One was so rude about fucking chests of gems that had been raided from them that I ended up leaving it in front of Phil.
“I change my mind. Fund ISLE with what me and mine recovered,” I told him firmly.
“Don’t,” that female leader warned the Alpha. “You are—you’d be dead if you treated me this way. She owes us nothing. You are upset she is airing your dirty laundry and mistakes. She is showing we all have them after having shown ustheirsand how they corrected them. You are notlearningthe lesson.”
I glanced at her and then the guy. “It’s not even a mistake. You gotscrewed. Theycheated. They committedcrimesagainst you. You and yours were the victims of—”
“We are no one’s victims,” he snapped.
I shook my head. There wasn’t a point in discussing things with someone who felt that way. “I’ve been the victim of many crimes. The shame isn’t ever mine. It’s theirs. My pride is how I’ve recovered. What I’ve done after I was hurt.” I nodded to Phil. “Fund ISLE. I believe in you as the boss and you’ll do what ISLE was meant to.”
He studied the chests and took in a slow breath before meeting my gaze. “How fast did you seriously pull this off again?”
I met his gaze and ran my tongue over my teeth. “I’ve pissed off enough people tonight. Let’s not add to it, yeah? We know what we’re doing, and we’re really fucking good at our jobs. I didn’t come to make people feel small.”
“No, you never do,” he chuckled darkly. “That’s just an unfortunate outcome of you being so exceptional. You just wanted to make it clear that you can easily make friends and the demons aren’t in a weak position with you on their team.”
Yes. Well… Yes, but not only that, there were several purposes in what I was doing.
There always was.
But we still had a huge fucking mess. I went through the rest of it and managed to mumble a thank-you to Dylan for gettingone of mine out of the way. I barely managed an apology to Elijah and David before I fled.
Just maybe not for the reasons they all assumed.
Or maybe Elijah did because I felt his worry pulsing after me and desires to warn Mason to watch me… Before I might change forms.
Yeah, it got so bad that my other side had wanted to come out. In response to how dark I got on all of this, my other side wanted to emerge.
I hid at my stupid fucking hotel for my undercover and silently cried, trying to think of what Elijah and Mason said over and over again. My other side wasn’t bad. I wasn’t evil.
It was aresponseto darkness. Things had gotten so dark that my pure white and good energy had wanted to come out.
But did that really matter when I’d messed up so badly?
I wasn’t really sure, but one of the only ways things could have gotten worse was for another murder to happen.
So what news did I wake up to?
Yeah, there was a second victim.
I almost blew my temper, but that could have leveled the hotel, not just the room or part of a safe house like one of Kyle’s teams could do.
I let Mason know I was fine and I was sorry for the mess I left. That I had my other side under control and would stay out of trouble. That I would make amends somehow for the cleanup and even for not catching a murderer before someone died again.
The second victim, Chad Mopps, was a lot like the first on paper. Mostly a selfish douche on the surface. Did the bare minimum and expected a lot for it. He wasn’t well-liked by his coworkers, several saying he took credit for their work or wanted praise like he solved world hunger by finishing what he should.
And most times, it was mediocre at best. But his uncle was someone, so it wasn’t like he was going anywhere anytime soon. When I went to talk to his coworkers, none were going to miss him. A few were full of desires hoping for his job or for their lives to be better now that he was gone.
Several were annoyed they’d never get the few hundred bucks he owed them. One he was sexually harassing and pressuring for dates, so she was thrilled he was dead.
Lovely. Seriously, it was crazy how people truly felt about each other and what was under the surface once you scratched back a few layers.
He was in a lot of debt and had an issue betting on sports. All legal, but he was making minimum payments on everything and the interest on his credit cards was killing him. I didn’t feel bad for that because of bad financial decisions unlike when people were struggling and doing their best.
But—and this was the big one—he didn’t go to the strip club where I was undercover.
He went to a different one. Four to five times a month.
