Page 34 of Seduced Wolf

“I see.”

I already suspected as much. How else would Bane have seen her without me knowing?

Andre raises an eyebrow as he stares at me, but I simply back. Eventually, he sighs. "I did tell you that you can handle this, so her movements aren’t not my concern. But a spade is a spade to me, Chase. It isn't going to be easy to convince me otherwise."

I incline my head. “I suppose that's fair."

Andre is just looking out for the company. As far as he knows, my father pulled the same shit that I am with Aria.

Andre pushes his fingers through his sparse hair. “I was actually at the club for a different reason.”

“Yeah?” I ask, resisting the urge to tense up. What was Andre doing at Club De Lune?

“Remember how we found that little backdoor in the finance sheets?”

I snort. “The measly twenty million that disappeared?”

“Yeah, that,” Andre says. “It’s been keeping me up at night. How could twenty million be authorized without anyone knowing? Even for your father, I'm sure that the bank would've let us know about that transaction. So how could someone funnel through all that money without so much as an offshore account?"

I rub my jaw, thinking. “Either through the executive treasurer or someone else trusted."

“I assumed the same.” Andre jams his hands deep into his pockets again, squinting up at me. “Did you know that Wild Heart weren’t the first shifters in this city?”

I blink at the sudden change of topic. “I’m not sure what that has to do with the missing millions?”

“Night Fang used to be a pretty good bunch back in the day,” Andre continues, clearly determined to discuss this. “Their very first building is where Wild Heart is situated now.”

I pause. "I heard the story from Zayn. Night Fang were the one people went to when they needed help, when no one else was willing to."

"It's a bit more than that, Chase." Andre hunches his shoulders as his hands dig deeper. "Try a shifter hunt dead set on driving us back to the wilds."

"Things were that bad?"

"It's human nature to fear things they don’t understand," Andre says solemnly. "But I digress. The point is that Night Fang used to be far different from what it is today.”

I wait, conscious the punchline is coming.

Andre almost looks apologetic as he relays it. “My theory is that despite the change in leadership and drive, Night Fang still believe they have a claim to Wild Heart."

“They don’t,” I snap.

"But they did. Which means the unknown account is probably Night Fang. And if it is, it explains how they can manage an organization as big as they are. And as skillful in hiding as they are."

I narrow my eyes, realizing he’s right even as I struggle to digest it. “Are you questioning whether my father was ever a part of Night Fang?”

“That’s where I got stumped. He was a sleaze ball and a bastard, but he didn’t play with those kinds of numbers. He was a crook, but a small-time one. But if he wasn't a part of Night Fang, how were they able to draw so much of our funds? Under your father's nose?”

I rub my forehead, repressing the need to sigh. More information. More unanswered questions. “Keep digging,” I tell Andre. “If you’re right, Night Fang secretly manages Club De Lune and a portion of shares of Wild Heart itself.”

Andre nods. “Sure thing.” He turns away, takes a few steps back to his car, then glances back. “It’s someone connected to Wild Heart, Chase. Someone connected to you.”

He hurries away before I can answer, not that I have anything to say. The thought already occurred to me, but I doubt I reached the same conclusion Andre did.

It’s not Aria.

Bane is the obvious guess, and he’s certainly connected to the club. Every encounter with him has occurred near there. My first was with him at the alleyway, the murder at Room 204 of the bordello. It’s where Aria saw him when she went to the club to check up on Holly.

As I climb into my car, I can’t reconcile the psychopathic murderer with someone with the smarts to funnel a cool twenty million without anyone noticing. Is there someone else?

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