Chapter 6 #3
Mason stared at the wolf as if trying to figure out whether the younger man was suggesting he was too weak to do it himself. He must’ve decided not to be offended, because he nodded. “Sure.”
They headed out, which left Esperanza, Ronan, and me alone in the room. I gathered up the breakfast trash and searched for a can. Esperanza immediately stepped up. “I can take that for you, Alpha.”
“Nope,” I said. “My mess, my clean up. It’s kind of a life philosophy.”
Esperanza smiled. “It’s mine, too.”
Ronan stood, and the change in the young woman was immediate. The smile slipped off her face, and she angled as far from him as she could without moving her feet.
“We haven’t formally met. I’m Ronan—”
“Pallás,” she blurted. “I know who you are.”
“Williams,” I corrected.
She frowned at me. “That’s not what I know to be true, Alpha. This is—”
“Ronan Williams.” I looked at her without staring directly into her eyes because I didn’t want to spook her. She seemed terrified enough.
“Y-yes, Alpha.”
“Floyd hurt a lot of people, Esperanza. Some wounds are less obvious than others, but no less important, and we’re going to respect that.”
“Yes, Alpha.” She directed her next words at Ronan. “I only know you by your association with…” Esperanza did a shake similar to the one Mason had done, but this time it wasn’t because I’d given her an alpha command. She seemed to be trying to shake off her fear.
“My association with the worst person you ever met.” The hurt in him was palpable, and I didn’t think only to me.
I wanted to smooth things over, but I let them handle it. Ronan knew he had to face these sorts of accusations head-on if he intended to take over the pack. We’d discussed it.
“The pack—at least, the wolves I trust—respect you. They say you aren’t like the old— Like him.” Esperanza spoke like she was tiptoeing through a minefield. “It’s not fair to judge you by something you couldn’t help.”
“It’s understandable,” he said.
She took a deep breath and stuck out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Ronan Williams. I’m Esperanza Pacheco. I used to work here.”
Ronan walked over and shook her outstretched hand. “Nice to meet you, too.”
“You still work here, Esperanza. We need all hands on deck if we’re going to reopen the place,” I said. “I mean, after we wreck it. Not all of it, just the office.”
Tension seemed to drain from her. “You’re really offering me a job?”
“Only if you want it,” I said. “No pressure. I can understand if you’d rather not.”
“I want it, thank you.” She started nodding before she spoke, as if her body was responding to the question before the rest of her.
“I have a little boy and next-to-no savings. Daycare is really expensive and hard to find. I’m so late on my rent I’m about to be evicted.
” She looked stricken. “That’s not your problem, though. Sorry, Alpha, I—”
“Who’s your landlord?” Ronan asked. “Are they pack?”
“It’s Brock Greer.”
“Of course it is.” I sighed. “Tell me, Esperanza, how would you feel about living in a trailer park?”
Mason and Dylan lugged in the sledgehammers and a few other tools I didn’t recognize, and we all traipsed down the hall to Floyd’s office. None of us were particularly excited about reentering the room, but Ronan and Esperanza seemed the least thrilled.
Dylan handed her a sledgehammer and whispered, “You deserve to enjoy this.”
Esperanza smiled and nudged him with her shoulder. Dylan gave her a look of love so raw and intimate I had to turn away. It was like seeing him naked.
“Let’s move.” I unlocked the door and kicked it open, movie-hero style. It was overkill, but it felt good.
“Pretty badass, Alpha,” Ronan murmured into my ear.
“Oh, good. That’s what I was going for. I’m just glad the door didn’t ricochet off the wall and smack me upside the head.”
Esperanza stared at Floyd’s desk, her hands flexing on the wooden sledgehammer handle.
Cecil had offered to set the thing on fire along with the carpet, but Mason and I’d needed to search it first. Now that it had been officially declared empty, I decided I was going to handle the desk disposal a different way.
“Destroy it,” I said.
Esperanza’s eyes widened. “Me?”
“Yeah.” I glanced at the guys. “No one else touches the desk. It’s all hers.”
“It’s okay,” she said, softly, “they can—”
“Firewood,” I said, “then kindling, then toothpicks. Once you’ve beaten every last bit of it into a fine paste, I’m going to have my most devious partner destroy every last molecule with his evilest spell.”
“You have to be talking about Cecil,” Ronan said.
“Of course. He’ll be by later. Ida and Gladys are dropping him and Fennel off on their way to the senior center.”
“I don’t know.” Esperanza's lower lip trembled ever so slightly. Again, her hand flexed on the handle. No one but me was looking at her, but I was certain the other wolves knew exactly what she was feeling. They didn’t need the pack bonds to pick up on it, either.
She was so very, very angry.
Worse yet, she was still afraid of Floyd, even though the bastard was dead. She needed to take back some power. I wasn’t sure this would help, but it damn sure couldn’t hurt.
“Only if you want to,” I said. “This isn’t an alpha command. This is your choice, Esperanza. Anything you choose is all right with me—even walking away.”
Her face pale and expressionless, she stared at the desk. “I want to.”
She stalked over to it, the sledgehammer head dragging behind her, scratching a straight line into the cement subfloor. Her fear had taken on an erratic, crazed sort of rage that pulsed through all of us.
“You piece of mierda,” she said to the desk. “You lying cobarde. All the people you hurt.” Her voice crawled from the depths of her gut and wheezed out of her mouth. “The me that you hurt.”
Dylan raised a hand as though to comfort her but stopped himself before he acted. Knowing how he felt about Esperanza, it had to be torture to see her in so much turmoil.
“You laughed at me when I cried.” Her breath hitched.
“Said the salt gave my terror flavor.” She lifted the heavy sledgehammer high above her head.
“You laughed in my face when I asked for help for my son and me. Laughed.” Her breath hitched.
“No one misses you, not even your children. We’re all glad you’re dead. Burn in hell, Alpha Pallás.”
She slammed the sledgehammer into the center of the desk. It splintered then caved in. Solid oak was no match for a deeply hurt, pissed-off alpha wolf.
“Evil, disgusting, nothing of a human.” She hammered the desk into bits, sometimes shrieking at it, sometimes sobbing, sometimes working in concentrated silence.
Ronan and Mason left the room about halfway through. Dylan moved to the doorway and watched with a glazed expression, probably wishing he could pull her into his arms.
I caught his eye and nodded, and eventually, he, too, left the room.
When the desk was thoroughly destroyed, Esperanza dropped the sledgehammer and collapsed to her knees. Her shoulders hunched, and she released a huge gasping sob. Tears sheeted down her face, soaked into her top.
Fernando Floyd Pallás. A narcissistic son of a bastard who’d hurt the people he was entrusted with the power to protect. They’d come to him with heads bowed and tears running down their faces, begging their powerful protector for mercy, and he’d seen it as a way to enrich himself.
He’d blackmailed, coerced, and violated them. Worse yet, he’d laughed off their pain as if it didn’t matter, because it had never mattered. Not to him.
I regretted the effect killing Floyd had had on Ronan, but there wasn’t a single part of me that wished that bastard was alive.
I was so thrilled he was dead I was almost giddy with it, yet at the same time, I was overwhelmed with the fallout of the hurt this one selfish man had caused.
Hurt that had been spilled at Ronan’s feet, at my feet in the form of distrust and fear of all things alpha.
Slowly, so as not to spook her, I knelt beside Esperanza and held out my hand. She grabbed it as if it were a lifeline.
Dust hung in the air like smoke, spent rage clouding the atmosphere in the room. Wood splinters ground into my knees through my jeans as we knelt in the dregs of the last symbol of Floyd Pallás’s power.
Right then, right there, I made a promise to this wolf that no alpha would hurt her or her child like that ever again. Not on my watch.
And then I cried my heart out right alongside her.