Chapter 165
_Author’s POV_
The address Theodore gave them landed in the room like something nobody quite knew what to do with at first.
Alaric looked at it on the paper Kasper had written it down on, then he looked at Theodore with an expression that didn’t give anything away. “You’re sure about this?” He asked unsure. Theodore could be lying for all things holy, but again why would he?
“I drove her there myself,” Theodore said with a straight face. He wasn’t even trying to convince them. They either believed or let it be. “Three days ago. I know exactly which room she sleeps in.”
Kasper pulled up the location on his phone without saying anything and turned the screen toward Alaric. Alaric looked at it for a moment and his face did something brief and complicated before it went back to neutral again.
The property was twenty minutes from the hotel.
Just twenty minutes away. After the island, after the military chopper, after all the running and hiding, she was merely just sitting twenty minutes away from them the entire time.
Nobody said anything about it but everyone in the room felt it pressing down on them.
Kasper was already working on his phone, pulling up property records, running the address through the databases Celeste had given them access to. It came back clean under Theodore’s name, even under all the shell companies they had been tracking for weeks.
He kept digging, going back further, checking different angles, and it took him another few minutes of searching before something came up that made him stop. “It’s registered under Reid’s family name,” he said, looking up from the screen. “Not Reid himself but his family. The property has been in their name for over fifteen years.”
Alaric went very still.
“She used Reid’s network as a second layer of cover,” Kasper said, working through it out loud. “We were tracking Theodore’s assets, following Theodore’s money, watching Theodore’s connections but nobody looked at Reid’s side because Reid was supposed to be on our side.”
“That’s because those two are cousins.” Theodore said casually and everyone turned to him.
“What?” Alaric was dumbfounded. Why the hell was everything unfolding like this?
He sighed and didn’t respond immediately, he simply looked at the address on the paper in his hand for a moment and then set it down on the table carefully. “Call Celeste,” he said.
Kasper dialed, put the phone on speaker and set it on the table between them. It rang twice before Celeste picked up.
“Talk to me,” she said, in a clipped tone. You could tell she was expecting the call while still being in the middle of something.
Kasper walked her through everything, slowly and clearly, starting with the address Theodore had given them and ending with the property registration under Reid’s family name. Celeste listened without making a single sound the whole way through, which was normal. She always listened completely before she reacted to anything.
When Kasper finished there was a brief silence on her end.
It lasted three full seconds, which doesn’t sound like much but for Celeste it was practically significant. “I should have looked there sooner,” she said finally. “I’ll be outside in ten minutes. Have the vehicles ready.”
She hung up without waiting for a response.
Kasper looked at Alaric. “That’s the closest I’ve ever heard her come to admitting she missed something.”
“Don’t tell her that,” Alaric said simply, and turned back to face the room.
Theodore was still sitting in his chair, watching everything with that same resignation he had carried in with him. Rowena was near the window, her arms crossed loosely, her eyes moving between Alaric and Theodore. She was attentive as usual.
Alaric started laying out the plan and the room reorganized itself around him as he talked. Everyone stood a little straighter, focused as they obeyed his authority. He was smart, smarter than most people because he was Alpha King. The first young king in history.
He made mention of a small team, about six people maximum, himself included. No large convoy or anything that would draw attention on a residential street at night.
They would approach from two sides, Celeste taking three people through the back of the property and Alaric coming through the front with Kasper. There won’t be any announcement of their arrival. They would do it discreetly.
He looked at his watch while he talked, they had roughly twelve hours before Virella would start to suspect something had gone wrong with Theodore, but Alaric wasn’t planning to use anywhere near that much time. He wanted to move in the next two hours, while the evening was still busy enough that a few vehicles moving through the city looked like nothing at all.
Rowena listened to all of it without saying anything, and Alaric looked at her once when he was done, a single look that carried more conversation in it than most full voiced sentences.
He didn’t tell her she couldn’t come, nor did she ask for his permission.
It was simply understood between the two of them, without any words attached to it, that she was going to be there when they found Virella. After everything that had happened in that facility, after the gym and the cuffs and the fire and all the rest of it, nobody in the room was going to be the one to tell Rowena Ashthorne to stay behind.
Theodore spoke up from his chair when there was a brief pause in the planning. His voice was quiet and he didn’t try to make it anything other than what it was. a “What happens to me now?”
“You stay here,” Alaric said, without looking up from the map Kasper had spread across the table. “In this room. You don’t make calls, you don’t contact anyone, and you don’t leave until I say so.”
“And after all of this is done,” Theodore said. “What happens then?”
Alaric looked at him then. “That’s a different conversation and we’ll have it when the time comes. Right now you’ve done what you came here to do and I need you to sit still and let us finish it.”
Theodore looked at him for a moment and then nodded once and sat back in his chair. He didn’t push for more than that, didn’t try to negotiate anything for himself or ask for promises or guarantees. He just accepted what Alaric had said and went quiet again, and that more than anything else confirmed something about where his head actually was.
A person who had come here to cause trouble would have pushed harder.
People started gathering themselves and moving toward the door. Kasper rolled up the map, pulled his phone from his pocket and headed out first, already typing something as he walked.
Two of Alaric’s men followed close behind.
Rowena surprised Alarix and stood up straight. She moved toward the door and he fell into step trying to conceal his shock.
But he remained close behind her, close enough that his hand briefly touched her lower back as they walked.
Pierre on the other hand didn’t move an inch. He was standing on the other side of the room and he simply didn’t walk toward the door the way everyone else did. Nobody had told him to stay. Nobody had told him to go either. He just stood there while the room emptied around him and when there were only three of them left, him, Theodore, and Ezekiel, he looked at Theodore.
Theo too was staring at him.
Ezekiel could tell there was a whole conversation happening in that silence that had nothing to do with Virella or facilities or any of the things that had brought them all to this room.
He wanted to give them space, but he didn’t exactly trust that fucker Theodore.
So he stayed back.
Theodore looked at Ezekiel seated at the side and his jaw moved slightly, like he was working through something he didn’t know how to start.
Pierre pulled out the chair beside Ezekiel and sat down.
He didn’t say anything either. He just sat there, and that was apparently enough, because some of the tension in Theodore’s shoulders released by a small degree that probably only Pierre would have noticed.
“You’re not leaving?” Theodore asked Ezekiel through gritted teeth.
“I don’t trust you.” Ezekiel said in a flat tone.
“What’s your business here? Who the hell are you?”
“Shut it.” Ezekiel growled.
“Ezekiel, calm down.” Pierre butted in before things got worse.
Ezekiel glared at Theo for just a second or two before he looked at Pierre.
Something passed between them in that look. Ezekiel gave a single small nod and then he stood up and walked out, pulling the door shut behind him to give them privacy.
But of course he didn’t go far. If Theodore dared to do anything to Pierre, Ezekiel swore to never rest until he had that man’s head down on a platter.
He’d also cut his balls off and throw them into the river for fishes to feed on.