess from breakfast and making plans to put on cartoons for the kiddos.
Dayne leads the way out of the kitchen and opens a door to stairs that lead down.
“The basement?” I ask, hesitating.
Obviously, I’m not expecting anyone to maul me to death down there, but when you’re one of the few humans in a house full of people who can all turn into wolves, the thought of venturing down into a windowless basement with said wolf-shifting people makes a girl a little… wary.
Marshall says, "There are beanbags, so it’s comfy. Sometimes Dayne shouts during meetings so the kids don’t hear the yelling with us being down there, otherwise we’d have the meeting in the den or the living room."
“Also, we just got a projector and popcorn maker for when we have movie nights down there, so handy snacks,” Jeremy adds.
I mutter under my breath, “As long as I’m not the snack,” and then startle as Talis laughs as she walks toward us.
“Don’t worry, you won’t be,” she says.
Yet again, I’m reminded that I’m dealing with people with very sharp hearing, and I need to be careful about what I mutter. Someone will hear me.
My cheeks burn. “Uh, I didn’t mean for anyone to hear that.”
“You’re safe,” Vaden says quietly, squeezing my hand. “I will never let anything hurt you.”
I believe him.
“Okay,” I say.
Dayne leads the way down the stairs. He could have gone already, but he—and the rest of the Blackshaws—had to have known I was nervous and waited to reassure me first.
“It’s a games room,” I say, surprised, when I get to the bottom of the stairs.
There are a bunch of chairs set up in one half of the large space, with two at the front and the rest facing them. But on the other side of the room is entertainment central, with beanbags, a snack station, board games, and a projector pointed at a large white wall.
“It’s for serious pack meetings or fun movie nights,” Talis explains, giving Dayne an affectionate glance. “Being alpha, my mate doesn’t get to play as much as everyone else. I wanted it to be down here so he remembers play is just as important as work.”
He puts his arm around her and kisses the top of her head. “And I never forget that. Let’s get this meeting started, huh?”
Everyone settles into the wooden chairs, and Dayne starts the meeting in the way I desperately hoped he wouldn’t: by having me explain who followed me to Hardin and who wants me dead. I knew this moment was coming, but I’d hoped it would come at the end of the meeting rather than at the start.
With a roomful of people looking at me, waiting for me to speak, my tongue feels too thick. And even knowing I wasn’t responsible for what happened, that I don’t deserve the nightmare my life became, doesn’t chase away the sense that maybe it was my fault after all.
Dayne is at the front of the room, with Talis beside him. But even if he weren’t in a position that communicated he’s in charge, the timbre of his voice when he says, “Shelby?” would have told me he was in charge, regardless of where he was sitting.
Sitting up in my seat, I remind myself I’m not in trouble and to just relax. “Yeah?”
“A pack is only as strong as its weakest member. Which is a short way of saying, if someone is suffering, then we are all weakened by it,” Dayne says.
I grew up in the foster system because my parents loved partying more than they loved me. Dayne telling me that he and his pack are willing to risk their lives for me isn’t something I ever hoped for. I’m nothing to them.
I shake my head, disbelieving. “But I’m not one of your pack. And I’m human.”
Dayne points a finger at Vaden without taking his eyes off me. “His sister is part of my pack. That makes him pack whether I claim him or not.”
Vaden mutters something that I pretend not to hear because I didn’t think he was the type to swear like that.
Dayne lowers his finger. “That makes you pack, and pack protects each other. If someone is struggling, I’m not doing my job.”
“But I could get your family killed,” I say.
“I could shift into a wolf in three seconds and rip out Marshall’s throat if I chose to,” Dayne says calmly.
I blanch, and Vaden growls.
Talis rolls her eyes at Dayne. “Idiot.”
Marshall heaves out a sigh. “It’s always me,” he says, but his eyes are sparkling.
Gavin and Blair are grinning so they must not be worried about Dayne trampling over them to get to Marshall.
Dayne continues, “I’m not trying to scare you, Shelby.
I want you to know what I’m capable of. Marshall is one of my strongest wolves.
He can put three men down with hardly any effort.
” He scans the room. “The reason all these people are here is to find a way to protect you. They do the bulk of patrolling along our borders, so they, more than any of the others, need to know what we’re dealing with.
And we’re very good at dealing with threats. We just need your trust.”
His pack mates sit patiently, waiting, ready to listen and perhaps to act. But they don’t know what I’m running from or who is chasing me. Once they know, they might decide I’m not worth the risk.
“I forgot my apartment keys one night,” I say quietly, figuring, why not tell them?
The only thing I have to lose is time. “I was working for a temp agency after I graduated from college, and no one wanted to hire me. I took whatever work would help me pay the bills, and one of those jobs was cleaning the office of an investment company.”
Vaden scoots his chair closer to mine as if he knows I’m hurting, and I am hurting when I remember how terrified I was that night.
Clearing my throat, I continue. “I grabbed my keys from the cleaning cupboard where I left them, and was heading back out when I heard voices. I thought I was the only one in the building since it was just before midnight, and I was usually on my way home then. No one should have been there but the security guards. I really did try not to listen.”
“What did you hear?” Dayne quietly asks me.
I shrug. “Stuff about a client file not being a client file at all. A man told someone that no one had figured out what they were doing and that they could pull another million out in that quarter.”
“Embezzlement,” Gavin mutters.
I look at him, surprised. “You know about embezzlement?”
What I overheard sounded like theft, but it wasn’t until later, when I went to the cops, that I learned there was a name for it. Embezzlement. They didn’t believe me.
Gavin shakes his head. “I know next to nothing about corporate theft. Just the name. But someone stealing from a company is a pretty big no-no. What happened?”
I make a face. “I tripped over a trash can sneaking out, and he saw me.”
“Who saw you?” Vaden asks.
“The Chief Financial Officer. He was the one I heard saying it was okay to steal another million.”
Dayne winces. “Shit. That sounds like a mess.”
“Yeah,” I agree.
“I take it you went to the cops,” Blair says.
I nod. “But I didn’t have any proof. Just what I overheard. The cops said they’d look into it, but I could tell they didn’t believe me. And they didn’t. I was just the temp cleaner, and the CFO was this big deal who went to Stanford.”
“I take it things didn’t end there,” Talis says, watching me closely.
“Someone broke into my apartment and went through my things. I don’t know what they thought I might have taken, or whether they were just trying to scare me into staying quiet. I grabbed what I could and left New York. I moved to New Jersey.”
“Then what happened?” Vaden asks.
“It happened again,” I say quietly. “It kept happening. Everywhere I went, I felt like someone was watching me, following me. And no matter how many times I would be sure that I’d lost them, I never felt safe.”
“But this CFO had to know you didn’t take anything, right?” Marshall frowns.
I shrug. “Maybe he didn’t want me going to the cops again. Maybe he thought I recorded something on my phone. I don’t know. But one day, someone took a shot at me.”
The mood in the room switches from curious to alert.
Dayne sits up. “When and where?”
“Iowa. I was working as a barista in a coffee shop when I heard a pop as I was leaving in the afternoon. I just dropped. Then I saw a man watching me from across the street. It was one of the security guards from where I used to work. I figured they must have known I didn’t have any proof of the embezzling, but they didn’t care.
They just wanted to make sure I could never tell anyone about what I’d seen.
That was two years ago, and the CFO isn’t the CFO anymore.
He’s the CEO of the company. I read in the paper that they’re planning on taking the company public. ”
Jeremy whistles between his teeth. “Yep. That’d be why he needs to shut you up.
Companies make a shit ton of money going public, and you’re a massive skeleton in this guy’s closet.
He would want to make doubly and triply sure you can’t ever talk.
One wrong word to the right person, and that guy’s whole life is going up in smoke. He wants you gone.”
Talis notices my gulp and turns to scowl at him. “There were better ways to phrase that, Jeremy.”
“It’s okay,” I smile gratefully at Talis. “I appreciate the honesty. It’s what I was thinking too, since they went from scaring me to actively trying to kill me. Honestly, just saying it out loud, and hearing someone else say it makes me feel a little less crazy and paranoid.”
Vaden takes my hand. “You’re not crazy or paranoid. And that won’t happen again. You’re safe now. You will be safe now.”
Dayne pushes his chair back and stands.
My stomach drops as I brace for him to order me out of his house before I get him and his family killed. This is big. Bigger than anyone here. The CEO of a private New York investment company wants me dead. And the men he has sent after me aren’t afraid to leave bodies behind.
Vaden must be thinking the same thing because his hand tightens around mine.
Dayne looks at me. “We might have someone who can help. Mind if we get Dean down here?”
I remember Dean, who I met last night in the kitchen after I ran to the farmhouse. I frown. “Why would Dean be able to help?”
“He’s a software engineer. Knows computers, hacking, stuff like that. He once bought a satellite. Maybe he can find some real dirt on this company,” he suggests.
He bought a satellite?
“Why?” I ask.
His expression hardens. “To destroy them, of course. And then we’ll kill the stupid ones who come back sniffing for trouble on my territory.”
My mouth snaps shut.
Dayne shouts up the stairs for Dean to bring his laptop and come down to the basement.
I’m in a weird, numb state, struggling to believe this is real when Dean comes downstairs. Dayne gives him a brief rundown of everything we discussed, what I overheard, and what he wants him to do.
Dean opens his laptop, powers it up, wiggles his fingers over the keys, and looks at me. “Everything you know about this company, that prick of a CEO, and that client file they were using to embezzle. Give it to me.”