Page 56 of Escalating Alpha

Dain was back from DC, so he started on the contracts and got things going there.

After we got all the “elders” and Virgil’s mother to leave, we just had Virg and his Betas to talk to. Freddie came inside from taking a call and looked a bit shell-shocked.

“Dad, what happened?” Ashley worried. “Is Mom okay?’

“Yeah, everyone’s fine,” he told her but then snorted as he found my gaze. “Well, not everyone. The St. Louis Alpha is dead.” He nodded when my eyes went too wide. “One of the Betas took him out.” He wiggled his phone. “That was the call I just took.”

“They took him out and immediately called you?” I hedged, thinking it sounded even fishier after I said it out loud.

Freddie nodded, still looking completely gobsmacked. “The new Alpha let me know and apologized for the rudeness of the former Alpha and hopes there’s no bad feelings towards his pack from Chicago”

“Oh, there’s more,” I chuckled darkly. “But we’re not really welcome there again, right?”

“Nailed it,” Freddie sighed. “Yeah, they don’t want you to take over anymore, but it’s all bygones, and best of luck to us from all the way over there.”

“No, they don’t get to—people are seriously pissing me off,” Reagan seethed, letting out a heavy breath before meeting my gaze. “They didn’t stop him from running his mouth and hurting our reputation, but only when you made it clear you were going to handle it. They need to fix that for real.”

“Agreed, or they need to be frozen out,” Virgil muttered. “We heard the bullshit here, and—apparently, my fuckers were listening and thought they’d just hand me over for money. Seriously.”

“We didn’t hear—we heard St. Louis was talking some of that shit, but they’re stupid,” one of the Betas said. “We never heard peopleherethought it was really how it went or would go. Why? I mean—Des Moines—we know them. Well. They would…” He shook his head and looked disgusted.

Yeah, he wasn’t the only one.

But I agreed with them. I let out a slow breath and looked back to Reagan. “Call him in the morning and make it clear that my job might take me there and they will be in serious trouble if they ever fuck with that. Also, I’m pissed at the damage their former Alpha andpackdid to my reputation and our alliances with all of them running their mouths and we have receipts.”

He nodded. “And if they want us to accept the new leadership and move forward, they better make it clear that it was the former Alpha’s crazy and not the truth or deal with the consequences.”

“Perfect, but actually let them stew a few days waiting for a response because he can’t be stupid enough to think there wasn’t one,” Virgil suggested.

I nodded but then pulled out my phone when it was vibrating. “Thomas.” My eyes burned as I listened to what was being said and the news I was receiving. Reagan came over and hugged me to him, kissing my hair and comforting me. “Okay, thanks. We’re in Memphis, so we’ll be right there before anyone tries to fuck this up again. Not you guys—you know.”

I thanked him again and hung up, moving my hand over my face and trying to keep it together.

“This is about the girl you said you might need me to help out and adjust?” Ashley asked gently. “I was kind of wondering what happened with that.”

“More dirt on too much,” I whispered, wiping my eyes and hugging Reagan’s arm to me. “We can finally get Deanna Maze out of there. The last appeal to—it’s over. They busted her ‘aunt’ and now we can get her out of there. They’ll still need her to testify probably, but we can handle that.”

“Maybe not now that they know they can’t get at her,” Reagan muttered. “I think now those assholes will start taking deals.”

Hopefully, he was right.

Deanna Maze was a powerful clairvoyant I’d found when we’d done the spur of the moment supe outreach event in Alabama. She was sixteen and—it was a mess. A woman claiming to be her aunt came in and took over. A dirty cop facilitated it all and signed off on it, wanting the payout later.

Everyone assumed there was some sort of huge life insurance policy or millions of dollars payout. To go that far to abduct a kid so they could get what she’d inherit at eighteen but couldn’t touch until she was a legal adult in Alabama at nineteen was too crazy if it wasn’t some huge amount, right?

Yeah, criminals stole for way less and got off on it.Andthey always assumed they wouldn’t get caught. Normal people took the risk into account or weighed the punishment they could face before even considering something bad.

Criminals didn’t. Most times at least. They were smarter than everyone else and especially when they had inside help… Never thought it through.

Part of the perk of this fraud though was the “aunt” didn’t have to work during the years of taking care of Deanna. She got to live off the account set up to support the girl. Her mom might not have had much, but she was smart about what she did. Everything had gone into a trust with a monthly allowance and specific instructions they couldn’t get around.

But the “aunt” did use all of the money on herself besides paying the mortgage. So that was a lot of counts of fraud she’d been arrested for.

That had been months ago though. We’d had enough to go in immediately once we knew for sure the woman wasn’t really related to her but a con artist. The cop being involved made it more difficult and that whole police department was dirty.

They’d had to intervene when the “aunt” started getting physical with Deanna. She was arrested and the evidence was mounting each time I got an update.

That should have been the end of it. I should have been able to pick her up with the deal we made and take her into protective custody until she needed to testify. That was theplanand everything put in place.

---