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Chapter 148
DEREK
The problem was that the numbers made too much sense.
I leaned back in the chair, eyes burning from the screen, fingers stiff from too many hours toggling between spreadsheets, old scanned reports, and financial summaries from a decade ago.
Pierce’s tenure as Gamma was laid out in meticulous detal Gamma expense ledgers, supply requisition training budgets, All of it
Everything was intact. Logged. Balanced. Neat.
And that irritated the hell out of me.
I didn’t trust neat.
I wanted chaos. I wanted sloppiness. I wanted one loose thread I could tug on until the whole damn operation unraveled
I wanted hidden vendor names. Duplicate line items. A red flag buried in a forged invoice. Something–anythi that pointed to Pierce skimming money off the top to bankroll what he would become.
But instead?
Clean.
Efficient.
Predictable.
Every dollar accounted for, every authorization signed off, every number cross–referenced against a pack- approved audit.
It didn’t just piss me off–it unnerved me.
You don’t build an army from nothing. You don’t acquire weapons, tech, tactical gear, encrypted communications, transportation, medical equipment–hell, even food–without a funding pipeline.
Not unless you’re dealing with petty raids. And Pierce? He hadn’t been running a band of desperate rogues when he was killed. He had been organizing something.
Coordinated. Armed. Funded. Hell, he’d been able to pay fora villa in Barbados with a whole team in order to seeks his revenge on Elena.
But he hadn’t done it with Silverclaw’s money.
Which meant someone else was footing the bill.
Or at the very least, covering his tracks,
I sat forward again, elbows braced on the desk, pen tapping against the side of the laptop. My thoughts spiraled, jumping timelines, recontextualizing every mission report from the past six months.
Every rogue ambush. Every stolen supply route. Every leak Every whisper.
I’d assumed it was internal sabotage. I’d assumed it had started here.
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Now?
Now I wasn’t sure where it started.
But I was damn sure it didn’t end here.
And that scared me more than 1 wanted to admit.
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The door creaked open behind me, and I didn’t have to look to know who it was. The scent of pine and espresso always preceded Joe, and Brock was heavy footed as ever.
“Hope you brought a breakthrough,” I muttered, not looking away from the screen.
Joe entered first, followed by Brock, both with the kind of grim energy that meant they were either bringing bad news–or more work.
“We brought coffee,” Joe said, dropping a cup on my desk. That’s almost as good.”
“Nott I’m still staring at spreadsheets after midnight.”
I slid the laptop around so they could see the reports, the rows of tidy numbers that refused to confess.
“I’ve been going through everything from Pierce’s Gamma tenure,” I said. “If he embezzled money from Silverclaw, it should’ve shown up somewhere. I thought maybe he was bleeding funds slowly and stashing it off the books.”
“And?” Joe asked.
I shook my head. “No evidence of it. At all. He kept a spotless paper trail.”
“That’s disappointing,” Joe muttered.
“It’s infuriating,” I corrected.
Brock opened the worn notebook he’d brought, flipping to page marked with a black tab. “Okay, so I went back through old pack travel logs and Gamma movement records. Found something weird.”
He slid the notebook to me.
Pierce made regular trips to Black Hollow Pack. It’s all logged as ‘training consultation” or “combat advisory sessions. Like, dozens of times over a five–year span.”
I frowned. “Black Hollow? That’s Alpha Dren’s territory.”
Brock nodded. “Yep.”
“Our training facilities are far superior to Black Hollow’s. Why the hell would he be going out there for training?”
That’s the weird part,” Brock said. “We think he wasn’t going to learn. He might’ve been going each.”
Joe added, “Which raises a different question–why was Silverclaw sending a Gamma to train another pack’s warriors?”
“We weren’t,” I said. “If that kind of arrangement existed, would’ve signed off on it. Or my father would have.”
“And if neither of you did?” Joe asked.
“Then Pierce was doing it behind our backs,” I said. “Or someone else in the hierarchy was covering for him.”
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Brock looked at me. “You want me to dig into Black Hollow’s pack structure from that time? Maybe figure out who Pierce was meeting with?”
1
Yes,” I said. “And see if any of their wolves defected, disappeared, or were later spotted among the rogues. If Pierce was building something off the books, it might’ve started there.”
Brock nodded. “I’ll start tonight.”
“Joe,” I said, turning to him, “can you bring me Pierce’s journals?”
Joe blinked. “The ones from evidence?”
“Yeah.”
“We already combed through them twice.”
“Then I’ll comb through them a third time,” I said. “There’s something we’re missing. And I’m done overlooking things just because they didn’t mean anything the first time.”
Joe hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll bring them up.”
They left, and I leaned back again, rubbing a hand over my face.
I wasn’t going to get peace until I knew what Pierce had done, who had helped him, and where all this was leading, Especially now that it seemed that someone else was rising in his place.
Smarter. Meaner. Someone with a real grudge.
I glanced at the laptop again, intending to close the program, but my cursor slipped and clicked the wrong tab.
A different window popped up.
Recent financial transactions. Last seven days. Silverclaw expense records.
I almost clicked out of it.
Almost.
But then a name caught my eye.
Cassandra
My stomach clenched.
Yesterday’s date.
One charge.
$500.
Silver Pine Wellness Spa.
I stared at it.
y brain scrambled to reprocess the timeline.
Myl
Yesterday, Cassandra told me she’d had a follow–up appointment with the Silverclaw OB/GYN. She’d said the doctor reassured her that she’d be able to have children again. She’d said it calmly, even wistfully, as we were driving out to the launch site for the balloon.
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And yet
Nomedical appointment was listed on her ledger. Not even standard clinic check–in
Just a spa day.
An expensive, full–day treatment package at one of the most exclusive spas in the region
I clicked back through the ledger. No other charges. No medications. No consultation fees. Nothing
I sat there for a full minute, unmoving
She lied.
And not just casually.
She told me she was seeking care. That she was still fragile. Still recovering
She’d said it like she was confiding in me. Like she wanted me to hope. Like she wanted me to believe there was still a future left for us to build.
But instead of sitting in a sterile clinic, she was sipping cucumber water in a silk robe.
Something cold settled under my ribs.
I opened a new message on my phone and typed fast.
Derek:
Need you to do something quietly. Check if Cassandra had an appointment with the Silverclaw OB yesterday like she claimed. Or any doctor in our network. Confirm for me, but don’t flag it in the logs. Understood?
Thit send
Then I set the phone down and leaned back again, staring at the ceiling.
If she was lying about this what else had she lied about?
And what the hell was she playing at?
