I follow her through the house, which feels like it crawled out of an early 2000s episode of MTV Cribs. Colorful, over the top, and gold accents everywhere. If it wasn’t for Liam and his Millennial Gray design aesthetic, our home would be a white box with a leather couch and sports equipment littering the place. Nothing else. Thank fuck there’s so much to distract me from the extra swish Sandra is putting in her hips.
And thank fuck for the broken nose. Sandra is one of the few omegas I’ve ever met that drowns herself in perfume. I’m sure it is all designer, maybe even custom perfume, but I’ve always gotten the sense she doesn’t like her omega scent or something.
“You want some sweet tea?” she asks, pulling open the sliding glass door in the kitchen that I’m pretty sure she’s never cooked in.
“I’m all good, thanks.” I step out onto the patio to the sound of a saw doing its thing on some two-by-fours.
Alexei is standing over a table saw, with lumber littering the patio and the pool sparkling just beyond. Next to it is a wide expanse of synthetic ice. Beckett hates skating on that shit; he says it’s too grippy.
“What fucknut wears shorts in the middle of winter and keeps his pool open?” I say in greeting.
“What?” He looks down at his Hawaiian shirt and cargo pants. “Is practically heat wave.” He shuts off the saw and snaps off his protective eyewear.
After the manly-man handshake, fist, hug, backslap, the works, Alexei stands grinning at the center of his half-finished project in his backyard. I don’t bother with pleasantries.
“Are you still betting on the games?”
His face goes flat, all the warmth clicked off like a lamp.
“Pierce,” he says, wagging a finger at me. “You know that’s not allowed. Players do not bet on games.” His Russian accent comesback with a vengeance like he can’t spare the extra brain power to tone it down.
Alexei and Sandra host a lot of viewing parties with the house all decked out in Scorpion colors and their TVs the size of queen beds. After a few too many vodkas, it came out that he was betting on the games, and had been for a while. Now, I don’t give two shits. Snitches get stitches. Alexei isn’t mine, so what the fuck do I care that he’s violating league rules?
“And pack members of current players are not allowed.”
“I’m not trying to bet. I need a gambling addiction like a hole in the head. I need to find someone who bets on the games.”
Alexei squints. You can almost see the cogs in his head creaking around. “I don’t understand.”
He’s not stupid, but he’s not the sharpest crayon in the box, either. I give him a second, then lay it out. “Someone from my past is in town. Might be a problem. He gambles. He always has. If he’s in Nashville, he’s making fast friends with the bookies. I need to find him.”
“Ah.” Alexei nods, slowly. “The past is sometimes not kind.”
He would know. He had a string of former girlfriends come out of the woodwork when he retired.
“You want me to ask around.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“He’s probably using a fake name, but Randal Voss is on his driver’s license. He’d be mid-sixties now. Five foot six. Five foot seven. He always had this scruffy beard. Beady little eyes. Scar right here.” I scratch my right eyebrow. It was his souvenir from a knock-down-drag-out brawl with Reed right after he came up alpha.
“So, a pig man.”
“Sure,” I sneer. “I need to find him, and maybe persuade him that Nashville is a little too cold for his Florida bones.”
“This will hurt Beckett?”
The man is six-foot-six and 300lbs on a good day. He was nicknamed the Siberian Bear during his rookie year. His alpha protective streak includes the team, turning him soft like a teddy bear.
“Yeah. Voss is not good for us.”
“You or Beckett?”
“Both.”
Alexei’s smile is back, but it’s a little more calculated. “I’ll see what I can do. But I am not miracle worker.”
“What is all this?” I gesture to the stacks of lumber and tools littering his too perfect lawn.
“Pagoda.”
