Chapter Two
Lindon
A dirty job, but someone had to do it.
At least, that was how it was presented to me when I was old enough to join the family business. And when I left to open a shop with two of my friends. I thought my father would argue with me, try to get me to stay, but he treated my choice as the one guaranteed to lead to personal success.
He had no idea how I planned to operate.
My brother, only two years older than me, would inherit the original company when our father retired, and I would have been no better than any other employee had I stayed.
Just one more agent, despite my greater skills and record.
I could have challenged my brother for the position, but I wouldn’t risk his life.
And he wouldn’t step aside. Probably just as well since my father would never agree to my radical ideas anyway.
So, I left, and so far, it was going well.
In fact, I was at that moment headed for the conference room to discuss a new contract that had come in that morning.
We’d only been in our new offices for about a month, and I still couldn’t believe how nice they were.
My father’s company operated out of the alpha house on the pack lands, but I felt it was important to have a professional operation.
We’d even discussed what we should wear for work.
Suits came up but were quickly rejected in favor of polos or button-downs with our logo on the pocket.
At least when we weren’t undercover. Which happened quite a lot.
“We” referred to my two business partners whom I’d met while still working for my father. They had their own pasts, but together, we shared a plan for the future.
“Where is Shiloh?” True came in and set down a tablet.
“Is he late again?” Truett, who everyone called “True,” was the brains of our operation.
He always seemed to know how to approach a difficult problem and had no problem thinking outside the box.
I generally acted as the face of the company, meeting with clients, but before any contracts were signed, they had to be approved by him.
The moment I’d received the request, I’d sent it along to him to review.
“You just walked in.” Shiloh, who stood six inches taller than either of us, filled the doorway.
The brawn of our group, he had gone into the business when he was very young and in somewhat desperate straits.
His mother had cheated on his fathers, ripping the family apart, and the young, prematurely tall and muscular male had to support himself.
He’d been known to be a fierce and unforgiving hunter, blaming his mother’s omega status for her behavior.
By the time I found him, he’d learned better, but her actions had left him wary and with no desire to find an omega of his own.
We saw the good male under the frightening exterior, and despite his past, I’d never known anyone more loyal to his friends.
I let the other two go back and forth for a moment before calling the meeting to order. “We can’t just sit here all day, gentlemen.”
“I think we can.” True offered a cheeky grin. “But I have some numbers to go over with you both before we discuss any new business. If that’s quite all right?”
He knew we hated this part of the business and really would have preferred he just told us if we were doing okay or not, but True felt it was important that we knew all the details of…
everything in order to make decisions. How much we spent on ink for the printers, fuel for the vehicles, electricity…
And, with our unique business model, how many jobs we did that earned us money vs. something else entirely.
It wasn’t that we had clients who cheated us or that we were incapable of finding our quarry, just that sometimes our way of handling a situation did not result in payment beyond the initial deposit.
“Do we have a choice?” Shiloh grumbled.
“No.” True gave him a cheeky grin. “Now, if you’ll open the app…”
Another thing our partner was skilled in.
He’d developed the app for us, with two sides.
One, anyone interested in our services could access and see positive reviews from clients, what we provided, and contact us.
The other side was private and accessible only by us.
The security level was better than most government sites, I understood, and it was there that we were directed at this time.
“Now, last month was decent. You can see that we were conservative in our costs.” He cast a glance at Shiloh, who was known to overspend on lunches. “And we got those two payoffs as well as two deposits.”
He went on for a good ten minutes while my eyelids grew heavy and Shiloh fidgeted. It wasn’t really fair. True took care of so many aspects of our work that neither of us had the skill or interest in doing, and we needed to show more appreciation.
Finally, he wound down, and it was time to discuss new business.