10. Flint

“Hi, Dad.”

I hadn’t waited for him to say hello.

“What’s wrong, Flint? Emilio called earlier and talked of everything and nothing.”

“Nothing.” My people were frantic after receiving my curt messages last night and this morning. Not the ones about Anthony, though that did rouse suspicion with Emilio.

I’d told the household staff to take the week off. They’d left early, probably to visit family. My security detail, at least two of whom were always with me, called repeatedly asking to gain entry to the grounds and the house, but I’d said to wait outside. There were plenty of security guards roaming the property.

Emilio didn’t sleep, continually leaving voice messages asking what was going on with Tony. His exact words were, “It must be bad if it’s taking this long. Let me know when you want me to clean up.”

My belly churned at the thought of Tony’s blood and guts spread over the basement, and my wolf was ready to take Emilio’s head off if he tried to hurt our mate.

I’d put off an important meeting with a human, head of a multinational conglomerate. He had a problem and had decided I was the one to fix it. For a huge fee. A valuable piece of art that had been in his family for generations had been stolen, and he’d asked me to track it down and to give the thief his just desserts.

But I lied, saying I was sick. I sent him a bottle of the best cognac to smooth his ruffled feelings and had my brother, Ranger, take the meeting.

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Son. I can almost taste your lies,” Dad huffed. “I heard there was trouble last night at the club.”

I sighed. Rumors were the lifeblood of the pack, but coupled with my disappearance, I’d have to stamp them out or my ability to head our wolves would be questioned. “Mmmm.”

”Out with it, or maybe you can’t.”

We were both using an encrypted app, but my dad was old-school and wary that the technology could be hacked. Not that the police were interested in my private life. But if another pack hacked the app and discovered there was gossip about my ability to lead La Luna Noir, they could use that information to destabilize my role as Alpha, weaken the pack, and encroach on our business.

“Perhaps…” I was dithering, as Tony had accused me of. And it was his fault. My head was full of images of him, my nose scented him in the living room and entryway. I ran my fingers over my shirt where he touched me, and there was a reel going around in my head of his bloodied nose and split lip, wishing I could make it all better.

“Are you still at the house?”

Had I said that? Nope. My dad had a network of people who kept him up to date on my comings and goings. Spies, the lot of them!

“Yes.”

“I’m coming over.”

“Please come alone, Dad.” I could cope with my dad, but not my brothers and my uncle all trooping in, everyone talking at once over the top of one another.

“That bad, huh?”

I ended the call. Ahhh, not only was I failing as an alpha, as the Alpha, but also as a man, and my dad was coming to the rescue. He’d scent Tony as soon as he walked in. There’d be questions and more questions, he’d ask me why I hadn’t put an end to this mess.

Waiting for him to arrive, I wandered into the den and studied the photos lining the wall. The rest of the house was mine, decorated how I liked it, but the den remained as it had when this was first my grandfather’s and then my father’s home. The dark walls and curtains and the old leather couch gave it an almost hallowed atmosphere. As a kid, I’d crept in here and studied the photos on the walls.

Now I removed the one of Tony’s father and took it to the window. Everyone was smiling, including Papa and Dad and my grandfather. They had their arms around one another. Anthony was a trusted member of our pack. My brothers and I sat in front of them. I must have been about five, my brothers three and eighteen months.

I ran my thumb over the images of Grandpa and Papa. My life would have been so different if they hadn’t been killed. Taking on the responsibility for the pack in my early 20s was a huge burden. It still was.

But that was the past and this was now.

How had Anthony been able to mate a human? Maybe my dad would tell me. Emilio’s mind was brimming with pack history, but I’d wait for Dad to fill me in.

The house was strangely quiet, and I wished I could see what Tony was doing. There were cameras in the basement, and they’d been useful in the past as part of my interrogation process, but even with my finger on the app, I couldn’t do it. Invade his privacy.

My wolf rolled his eyes and asked to hunt.

After Dad leaves or tonight. We had a shifting and hunting schedule, but from the moment I caught Tony’s scent, I couldn’t think of anything but him. And I seesawed from wanting to hold him close, so our hearts beat in unison, to wanting to shake him and remove his snarkiness and sass. He made my blood boil.

Sounds nasty.

But if he became a shadow of his former self, he’d no longer be Tony, the guy I… I didn’t fall for. Humans did that, gushing about someone they just met. Shifters didn’t gush, they scented, sighted, and marked one another and loved with their entire being.

My phone beeped. My dad had arrived. I opened the app connected to the security system and studied the car coming up the driveway. He was at the wheel, the bodyguard beside him, his face ashen. I grinned ‘cause Dad was a terrible driver, and I should have forbidden him from driving. Fuck, if I made a list of all the things I should have done but didn’t, I’d question if I was the right person to lead the pack.

“My darling.” He placed a coffee carrier and cake box on the table and turned my face to the light. His brow furrowed. “It’s worse than I thought.” He didn’t sniff, but he couldn’t hide his slack-jawed expression.

He was dressed in a black sweater and jeans but topped it with a purple-and-aqua knee-length coat. He loved to make a splash, though Papa had frowned at his flamboyant dressing habits. He’d suppressed his love of color while Papa was alive and for a year after his death. But slowly he added a touch. A kerchief, scarf, hat, sunglasses, until eventually he’d thrown off any inhibitions and dressed how he pleased.

As children, my brothers and I had rolled our eyes at the clothes he wore at home when he dressed how he wanted, but when I grew older, I understood how he’d kept that part of him hidden for his mate when in public.

“In the den.”

His brows shot up. We always sat in the light-filled living room, so my suggestion told him something was going on. But he knew that already. He settled himself on the sofa in the den, grabbed a donut and coffee, and said, “Shoot.”

Just as well Tony wasn’t within earshot.

I removed the photo from the wall and pointed at Tony’s father. “Tell me about him?”

“Anthony.” He barely glanced at it, a sign he’d been prying. Emilio. They’d been at school together, and he could never keep a secret from my dad.

“What happened to him?”

He bit into the donut and chewed very slowly. “He died a long time ago.”

“How?”

“I don’t remember. Accident, I think.” He licked sugar from his lips and gulped the lukewarm coffee. “You were very young.” He tapped the pic of five-year-old me. “You were adorable. Still are.”

“Dad, you’re hiding something.” Tony had said much the same thing to me.

He arched a brow so high it looked painful. “And you’re not?” He swallowed the last mouthful and licked the sugar off his fingers. “Where are you keeping the human?” He put up a hand. “Nope, don’t tell me. In the basement, your home away from home.”

Of course he knew that.

“Why didn’t you let Emilio deal with the human? He wouldn’t have hurt him much. Roughed him up a little.”

“Or a lot. Remember, there was that one time…” I let my voice trail away, leaving an unpleasant image hovering between us.

Dad glanced at me. “Oh, you’re right.” He examined a nail. “And there was that other time.”

“Mmmm. He’s Anthony’s son.”

His mouth fell open. That he didn’t know. He got up and went to the window overlooking the pool. The medium-sized-ass pool. I grinned as I remembered Tony’s and my conversation.

“I’m intrigued.”

Dad wanted the details, but I needed something from him first. “Anthony was a wolf shifter but he was mated to a human. How was that possible?”

He examined the curtains and told me they needed washing, a stalling tactic.

“That broke one of La Luna Noir’s basic rules, enshrined in our law.”

My dad shot me a glance. “He didn’t mate. He married.”

“Come on, Dad. We can’t be with a human, ‘cause if we did, we’d have to tell them who we really are.” What sort of relationship would it be if you hid everything from your life partner?

“He met his mate and fell in love.” He put the last three words in quotation marks. “And he pleaded with your grandfather to allow him to be with that human.”

My mind was whirring. I was the Alpha, I didn’t need to ask anyone’s permission regarding my personal life. But who was I kidding? I couldn’t break our cardinal rule.

“He led a double life. Antonio Oakes with his husband and Anthony Oakley with us.” Dad explained his omega partner also wasn’t aware of his husband being part of the mafia.

“So he didn’t know him at all.” It must have been a shallow relationship.

“Your turn.” He patted the sofa beside him, but I chose to stand.

“History has repeated itself. Tony’s my mate.”

Dad took a bite of another donut and chewed slowly while furrowing his brow. “But you kidnapped him.” He winced. “It’s not the best start to a long and loving relationship.”

“It’s the beginning, the middle, and the end.”