They cared for me in every way, these alphas. And I’d never take it for granted.
But I had a feeling that the brief connection we shared after we fell asleep, when we met just long enough to greet one another on a grassy plain, might have meant just as much to him.
It meant a great deal to me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Felix
Tyrone blurting out that we—or at least he—would pay whatever our mate’s father wanted for her, could have been a disaster. Of course, he’d have found the money some way. In the time since we’d met Tyrone, we’d learned the value of his word. But, it would not be ideal for him to go deep into debt, even in such a good cause.
Cannon and I would help as much as we could, putting all three of us into a financial bind. Which, if it were necessary, we would do. For an emergency or an illness, for our family or even someone else in need.
But to line the pockets of a male who had been basically ignoring his daughter since her mother died when she was four years old until she presented as an omega and could make money for him and the others in the sleuth.
It was a very sick group. Even the females participated in preparing the omegas to be sold. How heartless did they have to be to raise these girls and do that? Especially to the types who came to make the purchases. With a notable exception of the three of us, the others at the auction had all been much older than the omegas and really should have been wearing hats withLasciviousprinted on them. OrDirty Old Man. That would also be nice. And appropriate.
It occurred to me that even more than making sure that we did not give that disgusting excuse for a father so much as a penny, we could do something to keep him and the rest of his sleuth from ever doing that to any other omegas. Even I had to admit that all the perpetrators could not be held accountable, so I was going for removing the head of the snake. Millie’s father and the other leaders.
We had feared that killing the bastard might cause harm to our mate. Really, we were not thinking that now, but why let him off with a few moments of excruciating pain when we could drag it out for years.
I hadn’t slept in three days, but what I’d come up with was worth every lost minute of sleep. As an accountant, I often used my skills to help people who were in over their heads financially. Put simply, people owed me favors. Some of them were in a position to help me find out what I wanted to know.
Turned out, little of what the sleuth our mate came from did was technically legal. Of course, the omega auctions weren’t, but what I was interested in was financial records. There were probably other types of crimes, but the annual auctions weren’t enough to keep the sleuth going. And nobody seemed to have a job. Yet, they got by. How?
I knew they had to have some kind of business going. Funny business, and a very nice detective who had owed me offered to look into the whole thing.
“Did you know they were selling drugs?” I asked Millie. “Any hints at all?”
“No.” She shook her head “What kind of drugs?”
“Pharmaceuticals. Those old guys who came shopping at the auction? They were pharmaceutical executives, and part of their arrangement with the sleuth was that they actually paid for their omegas not with dollars…”
“Then with what?” Millie looked so confused, so innocent. She truly had not known anything about what was going on behind her back. “Foreign money?”
“Opioids. Painkillers that sell on the black market for a great deal of money. None of which is ever reported as income, of course, and all of which went to the pockets of the sleuth leaders. Your father actually didn’t get a big share, but we had the most evidence on him.”
She sank down onto a chair. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. None of them have any scruples at all. If they don’t care about the omegas from their own sleuth, why would they care who they were harming outside it.”
“They don’t.”
She was pacing back and forth in front of the chair I sat on, and I reached out and pulled her onto my lap. “Settle. You’re making me dizzy.”
“Every time they bought omegas, they paid with drugs…right?”
“As far as we know it was every time.” I stroked her back, every muscle feeling so tense under my palm.
“And what happened to the omegas? I was given to understand they weren’t exactly going to happy homes?” She remained stiff and upright on my lap, despite my caresses.
“They were sold again, after the buyers ummm…well after them.”
“Oh goddess, that’s dreadful. Can we save them? Any of them?”
“I’m not sure, but the evidence has all been sent to the appropriate authorities, and now all we do is wait.”
Now, she sagged back against my chest. “I hope it doesn’t take too long.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
