“They are just theories,” Dominic says again.
Major opens his mouth to argue again, but Veda waves him off, her eyes on our unwanted guest. “Can you please just tell me?”
Dominic shakes his head, and for a moment there, I think he’ll refuse
“What I know for sure is that your grandmother wanted you. I heard from trusted people that the reason St. James agreed to raise you is that your grandmother couldn’t imagine giving her own bloodaway. So here’s my theory. I think your mother was supposed to be a breeder, but your father got her pregnant. I think St. James couldn’t let you go with the other Omegas because his wife thought of you as a granddaughter, and when she died, he got stuck with you because all Dallas already saw you. He couldn’t get rid of a child. And then—”
“And then I got pregnant.”
Dominic nods. “This is the new part of the puzzle, and I only started thinking about this since Major’s report. You got pregnant and had a girl. That’s a huge win for them.”
Veda’s face shows all the fear, even before I can scent it in the air.
“What does that mean?” she asks.
All the Alphas in the room have the decency of flinching at the fragility of her voice. She’s too precious, and these people abused her trust for too long. Only now has she relaxed enough in our care to tell us about Mirasol, and now we need to deliver all this bad news. It doesn’t seem fair.
“I’m sorry for being crude, but they use the breeders to have more Omegas, and you had one so easily. A fertile Omega producing other Omegas is worth a lot. I think your grandfather gave the baby to them, but I also think he’s planning to give you away too. There’s no way keeping you as his granddaughter is best for business, and what I’ve learned is that he only cares about that. His business partner is even crueler.”
“Joe’s father?” She twitches her nose.
Dominic checks one of his papers. “Joe Kingston?”
Veda nods. “Senior and Junior.”
“Sounds like a douchebag,” I point out.
Veda smiles sadly. “Both are.”
“I don’t have anything on Joe specifically,” Dominic offers, “but their finances are tied together. Unless he’s a dumbass, he has to wonder where the funds are coming and going.”
“So you’re telling me, Grandpa is going to jail.”
thirty
Veda
They all shift uncomfortably in their seats as if this is not an absolutely fair question. For a long suspended moment, none of them knows how to answer that, but my eyes are on this Dominic guy.
“If I got a say on it, yes.”
The news sits heavy on my chest. I still love Grandpa, though he has properly poisoned that love through the years. It weighed me down at every step, his voice screaming into the void of my head at every action.
He’s not so loud now.
In a way, I think he really fumbled, because this is the most clear my mind has been. From the moment I stepped away from his clutches, everything changed. The fog lifted, and I started seeing his cruelty for what it is, not the care he made me believe in for so long. His voice is now a muffled echo in my mind, and I know with each passing day, I get stronger, and the voice gets weaker.
Yet love is a complicated thing. The love for a parent is hard to kill, even if they aren’t worth it. But I’m nothing but a hopeful girl. I just need a little time, and my love for him will die soon enough.
“What do we need to do from now on?” Jesse asks after a loaded moment of silence.
“Don’t do anything stupid.” His eyes flick from Jesse to Derrick and finally Major. “Don’t go around St. James and ruin years’ worth of investigation.”
“I’m going to find Mirasol,” Major says matter-of-factly.
Thank god for this man.
“I’m looking into that,” Dominic says with a flick of annoyance.
