Alexander
“I’m sorry to bother you, Sir, but I had to show you immediately.”
I plucked the letter out of the soldier’s fingertips warily, keeping my eyes locked on his as I did so. Something in my gut was telling me not to trust this man. It was, after all, the same soldier who dared to disrespect me in front of the pack just the day before.
But my suspicions of him flew out the window when I started reading the letter. Because they had a new target.
“Tell me where you found this.”
“I was going to get an extra workout in,” he said. “And came across something I didn’t expect out in the yard. A, uh… well, first a little pile of clothes, and then the girl they came off of.”
“What?”
“Yeah, uh, there was this purple-haired girl, and, well, I don’t know how else to say it, Alpha Alexander. She was fucking Kayden right out there on the weight bench.” He shrugged his shoulders. Something about the way the story tumbled out of his mouth made me believe that it was true.
“And the letter?” I asked, trying to see how Kayden having public sex with Nina had any bearing on the matter at hand.
“It was there on the ground with her panties. Must have fallen out of her shorts pocket. I don’t know why, I just snatched it up, it looked like something my instinct told me was suspicious, and, well…” He pointed at the well-creased paper in my hand.
“Forget what you read in this letter,” I commanded him. “Never speak of it outside of this room. Do you hear me?”
“Heard, sir.” He bowed his head.
“You’re excused.” I waved my hand at the soldier, and he hurried away.
My eyes went back to the paper. The letter was hand-written, and I could see the writer’s furious emotion in his pen strokes, and the way the ink was smudged, like he had been writing in a hurry.
It just did not feel like it should be possible. I could not believe it was true. I studied every word on the page carefully. It was possible—probable, even, the more I thought about it—that Fiona received this letter from her father but had taken no action on his behalf. It was possible that maybe she had been just as shocked, the first time she read it, as I was in this moment now.
The language did suggest that Fiona was already conspiring with her father against me. But I still could not jump to that conclusion. I had to ask her directly first. Confront her and see what she would say.
I knew now that Fiona was not afraid to lie right to my face and could do it without flinching.
But for what purpose was she willing to lie to me… that I had yet to find out.
Fiona
It had only been a matter of minutes since Alexander left for a night training with his men. I was undressing in the bathroom, just about to step into a hot shower, and stopped in my tracks when I heard a quiet but distinct Pshhh sound.
I recognized the sound because it was familiar. It was the sound of a thick envelope sliding across our hardwood floors from under the hall door.
I threw my clothes back on and turned off the water. Went out and found, as I expected, another unmarked envelope on the ground. I tore it open and started to read it immediately. My hands began to shake as I read. My father’s words were much harsher in this letter than the last one.
You will regret your disloyalty, Fiona. You bring shame to our family and to the Red Moon pack! We cherished you as a prized Luna, and this is the way you will repay your family?!
A growl rumbled in my throat, my body buzzing with the vibration of it. How dare he accuse me of bringing shame to the pack? After all he has done, dragging us through the mud for years?
We do not need a cheap whore running our family’s business operations. Is that what you are, Fiona? Alpha Alexander’s most loyal whore? He was not even willing to pay me one penny for you, or do you not remember?
Do what your father has told you to do. Or you will be removed from every title you have ever held in any of our businesses. The choice, once again, is yours.
The harder my father pressed me on this, the more I wanted to push back.
The truth was that he had never wanted me to inherit the family businesses. The titles I held? I earned them through hard work. My father never handed me anything. He made me work for every one of my accolades.
Unlike my brother Liam, who skated by with his head in the clouds, at no concern to my father. Liam could get away with that because he was a male, and next in line to succeed my father as pack Alpha. But nothing Liam had ever said or done truly qualified him for such a position of leadership. Still, Father always wanted Liam to take everything. If I were the one between the two of us that had proved herself more professional and business savvy, all that did was convince our father that I needed to work harder at teaching Liam what I knew.
This threat of disinheritance was a long time coming. My father had always planned on finding a way to cut me out of the family companies.
And Alexander had always been kind to me. Deep down, I knew he cared for me and wanted to protect me. My mind’s eye flashed to the bloody scene in the dungeon and fixed on the memory of it. Alexander had taken a beating for me.
My father, on the other hand, had just drugged, tortured, and nearly drowned me.
It was an easy decision.
I found a pen in my bedside table and took it with me to the game table in the corner of our room. I flipped the letter over and began to write on the back of it, penning a contract by hand in the tightest, tidiest penmanship I could manage. I knew from memory what a legally binding document like this one would require. I started with the date in the upper corner of the page and worked tediously to recall all necessary details.
I was abandoning my rights of management to our mutually owned companies, giving my shares over to my father in their entirety.
The businesses would bankrupt eventually anyway, as long as my father remained involved in them. I had been kidding myself, trying to control his behavior for years. Keeping him from destroying the companies was an effort akin to trying to plug a hole in a fire hydrant. There was nothing doing for him. He was a scoundrel, and he’d never change his ways.
It was a little painful to say goodbye to the businesses I’d been working so hard to save these last years. But it was necessary.
I signed my name at the bottom of the contract, digging the pen in so decisively that I tore a little hole into the page as I dotted the i.
