Accepting My Twin Mates

Chapter 85

Accepting My Twin Mates Chapter 85

CHAPTER 82 – DID HE FLIRT WITH YOU?

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SPOILER ALERT

THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS REFERENCES TO PREVIOUS BOOKS IN THE SERIES

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Astennu

I tried to keep the tremble out of my hand as the mouse slid across the mat to open the first hidden- away file. Badru quickly gripped my shoulder in silent support, the same horrid apprehension gripping his centre as it was mine.

All the falsified invoices were there, twenty-two of them in total and dating back a decade, just as Elan had found. Each was different, listing a contrasting vendor name, amount paid and service rendered; accounting, consultancy, construction…

The fact our father had these hidden on his computer told us one simple dark truth. He was not only aware of the payments to the pack, he was involved with them.

Why? What were they truly for?

‘I don’t know, but he’s the reason our mate is gone,’ Aasim roared with venom. ‘He waved that damned stolen schedule in our face like we had f****d up when he KNEW!’

My wolf’s rage seeped and blended with mine. I didn’t know how, but I knew these bullshit payments had to have something to do with my mate’s disappearance. He had the power over Janet to make her do what he wanted and was why she wouldn’t say anything. The threat on her daughter was real… and it came from my own father.

The damn family photograph leered at me. Was this why he moved it here? Out of some sick guilt?

In a single motion, I snatched the photo and hurled it across the room. The frame and glass shattered, putting a crater in the opposing wall.

“We should call this number for ourselves,” Badru surprised me with a calm and level tone. He hadn’t batted an eye at my explosion.

“I’m being serious,” he repeated when I stared back at him in dismay. “If we’re about to beat the ever- living s**t out of our own father, I want to know precisely what for first.”

I took a deep breath, the air containing nowhere near enough oxygen to fill my lungs and calm me.

“You do it, Ru. You’re better at improvising and acting.”

My clumsy distraction in the kitchen had turned my stomach with cringe.

“I am, but you do a better impersonation of dad and you know it. Even mom was fooled that one time. Which got awkward real quick,” he grimaced, paling.

It was intended as a joke a few years ago and had back-fired mortifyingly.

“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you when I f**k this up.”

“You won’t,” he handed me the landline phone. “You got this.”

“Ok,” I gave in and accepted the phone. “Try and stay quiet.”

I dialled the number in haste, copying it from my brother’s phone screen, and listened to the ringing tone signalling the number was operating.

“Alpha Isaac,” a rather smug-sounding voice I hadn’t ever heard in my life, drawled out. “Hearing from you again so soon! What can I do for you? You can’t have a little gem already, can you?”

Oh s**t! I had no idea what to say. How the hell do I pretend to be my father, when this man clearly knew him and, from the sound of the familiarity, he knew our father well.

I cleared my voice and dropped it an octave, praying I played this right.

“You need to pass on a message for me.”

Why did I ask for a message to be passed on? Passed on to who?! This is why Badru should be on this phone, not me. He was best at thinking on his feet. I had just blown this whole thing in nine words.

‘This is why we plan things,’ Aasim wiped his paw down his muzzle.

“Why do all you Alphas seem to think I’m your personal messenger boy?” The man sighed heavily, as though the task was a massive inconvenience and one asked of him too many times. “I’m taking a messenger fee off the next one you send.”

“Next one?” Badru said out loud, without thinking, from where he listened in next to me.

‘I literally just told you to stay quiet!’ I mind-linked him with a glare.

“You still there… Alpha Isaac?” A superior voice drew my attention back. Content bel0ngs to Nôvel(D)r/a/ma.Org.

Something about his tone… did he hear?

“Still here.”

“The message?” He prompted when I stupidly remained quiet.

I wanted to facepalm myself as the world’s biggest i***t. A career in espionage was not going to be in the cards for me anytime soon.

“There’s a discrepancy on the last payment,” I used what Elan had said and hoped, prayed, for Evie’s sake, it would work.

“Discrepancy?” The man’s patronising tone repeated. “You told me to purposely delay the payment for your last two packages for a few more months till you said so. Is this you giving your say-so?”

“Yes, you can tell your boss to send it,” I swallowed my snarl, as did my brother, whose claws dug into the wooden desk.

Two packages; he had to mean our mate and Konstantin.

A hysterical burst of laughter exploded through the earpiece. “Boss? That wannabe French overlord? Ha! You’re funny Alpha. And here I thought you were a stick in the mud.”

‘Get the f**k off the phone!’ Badru’s wide eyes warned. ‘I don’t know who this guy is, but you can’t bullshit him any longer.’

“If you’re finished pulling my leg, you got any more messages for Frenchie?” The trailing end of the man’s chuckling tinted his words.

“No.”

“Well, alrighty then. And, no hard feelings about your Luna?”

“…No,” I tried to keep the question out of my voice.

What the f**k did that comment mean? How the hell did I even press about that without giving myself away?

“I guess if there’s nothing else,” and I thought the unsettling man on the other end of the phone line was about to hang up. “Before you go, Alpha. Rest assured, I won’t go running to your daddy to rat you out,” his laughter rang loudly once more, letting me know my act was screwed. “Consider it my good deed of the day… and because you sound rather arousing when you’re trying to play it cool. Just one last thing, more of an FYI. I answer to myself. I never have ‘bosses’, so please, pretty voice, don’t insult me again and have fun talking to daddy about all his rogues.”

I slammed the phone down, not having the first clue what part of any of that conversation to question first or digest.

“Did that guy flirt with you?”

I lifted my head up to my brother, that out of everything he heard, this was what he focused on.

“That’s seriously your first question?”

Luna? The man meant our mother. What did he mean about her? What the f**k did any of that insanity mean?

“That guy said ‘all his rogues’,” my mind focused on those last words. “Whatever our dad is hiding, it goes far beyond some shady payments and Evie.”

I began opening desk drawers at random, needing to find an answer. A strange tranquillity overtook me, my mind blocking all else out other than my main focus of finding what my father was hiding. Because if I left this room, I would go to him and my unnatural calm would explode. My wolf was somewhere screaming in my mind, but if I listened to him, my final speck of control would descend into chaos.

“Stop!” Badru grabbed my wrist. For a second, I thought he was trying to stop my aimless search. But he slid open the drawer I was about to slam shut and looked at it from the side, moving to peer back within it. “It’s shallower than it should be.”

He threw the contents over his shoulder and felt the base, sliding it back and revealing a false bottom. Inside, lay a black leather ledger. My brother pulled it out and flicked through the pages, setting it out on the desk. But my attention was claimed by another item.

A very sick state of dread began to take hold, twisting a painful jagged edge in its wake as my trembling hand pulled out a necklace I would recognise anywhere… Evie’s locket. I opened it anyway, knowing I would see the small picture of her mother inside, despite the three names carved in Russian on the surface.

He took it…

He had it all this time…

Each day, he saw our pain, knowing he had done this…

All the signs I read with my father, thinking it was sympathy… and it was guilt, shame.

“Aste?” My twin didn’t look up from the ledger and even when I placed the locket in front of him, he didn’t react, continuing to stare at the pages, shellshocked. “This is way worse than anything I was imagining.”

He pushed the book under my nose and pointed to the listed entries.

“The dates line up with the invoices, as do the monetary amounts,” he pointed out. “The payments come roughly a month after the date written in the ledger.”

I read the passages, noting hair colours, eye colours, approximate ages, heights, builds, genders…

“These are descriptions of people,” Badru’s fist clenched and his voice shook. “The payments are for people. Our father wasn’t relocating rogues… he was f*****g selling them.”

As my brother flicked through the pages, a date caught my eye, as it did Badru’s.

“Six years ago, that’s the date Arthur died…” we both whispered.

Finley’s younger brother, killed by an escaping rogue… this rogue.

The description read:

Hair colour – Brown

Eye colour – Green

Gender – M

Approx. age – Early 20’s

Height – approx. 7ft.

Build – Large, heavy fighter potential

Where it said ‘value’, the number 250K had been crossed out and ‘void’ was written on top with ‘escaped, pack member killed’ noted at the side.

I remembered the date well, when we and Finley were 19 years old. I never saw the rogue but I remember the warrior guards describing him; the biggest wolf male they had ever seen, further proof of how dangerous he was.

Finley had gone to pick up some work as part of his training and Arthur begged to go with him. The kid was recently shifted, full of ego and looking for glory. The CCTV in the prison had captured the fight and Arthur had attacked first. The camera never got a look at the rogue’s face but I could tell how he staggered, he was a little uncoordinated, most likely from a tranquilliser. The scuffle had moved out of the camera’s range, but we all knew what happened. All I remember of him was a double wolf tattoo high on his chest.

“Oh goddess, I know this one,” my finger trailed to the next entry. “I brought this rogue in.”

I was about to turn 20 years old and it was around the time I was still sceptical of rogues, thinking they were all devious criminals and degenerates, as my upbringing had instilled in me. It was roughly a year after Arthur’s death and a few months of the new prison structure being completed. He barely said a word to me, a hint of a Canadian accent lilting his mumblings. He looked so lost and I doubted he knew where he was. His unkempt black hair hung in his steely grey eyes, rimmed in heavy dark circles as though he hadn’t slept in days.

The creeping sickness clawed at my insides. I had unknowingly assisted in selling a man into slavery.

A deafening silence hung in the air, coating it in a putrid taste of bitter reality. The last two entries in the ledger… Konstantin… and my ammar, a price of 500K combined and written beside their names.

A lone tear slipped down my cheek that she had been sold like cattle, reduced to a number as though she had finite value. She was priceless, irreplaceable.

“Marceau,” Badru sniffled, wiping his face on his sleeve.

He suddenly stood and threw his chair, grabbing the leg and swinging it into the wall repeatedly till all that remained was splinters. A shuddering roar followed that tailed into a wail as he fell to his knees and I was too numb to react.

Marceau…

‘Frenchie.’ The nickname used by whatever lowlife I had spoken to on the phone, now made complete sense.

Marceau was the wolf based in France that our father had done business with. And he started working with him a little over a decade ago.

“Ru… he was there, at our welcome home party,” I said robotically, reiterating what my twin had already gathered.

The day we returned home from our training trip at Opal Sun pack and discovered Evie was our mate. That son of a b***h was in attendance, and he wasn’t there for business. He was there to buy our mate…

“What the hell is going on in here-” a distant voice called out under the sound of rushing water in my ears.

I turned my head slowly, seeing my father’s figure in the open door, his eyes wide and aimed at the open ledger in front of me.

‘He is no father of ours,’ Aasim snarled, his hackles raised and wanting out to unleash a torrent of pent- up, blood-curdling wrath.

My grip on my mate’s locket tightened, drawing blood from my palm.

“You sold our mate… our pup?” My voice broke and my body launched forward.