Chapter 14

Zach shook his head curtly. “No on both counts. It’s real. I said those things. And we can’t be seen taking any action against the reporter—or his paper.” Zach and Alastair had done corporate espionage before, so it made sense that Alastair would wonder where the line was. “Not yet, at least,” he added, to keep the uncrossable Beast’s pretense up.

Alastair’s dark eyes flickered between him and the table full of pages. “Does it relate to Larios in some way?”

Because what else would explain his strange interest in Stefan Larios’s business, as his own was starting to fall into a controlled crumble around his ears?

“No. These are two separate incidents. Larios no longer concerns you.”

Zach pushed back from the table. “Start looking into the board—and don’t be shy about it. Let them know you’re coming and that I sent you. See who runs, and to where and to whom. I suspect more than one of them was in on this.”

And sometimes, when he was lying, he wondered when he’d gotten so good at doing it.

Would he eventually be so good at it that he wouldn’t know if he was lying to himself?

“Understood.” Alastair nodded curtly and then frowned. He put a hand to his earpiece, as if not believing what he was hearing, and then he looked sharply to Zach. “You’ll have to excuse me, but we need to enact containment protocols—there’s an armed intruder on the first floor. We need to lock this room down.”

Zach blinked back to attention. This wasn’t part of any of his plans.

“Keep her down there at all costs,” Alastair said, speaking to the men listening in beyond, not him.

“Her?” Zach asked.

“Female, late twenties, blonde. I want all my men down there this instant; the Alpha target is too close for comfort,” Alastair said to his men. Then to Zach, “Please lock the doors and tint the glass, sir.”

Zach stood but ignored Alastair’s attempts to get him to lock down the conference room’s glass cage. “Bring her up here, to me. Now. And don’t injure a hair on her head.”

“Sir?” Alastair asked, confusion breaking through the military precision of his expression.

“You heard me. Don’t disarm her either. She doesn’t like that.”

Alastair hesitated, but only barely, before cupping his ear again. “Stand down. I repeat, stand down. Escort her here.” A second’s pause, in which Zach imagined he could hear the sound of static. “Yes, you heard right. Up to the conference room.”

Shortly thereafter, Zach could see Stella walking up, flanked by two of Alastair’s security team. They were both taller than she was, they both outweighed her, and neither of them had any idea how close they’d come to death.

“We caught her sneaking in via the service truck bay,” the man to her right announced, after pushing open the door to let them in.

“I wasn’t sneaking,” Stella snarled. She was wearing a dark T-shirt and military cargo pants that Zach was sure had half a gun store worth of bullets inside the pockets. “If I’d been sneaking, you wouldn’t have caught me.” She glared at Zach from across the room. “I just started feeling like punching people the second I got into your nice shiny building here. I figured I’d start with him,” she said, jerking her chin at the man to her right, who was nursing a swollen black eye, “and work my way up the chain of command.”

As she finished speaking she freed herself and raced down the aisle between the chairs to leap up on the desk in front of Zach, scattering the pages of information on Larios every which way. She only barely hid her strength and speed, looking like a human in incredibly optimal condition, as opposed to possessing the superhuman powers of a werewolf.

“What the fuck did you do to him?” she growled, as Zach felt the cold end of her Ruger pressed beneath his chin.

He held his hand up to stop his men from getting any ideas. “Would you like to wait and have this conversation alone?” he asked her.

“No. Because when I kill you, I want witnesses.”

He hadn’t seen her up close—without magic—in months. Her wide blue eyes pierced him more than any bullet she could shoot him with. Her light blonde hair was swept back into a low ponytail, although a piece of it had gotten free to cup her cheek like he wished he could, the nostrils of her button nose were flared in anger at him, and her full red lips were puckered into an angry pout. She was close enough that he could smell her breath— something minty like she’d brushed her teeth before going on a murder patrol, and at the incongruence of these two things, he laughed.

Her eyes widened, and she jabbed the gun higher into the flesh beneath his chin. “Fuck you! It’s not funny! Why did you kill him?”

“I have killed a lot of people, yes, but at the moment, I have no idea who precisely you’re talking about,” Zach whispered, as best he was able to, what with the gun right there.

Her eyes tried to read him, and then she muttered something in disgust, before rocking back and shouting, “Fuck!”

“If you could excuse us, gentlemen,” Zach said, pointing at the door. Each member of the security team looked to Alastair for instructions, who then looked to him.

“Forgive me for asking, Mr. Blackwood, but are you… sure?” “Entirely,” Zach said gruffly.

Alastair escorted his men out as Zach got up and walked to the podium at the desk’s side, hitting the button that tinted all the glass—and he already knew the walls were soundproof. “Why the fuck are you here, Stella?”

She rifled through the papers Alastair had brought him and held up a fistful in accusation. “Larios is dead. And I needed him alive. For tonight.” She threw the papers further down the desk. “If you were going to shit on my pack, you should’ve just not helped last night, from the start.”

Zach stared her down. “Do you think I would be researching a dead man?”

She inhaled to speak, then stopped. “But—why research him at all?”

You know why, Zach longed to say. But what came out of his mouth instead was, “I didn’t become the CEO of this corporation by keeping my nose where it belonged.”

“Become?” she taunted. “Like the real Damian didn’t just install you.” “That’s how it started. That’s not how it ended up.” He glowered at her. “Did you come here just to kill me?”

“If I thought you were lying? Yes. Ugh!” She raked a hand through her hair. “This is all your fault, Zach! If I’d gone home with him last night, like he’d asked, I would’ve been able to save him!”

So she hadn’t been with Larios after all. Something subtle inside him shifted, letting him breathe easier like his tie was not quite so tight. “And… you’re sure he’s dead?”

“Him being rolled out of his home in a body bag this morning and into a hearse seemed fairly legit.” Stella snorted and then considered his desk in dismay. “I came here hoping you’d already gotten the information I needed from him before you killed him. But it’s not here, and I don’t think you’re holding out on me,” she said, shoving the rest of the papers off the desk.

“I don’t even have the slightest idea what it is you’re looking for. But Jamison can hack anything, you know that. Is it an email? His phone? A combination to a safe?”

“I can’t tell you,” she snapped. “And this is all still your fault. You and your stupid promises.”

His phone buzzed on the desk as it alarmed—it was time for the conference to begin.

“Fuck,” he muttered. This was not the look he wanted to have for it— secluded and hiding. Zach scanned the rest of the room—there was no other scrap of cover. “Grab those papers and get behind the podium,” he said while pointing.

The podium was a gothic affair, made of dark wood, both large and imposing. Stella looked between him and it. “The fuck I will.”

He growled at her. “I can’t very well pretend you belong here, looking like that. People will talk.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, my suit’s at the dry cleaners, they’re getting someone else’s blood off of it,” she said, staring him down.

“You asked me for a favor last night. Now I am asking you for one.”

“Your favor had conditions that ruined my mission.”

“Unbeknownst to me,” he said, before snapping his fingers and pointing again. “Go. Hide.”

Stella took a deep inhale of breath, and then swept her arms down and out, pulling all the papers into a pile, and stormed to where he directed her, ducking down to crouch inside the podium’s column. He followed her, falling into an alert yet relaxed stance behind it, calculated to look readily prepared, and hit the same button he had earlier.

The windows went translucent, the doors unlocked, and his secretaries began ushering reporters in.