Page 69 of Awakening

Nick’s face drops as he looks at me. “Have you seen the footage?”

“No. Lance came to tell me last night, but with Olivia running off, I didn’t have a chance to look at it yet.”

“I have it, if you’d both like to see it for confirmation,” Lance says.

“That’s your call,” Nick says to me.

Crossing my arms, I draw in my bottom lip, releasing a deep sigh. “I need to see it.”

“I need to warn you,” Lance says, “it’s difficult to watch.”

I nod for him to continue. “Go ahead.”

Lance opens his iPad and searches through files. “This is the clearest video I have,” he says, handing the iPad to me as Nick leans in to watch. “There she is running across the street, and here comes the car,” he says, pointing to the car as it clearly accelerates. He pauses the video and zooms in when it gets close enough to see a side view of the driver. “There’s your driver. Is there any question in your mind who was driving the car?”

“Not at all,” I say.

“It’s definitely Ian,” Nick agrees.

“I need to see the rest,” I say, ready to push play.

“Alpha, I would highly suggest you don’t watch the rest of this video,” Lance says.

“I need to see it.”

“Maybe you should listen to him,” Nick says, attempting to take the iPad from me. “Ethan, this is Olivia and your baby in this video, man.”

“That’s exactly why I need to see it. I’m watching the fucking video.” Nick shakes his head as I push play. It’s only seconds later that I see Ian slam the car into Olivia’s pregnant body at a high rate of speed, tossing her over the roof as if she weighs nothing at all, to where she lands on the street behind him. Motionless. If she’d been human, she’d be dead.

I’m unprepared for the level of rage and grief that start in my gut and build their way up through my chest until it’s released in an aching, sorrowful howl. Anything on my desk that’s within an arm’s reach is thrown off onto the floor. I grab the lamp from my desk and hurl it across the room, leaving yet another hole in the wall to be repaired. My voice shakes as I say, “He killed our baby. Our daughter is gone because of Ian. Fuck!” Nick places his hand on my shoulder as my body trembles with pure rage. “We will find him, and I will kill him.”

“And I’ll help you,” Nick says.

“The rest of this can wait until later, Alpha.”

“No, now,” I say.

“There’s more?” Nick asks.

“I had him investigate Anthony Moretti,” I say. “Did you find anything of interest?”

“Oh, it’s interesting all right,” Lance says. “I did some extensive searching on Carlo and Gloria Moretti, and he was telling the truth about his Italian roots, however, he wasn’t honest about everything.”

“I knew that would be the case. What else did you find?”

“Not only do they have pack ties that have followed them here from Italy, it gets way more complicated than that.”

“How complicated?” Nick asks.

“Well, I wasn’t able to dig as deep as I would have liked because they’ve hidden their trail really well, but I found evidence of ties to organized crime. I suspect that’s the business that brought them to the U.S.,” Lance says.

“Organized crime? Holy shit,” Nick says.

No one in an authority position in our world is above the occasional bribe to the right people. It’s how we keep our world a secret from the rest of society. However, beyond that, the majority of us maintain completely legitimate businesses. “I assume Anthony Moretti has knowledge of this,” I say.

“I would have to assume so,” Lance says, “though, I couldn’t directly tie him to anything.”

“Don’t say anything to Olivia about any of this. The less the Moretti name comes up, the better.”

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