Page 108 of Sold to the wrong Alpha
“Not a single doubt. Not one.”
Brody let out a breath through his nose. Something in his expression eased, not entirely, not enough for the tension in his jaw to disappear every time his eyes returned to Ren’s bruised cheekbone, but enough. He put another piece of toast on his plate.
Marta refilled Sergei’s coffee. This time the cup lingered in her hands a moment longer than necessary before she set it on the table. Sergei looked at her. Marta didn’t look back. She returned to the coffee pot with her lips pressed together and her cheeks flushed.
Ren saw it. He chewed his toast and filed it away.
The plates ended up in the sink and Marta disappeared with a cloth in her hand and one last furtive glance at Sergei that the Russian either didn’t catch or pretended not to. The kitchen transformed. The morning light came in at an angle through the wide windows and bathed the wooden table where now onlyhalf-empty cups remained and Zev’s open laptop before him like an altar.
Zev didn’t look up. His fingers moved over the keyboard with the cadence of someone reading a score only he could see.
“The security cameras at Reznov’s mansion are clean. Thirty-six hours of footage overwritten with a loop from the previous night. The geolocation systems on the cars we used show the usual routes of Reznov’s drivers, nothing more. The records of internal communications between Reznov and Malachi for the last six weeks…”
A pause. Keying in.
“Gone.”
Brody nodded once. Ren watched Zev from across the table, the way the boy disappeared inside his own sentences as though they were tunnels. The screen lit his face from below and made him look even younger than he was.
“Reznov had an encrypted file on you.”
Zev said it addressing Brody without stopping his typing.
“Movements, contacts, transactions from the past year. Records of the times Rocco accessed restricted areas of the casino outside his shift. Photographs of the service entrance we used to get the omega out of the previous auction.”
Ren felt Brody tense beside him. He didn’t see it, he sensed it. The alpha’s temperature rose half a degree, maybe a full degree, and his scent thickened with a bitter note that hadn’t been there before.
“How much did he have?”
“Enough.”
Zev looked up for the first time. His dark eyes met Brody’s with a frankness stripped of emotion that reminded Ren of a surgeon assessing a wound.
“Enough for Malachi to need nothing more than a glance at it to decide you’re a problem. But it no longer exists. No server, no cloud backup, no physical drive in his safe. I checked twice.”
Brody nodded. His gaze shifted for a moment to Ren.
“Your brother signed the kill order alongside your father.”
Ren said nothing. He had already told him.
“I know.”
“We have them under surveillance.”
Three words. No further details. Ren didn’t ask for any.
The silence that followed had weight. Ren felt it settle over the table like another presence. Brody exhaled slowly. Rocco rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand.
“But.”
Zev closed the laptop. The click resonated in the kitchen like a period that wasn’t.
“Malachi isn’t stupid. Reznov will turn up dead and he’ll connect the dots. Suspicion exists independently of evidence. He doesn’t need a file to know his nephew has been working against him for years. He senses it. Perhaps he always has.”
Rocco leaned forward with his forearms on the table. The wood creaked under his weight.
“We’ll have to be much more careful.”
