“Okay, now I’m the one who gets to ask you if you really are that dumb.” He puts his hands on his hips. I pinch my nose again. I hate when he does that. It’s so fucking cute. “We tell Beckett, and then whoever this is goes to the press. And that kind of press the team can’t avoid.
For months, Beckett has been on eggshells. There was this whole PR push to fix the team’s image. Send all the players out on dates, get photos of them all over town. Good for businesses, good for the team. It was the exact kind of thing Beckett hates. He would much rather do outreach with kids or animals. He practically pioneered the team’s holiday toy drive.
Pierce has a point here. We’ve done a lot of questionable things over the years to ensure Beckett’s career. Which, goddamn it, gave Pierce another point. If we were going to come clean, we’d have to come clean about all of it.
“Exactly,” Pierce says, satisfied he read agreement in my face.
“What’s your solution then?” I sit on the back of the couch and hang my head. He’s not going to say it again, not seriously. “We go” isn’t an option. Not anymore.
“I don’t know,” Now Pierce is pinching his nose.
We sit there in miserable silence for far too long. Beckett saved us, and he doesn’t even know it. And we’re about to ruin everything around him.
“I know you have money,” he says softly. It isn’t an accusation, not really, just acknowledging yet another dirty secret. I’ve been stashing money into a secret account for years for this exact reason.
Pierce is the decisive one. I’m the planner. And Beckett? He’s the one we both can’t live without.
He claps his hands once and cracks his neck. “Right. That’s what we’ll do. Burn the letter. When he makes his next move, we’ll just pay to make it go away.”
I shrug with all the confidence I can muster. Snatching his keys off the sideboard, he flips them around his index finger and lets them hit his palm with a satisfying clang of metal.
“Beckett will be home tonight. Tomorrow, maybe. Everything will be fine.”
“No, you fucking asshole, go apologize!” I shout as he steps out the door and shuts it. “Jesus Christ,” I mutter to no one.
Chapter ten
PIERCE DAWSON
“Onemore.That’sagood girl.”
Sandra does another squat with terrible form. I tap her knee with my toe to remind her again that her knee is coming out too far. She does nothing more than wiggle her ass a little.
Forget blackmail.
Forget Beckett leaving me.
This is what’s going to kill me.
Sandra straightens and tosses her long blonde curls over her shoulder. She winks at her alpha and picks up her three-pound weights. Every other alpha and beta working out today is huddling up in the free weights section, giving Alexei and his omega as much space as possible.
“Can we change the music or something? Like Taylor Swift?”she asks.
“No.” I smile and wink at her. “The gym is literally called Metal Heads. We play metal music.” She tilts her head, not getting the connection. “It’s part of the branding.”
Her lips make a perfect ‘ohhhh’. Like branding was the answer to every problem. It is impossible not to note that her lips are perfect. Berry-colored like her alpha has been feeding her strawberries in her nest all day. Of course her makeup is flawless. She is an influencer, so that makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is her pretending to work out here, in the middle of a lifting gym known for training pro athletes. I had to go out and buy one, three, and five-pound weights just for her. The little pink dumbbells look almost obscene in the steel-gray environment.
We have a good number of omega members, the packmates of athletes we work with, but none look as delicate as she does.
She carefully parts her legs, checking to make sure they are shoulder-width apart. For whatever reason, she always nails that part of good form. She starts in with alternating bicep curls, her butt flexing just a little with the movement.
Yeah, I know, terrible business etiquette to be staring at your client’s ass. Not to mention a dick move. She is wearing low-rise biker shorts and a sports bra. No pump cover, and the set is the exact color of her skin. Alexei is casually doing shoulder presses at about half his usual max. I cock my head and look between the two.
Alexei offered me an even thousand to train Sandra while he worked out. I would never say no to that kind of money, regardless of how out of whack this was. Alexei isn’t even taxing himself and Sandra? Not a drop of sweat to threaten her makeup.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
