24. Theo
Theo
W hen Nia opens the door, I’m ready. “Where’s Mom?”
“Sleeping.” She frowns. “What’s wrong with you?”
I can’t look at her. “Is he here?”
“Dad?”
I force a nod. She crosses her arms. “In his study. What’s going on?”
“Go upstairs,” I say shortly. “I want you to put your headphones on, alright? Everything is….,”
I can’t say it. Everything is not fine.
Nothing is fine.
My brother raped my mate. Our mate. He tried to steal her, and when that didn’t work, he forced her.
While we stood there and let him take her. Trusting him with her.
My head jerks up. “Did Brett ever hurt you? Touch you?”
I’ll dig him up and kill him again. Nia’s eyes widen. “No!”
Her shock seems genuine enough, and I move past her. “Go, Nee. I’ll… I’ll explain later.”
Nothing about my posture suggests that I’m open to discussion. She swallows, nods, and then she’s jogging up the stairs, glancing at me over her shoulder.
I have no doubt that my pack will be here in minutes.
Maybe they’ll be in time to stop me killing my father, but it’s debatable.
His office door slams open, sending plaster tumbling down as the handle smashes into the wall and I stalk inside. “Where is it?”
Behind his desk, he flinches back from his laptop. “Theo? What’s wrong—,”
“I know,” I snarl. “I know everything. What he did to her. What you kept from me .”
“Theo—,”
“She was my fucking mate!” I roar it at him. My hand sweeps out, sending the shit he keeps so fucking tidy on his desk scattering across the room. “He attacked her!”
“Stop.” My father gets to his feet as I flex back, my fists tightening. “I know you’re upset. He wasn’t well—,”
“Don’t you fucking apologize for him!” I scream the words, the rage, directly from my heart. “ Don’t you fucking dare !”
I can’t take this out on Brett. Can’t rip him apart for what he’s done to her. But my father… he was complicit.
He knew.
My anger grows and swells as he stumbles back and I stalk around the desk. “Where the fuck is it?”
“What?” He straightens his tie, but his hands are shaking. “I don’t know…,”
“The reports.” I stalk to his drawers, ripping the first one open and tearing through the paperwork, tossing it aside. “I want to see it all. Everything you fucking kept from me. It ends now .”
“She wasn’t supposed to tell you,” he snaps. “We had an agreement in place for your protection.”
I stop. Just… stop. “What the fuck did you just say?”
Because in the hours we talked, Kennedy didn’t mention any sort of agreement with my father. Only that he was there, in the hospital.
Only what she had to, I realize suddenly. Dread curdles in my stomach.
Because I knew he was there, so she had to mention it. But she clearly didn’t tell me everything.
What the fuck else could there be?
And my father has paled. “Sit down, son.”
“Don’t you call me that.” I grip the edges of the desk, dropping my head and fighting for breath. “I am trying very hard not to go for your throat. My mother and sister are upstairs, and all I want to do is see your blood decorate your precious office floor. So if you value your life at all, you will get me those reports – the real reports, not the shit you gave me before which were obviously fake - because I know you’ll have them, and you will tell me every single fucking thing that you have kept from me about our mate !”
Silence.
My body coils, readying—
“Wait.” He blurts it, rounding the desk and putting distance between us. “There. That cabinet in the corner. The code is Brett’s birthday, eight digits.”
Disgust threatens to consume me. “Everything he’s done, and you still put him on a pedestal.”
Another surge of nausea as a thought strikes. “You put that fucking statue up in town, knowing she’d have to walk past it. To see it, after everything he did to her.”
Like he was something to celebrate.
My father doesn’t say a damned thing.
I rip the cabinet open, searching through and yanking out files, checking every single one until I have a bundle in front of me. It’s thick – thicker than I expected, and my stomach surges. “Is this it?”
“Everything is in there. But before you judge me, just listen. Please.”
“Oh.” I shake my head. “Too fucking late for that, Charles. I’ve already judged you. You’re just as guilty – as complicit in this – as he was.”
I can’t bring myself to say his name. “I’ll be in touch to arrange Nia’s living situation, because she’s not staying in this house with you.”
Not yet. I have to prioritize.
Kennedy comes first. Always. As she should have done from the beginning.
He stiffens. “Now wait a minute—,”
I move faster. Far fucking faster, fueled by rage that reddens my vision as I slam into him. My hand finds my father’s throat. And the man that raised me – that I looked up to, and idolized, and trusted – he shows me his throat, tipping up his neck.
He submits.
“Do not say a fucking word more to me,” I breathe. “Because I will do worse than hurt you. I will go out there and tell every single fucking person in Widow’s Peak about the spineless bastard who let an omega suffer for his son’s crimes. Who covered them up and let her take the fall. I will not stop until every investor pulls out, until your businesses fail and until you have nothing and nobody left. I will fucking ruin you.”
Because that’s what will hurt him most. His wallet.
My hands tighten. He struggles under my grip, his already ruddy face purpling.
And then I release them, stepping back. Turning my back on him, I scoop the reports up and head for the door. Stopping, I voice a question. “Did she know? Mom?”
All I can hear is his stuttered, heavy breathing. “I told her the same as you. She… she didn’t know about his genes. I buried it. She didn’t need that stress.”
My lips tighten. “So you’re a shit mate, as well as a shit father.”
I leave him with that, leave him massaging his bruised throat as I walk out of that house and close the door behind me. The sky's still blue above my head, the sun heading toward setting, and our neighbor from across the street lifts his hand in greeting as he jogs past.
As if everything is normal, and my world hasn’t just ended.
They’re there as I pull up to the house. Oscar is already halfway down the path, Max yanking on a shirt as he follows and Jake pulling the door closed behind them.
They turn to face me, surprise across their faces as I turn off the engine.
Oscar reaches me first. I stare down at the wheel in my hands. “You know what I’m going to say.”
“Some of it. She told you.” There’s no question in his words. Only a deep undercurrent of emotion, his voice tight and controlled.
“Some. Not… not all, I don’t think.” Slowly, I reach for the paperwork and pass it through the window. “Here. This should have the rest.”
A hand grips my shoulder. Oscar. “Get out of the car, Theo.”
“I hurt her.” My eyes start to burn.
“He hurt her,” Max snaps behind him. “That piece of shit.”
“Yes. But we hurt her too,” Oscar says quietly. He’s studying me. As he always does to everyone around him, learning them. “We all bear a part of the responsibility here. It’s not all on your shoulders.”
But he didn’t force her onto her knees. My throat closes up at the thought of it. It runs through my head over and over again. The way she fought so hard against the bark, even then.
Like she fought against my brother. We grew up together. Shared everything together.
Maybe Brett and I were more alike than I ever realized.
When my face crumples, Oscar’s voice hardens. “You’re not falling apart on us. Not yet, Theo.”
He pushes the papers into my chest. “Come inside, and we’re going to work this shit out.”
For once, I don’t argue with him. I don’t push back. Instead, I silently follow them into the house.
Our house. The one that we worked on with Kenny in mind. I always imagined her here, with us.
Jake runs his hands over his face, his voice ragged. “How is she?”
“Broken,” I rasp. We watch in silence as Oscar spreads out the papers, flicking through them.
He hands them out, splitting them between us. “Start reading. Between us, we’ll put the pieces together.”
“Theo,” Max says quietly. “You have some of those pieces.”
And so does Oscar.
The sky turns to black as I walk them through our afternoon, forcing every horrific detail out through the tightness in my throat. When I finish, silence reigns. All of them look grim.
“Does that fit with what you found when you spoke to the hikers?” He’s frowning down at his untouched paperwork, glasses pushed up on his face.
“Not entirely,” he says finally, leaning back. His jaw works. “You said he… attacked her.”
“For hours.” While we sat here, clueless. Heading to my parents for dinner, beginning to wonder where they were when they didn’t show up.
Listening to the voicemail and feeling my steady world shift beneath my feet. The panic when they didn’t answer their phones. My father, on the phone to the police, gesturing and shouting as the four of us took to the forest to search and didn’t find a trace.
And then the days that followed, with no news.
And that day. When my father got the call that made him stagger, the blood draining from his skin.
When he doesn’t say anything, my brows furrow. “What?”
“The hikers told me she was covered in… marks.” He hesitates, throat working. “Bites. Savage ones.”
I’m shaking my head before he even finishes. “They… she….,”
She didn’t mention that. And I didn’t press her for details, figuring I’d done enough of that already. I let her talk, let her give me the pieces of information she was comfortable sharing. Enough for me to know, or so I thought.
Maybe I don’t actually know much at all. My mind drifts again to that sweater, the way she tucked it in against her jeans, no skin on show below her chin.
“Bites?” My voice wavers. “Like… a mating bond?”
Oscar’s eyes meet mine. Endless and dark. “They said they were… black. As if she’d been poisoned.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like that,” Max insists. He shakes his head. “They were mistaken. Even if he—,”
He stops. “Maybe we should go up there now.”
“She wanted to be alone.” Standing, I cross to the refrigerator and pour myself some water, but it does nothing to ease the dryness in my throat, as if the sides are sticking together. “But she agreed to tomorrow.”
Jake pulls papers toward him. “Then we spend tonight learning everything we can to help her.”