38. Lucy

Frankie satat her desk checking her morning messages and I sat at mine, writing an email with new instructions for our team of interns when Liam set a plate of sushi on my desk.

He gave me a wink and set up the soy sauce with the exact right amount of wasabi – enough to make my mouth burn but not too much that my eyes watered. I couldn't believe he still remembered what kind of food I liked, but then again…

This man has spent the last fifteen years looking for me.

Even after everything, it was still hard to wrap my head around the fact that Liam Valor was the boy I thought I'd never see again – the one who never once gave up on finding me.

I hadn't expected anyone to understand what it was like to feel like this.

Someone else felt obsession and affection the exact same way I did. Enough so that he'd made it his life's mission to find me again.

I grabbed one of the rolls of sushi and dipped it in the soy sauce and wasabi mixture, popping the whole thing in my mouth. The spice offset some of the texture and I chewed, watching Liam head over to the couch in my office where Cas was.

He plopped down and started making another plate, handing that to Cas while they pretended not to watch me eat.

This should feel awkward, but it didn't. I thought it would since the boy I've never been able to forget had somehow grown up to be a legacy alpha and one of our clients but none of that really bothered me anymore.

What bothered me was how much my life was going to change because of this.

It wasn't that I regretted our bond. Not at all. That was actually the one part of this whole mess I couldn't get enough of. I could feel them in my chest and I knew I'd never be alone again even if they weren't anywhere near me.

I could actually feel their love for me and I never wanted to get used to it. I wanted to feel like this every single day for the rest of my life – basking in the warmth of their obsessive love and attention.

But none of that changed the fact that we still had a lot of logistics to figure out.

Liam may have put in his unofficial resignation along with a request to be taken off the family registry but it wasn't that simple.

Even if Nicolette Valor allowed it, the whole world would know Liam was no longer part of the Valor pack. Everything he did made the news and this wouldn't be any different. They'd all try to find out why he left his pack and when they eventually learned he was bonded to an omega…

Starting a new pack with Cas's name wouldn't shield me from the spotlight either. It was an insanely romantic idea and I loved him for committing to it with absolutely zero hesitation, but it would only make different, potentially worse problems.

Thankfully, I had some experience with legacy packs since I spent most of my teenage years in the Lopez compound.

The hierarchy and society the legacy packs had were separate from the rest of us.

Old money, connections to every aspect of society, rules that never applied to them – rules that only applied to them…

That's why most legacy pairings didn't end well if one of them wasn't from another legacy pack.

Melinda Valor had enough personal wealth from modeling it didn't matter. She also came from a wealthy pack. They weren't legacies, but they might be one day if they kept choosing strong pack members.

I didn't have personal wealth even if I did pretty well for myself – I had nothing of value other than my intelligence.

Unfortunately, Nicolette Valor still held some traditional ideals even if she was one of the more progressive alphas so intelligence wasn't exactly high on her list of requirements for an omega.

It didn't matter if Liam insisted on making a new pack, there'd still be rumors and gossip that I was some gold-digging bitch who didn't know her place. Solving this case might help silence those rumors and could go a long way to proving how useful I was.

It wouldn't fix a lot of the deep-rooted issues that would no doubt arise simply because I was an omega who refused to quit their job after getting bonded to an alpha though.

Not that I thought Liam or Cas cared about that, but everyone else would. No matter where we went, Liam's red eyes would tell the world what he was and we couldn't avoid this reality unless he dragged us to the middle of nowhere to live in seclusion.

It might actually work to my benefit that I was a dominant omega with connections to the Lopez pack. That might even explain how a private detective with tattoos, a concealed carry license, and a bad attitude could possibly interest someone like Liam Valor.

Grabbing another roll of sushi, I studied Liam out of the corner of my eye.

He had his legs crossed at the ankle, bouncing his foot as he read something on his phone while he ate. His white-blond hair was sticking up everywhere thanks to Cas constantly running his fingers through it.

They weren't even looking at each other, but with Cas's arm along the top of the couch, his hand in Liam's hair, their thighs pressing against each other…they were so fucking hot I could die.

Seeing them like this, so comfortable together while in my apartment with Frankie in the same room was doing things to my head. Crazy things. I wanted to see them kiss again…wanted to see them do more than kiss.

Liam looked up from his phone and gave me a wicked smile, clearly picking up on my thoughts through the bond.

I cleared my throat and tried to focus on the email I was writing but it was impossible.

Thankfully, they were both wearing shirts or I'd be fucked.

Popping the sushi in my mouth, I forced myself to finish the fucking email and sent it off to the team of interns assigned to our case. I'd asked them to track Melinda's movements along with proof of her whereabouts over the last six months and whatever evidence they could provide to confirm it.

We had some time before the dinner with the Lopez and Valor backs to get some work done and I was going to take full advantage of it.

I studied the list of Gideon's locations next, hoping we could get it all done today.

All the official financial documents for Valor Enterprises and Gideon Valor's personal accounts needed to be checked over in detail too…I needed to know if any of the locations they gave me were owned or run by someone of interest. That would help me write out the questions I needed Frankie to ask.

We were lucky this case was considered high priority or we wouldn't have been assigned a whole team of interns to help us. Combing through all this crap was time consuming and it would have taken even longer since there wasn't much Frankie and I would have been able to do during those three weeks I was in heat.

The interns had worked overtime to make sure we had this as well as whatever data they could find on the members of Valor.

They'd had to go through hours and hours of traffic footage with only the license plate number and time stamps I'd given them because Gideon had either deleted his destination history from his car, or he never bothered to use it in the first place.

Melinda wasn't very helpful either. She may seem like the kind of person who would put a tracker on her spouse without telling them, but I haven't found any traces of an app on the car other than the one Valor used.

Unfortunately, that app was no longer in service after they'd switched to Aegis Security and for whatever reason, no one had bothered to update it.

Valor had a lot of decent security in place, but thanks to the fact that there was still a human element to it, there was always the chance for something to slip through the cracks.

And for someone to not notice Gideon was off doing whatever without anyone knowing where he was, he couldn't have been doing it for very long. Anything outside his normal hours would have been detected and questioned, so he had to have been back between 10 p.m. to midnight, or waited to come back in the morning when he usually arrived for work.

Melinda had mentioned Gideon worked late a lot too. Per the logs at the estate, he usually made it home a little after midnight. There wasn't a single time he'd gotten in after one in the morning, but there were times he hadn't come back at all.

That Melinda didn't find that odd meant he'd told her it was work related.

I couldn't let the interns compare the dates I'd asked for to the Valor estate log though since Liam didn't want anyone else to have access to his pack's comings and goings. That he even allowed me to have the log on a hard drive here in my apartment was technically against the rules.

The alpha of the Valor pack had no idea I had it, but she could figure it out if she decided to check in with security. I doubted they'd tattle though. Liam held a lot of power within his pack despite being the second child.

Maybe that should have surprised me, but it didn't.

The people who worked for Liam seemed to love him and they had an intense kind of loyalty that told me exactly what kind of alpha he was. They didn't seem afraid of him either, but they did have a cautious respect for him that made me wonder what they'd seen.

Had he ever lost it in front of them like he had at Bite?

It was impossible to know for sure and honestly, I didn't really care.

What I did care about was that an alpha who could literally kill someone with nothing but his pheromones actually trusted me with all the comings and goings of a pack like Valor – the people he was responsible for protecting.

Well, I guess he wasn't responsible for that anymore.

But he trusted me with sensitive information. Even from the beginning. I thought it was weird at the time but I didn't question it since I was getting what I needed. Now I knew why he had turned over everything once he decided to hire us.

Liam had always trusted me.

"Did you read the report from my interviews yesterday?" Frankie asked.

I nodded and pulled up the files. It never ceased to amaze me what Frankie could accomplish.

Somehow, she'd managed to talk to most of the top brass in the Lopez pack as well as a few in the Grimm pack. She hadn't been able to meet with the alpha or the heir of Grimm, but she was able to get an appointment scheduled thanks to some bullshit about marriage talks with one of their omegas.

I couldn't help but wonder if she was planning to reclaim her pack name.

"It doesn't seem like the land dispute with Lopez was an issue," I muttered, scrolling through the transcripts from the interviews. "Grimm wasn't the pack Gideon and Liam argued about either."

"No, it was the Steele pack," Liam confirmed without looking up from his phone. "They're constantly fucking up and delivering damaged supplies for Valor Construction. Despite that, Gideon wanted to give them another chance."

Why? That seemed odd for a businessman.

Maybe Frankie could get a meeting with the Steele pack and ask.

I glanced over at Liam, feeling a little weird about that considering what I'd found in his email.

Honestly, I freaked out a little when I saw that Nicolette Valor tried to get him to go out on another date with River Steele, but Liam's response to that pack's alpha had shut down any potential discussion about a possible marriage between them.

It was impressive how he could sound so polite while making sure every single word was as derisive and scathing as possible.

I grabbed another roll of sushi and dunked it in the soy sauce, wondering if this question was going to cause a problem or not.

Both Cas and Liam looked up from their phones and stared at me, probably sensing my nerves through the bond. This shit was really fucking annoying sometimes, but I wouldn't give it up for the world.

I rubbed my chest and swallowed, deciding I had to know.

Considering all Frankie's various connections, as well as the skills she had that I could never learn, she'd be the one with the most accurate information.

"Hey Frankie…what do you know about River Steele?"