Chapter 164

_Alaric’s POV_

The meeting today wasn’t going to go as planned, but I hoped it would.

Thankfully, Theodore was efficient. He arrived at exactly the time I specified.

I’ll give him that much.

He knocked twice before the door opened, one of my men let him in, and I watched him walk into the room and take stock of everything in it, as if cataloging the room and deciding on how to make a disappearance if necessary.

He looked nothing like I expected from the photo Pierre had shown us. That man Pierre had shown me looked put together, confident. He looked like someone who entered places like he owned them.

This Theodore in front of me looked like he hadn’t slept properly in days. His clothes were neat but his eyes weren’t, and there was something in the way he carried himself that had settled into a kind of quiet resignation I recognized immediately.

This wasn’t a man walking into a trap, he was far too gone to consider that.

This was a man who had already made his decision and was just finishing the last part of it.

From what I heard from Rowena about Theodore, it was that he was always calm and collected. He always carried himself like a God.

And the one standing before me looked nothing like that, it was a sign that Virella had done something to him.

He scanned the room, me, Kasper, Pierre, and then his eyes landed on Rowena sitting in a wheel chair by the window and he stopped walking.

Just for a second, just one full beat where his feet simply didn’t move, then he averted his gaze.

Rowena remained calm as she settled her gaze on him.

Theodore looked at Pierre, but there was nothing on his face to tell what was going through his mind.

And I didn’t know what passed between them in that regard. It was the kind of thing that belonged to two people with a long shared history and wasn’t for anyone else to read.

Pierre held his gaze steadily and Theodore looked away first.

“Sit down,” I said.

He obeyed and sat down.

I stayed standing, not because I wanted to intimidate him, I didn’t need to do that, but because I think better on my feet. I wanted to think clearly right now.

“You came alone,” I said instead of asking.

“You asked me to,” he shrugged.

“I ask a lot of people a lot of things, people in your situation and not all of them listen.”

“I’m here to cooperate,” he sighed. “Not to play games. If I wanted games I’d have stayed where I was.”

His voice was even and controlled. He might look disheveled but he was still having that confidence in him.

“Then let’s start simply,” I said. “Where is Virella right now?”

“I’ll get there,” he said. “But there are things I need to say first.”

“You’ll answer what I ask first,” I deadpanned. “Then you can say whatever you need to say.”

He looked at me for a moment and I pressed on him with my Alpha aura. He eventually fell for it and nodded.

I started with the straightforward things. His involvement in the facility, when it started, how it was funded, and whose idea it was originally. He answered without deflecting, which I hadn’t fully expected. He confirmed the shell company, confirmed the funding, confirmed that he had known what was happening inside the facility even when he wasn’t present.

Kasper was writing everything down beside me efficiently. Rowena hadn’t moved her wheel chair, she just kept her focus on Theo and what he was saying. I felt her attention in the room without looking at her, her aura filled the presence.

“Who else is involved beyond Reid?” I asked.

“Nobody significant,” Theodore said. “Reid was the inside connection. The men at the facility were hired independently, no pack affiliation, and no names worth chasing. They’ve probably scattered by now anyway.”

“Probably,” Kasper said flatly.

“I’ll give you the contact I used to hire them,” Theodore said. “You can work back from there.”

“We will,” I assured him.

I moved through the questioning steadily, and he answered steadily, and somewhere around the fifteen minute mark I started to believe him. But that didn’t mean I believed him completely, I wasn’t built for complete trust in rooms like this, but what I felt was enough. There was a particular quality to lying that I had learned to read over years of sitting across from people who were doing it, and Theodore didn’t have it. He was careful about what he gave me, yes, he selected his words, hut the words themselves were true.

Then I asked the thing that mattered most.

“Does Virella know you’re here?”

“No,” he shook his head. “She thinks I’m arranging our next location. I told her I needed a few hours to make calls.”

“How long before she realizes something is wrong?”

He thought about it honestly. “Twelve hours. Maybe less if she tries to reach me and I don’t answer. I turned my phone off when I came in.”

Twelve hours. I looked at Kasper and saw he was already looking at me with the same thought on his face.

Twelve hours was enough.

“One more question,” I said, and I kept my voice level and easy the same way I had kept it level and easy through everything else. “Where is she? Right now..”

Theodore didn’t answer immediately.

He looked at me for a moment, then at Kasper, then at Pierre. And then his eyes moved to Rowena sitting quietly by the window, he looked at her for what felt like a long time but was probably only a few seconds.

Rowena looked back at him without expression.

Something moved across his face as he contemplated telling me of her location.

Later, we would think about Reid’s.

For now, we catch that woman and have her pay for what she did to Rowena.

Theodore looked back at me and gave me the address.