The head of security, a man who looked to be in his late forties, with enough gray hair in his beard and what little you could see of his hair beneath the helmet to certify him to be a year or two from the big five o, turned to the gathered crowd. “There has, unfortunately, been a breach of security. This is a very serious matter and the police will no doubt be involved and helping us with the investigation.” Mummers that erupted before he even started, intensified. “I will give the stage to our CEO and owner, Mr. Princeton.”
So that was his name–well at least some of it. Wait! Hold up! What did he just say?! CEO?!? Of this company?!!
Princeton stepped forward, when he spoke his voice had the same attributes as his aura and it carried across the floor. Some shifters, specifically the wolves bowed their heads. Rita had learnt a while back that that was a sign of respect and subservience. So he definitely was not human.
“As Mr Delrio, our head of security just said. This is a very serious matter. To get it all sorted your utmost cooperation is crucial. It would also be in your best interest to do so.” That last part sounded like a threat. Rita felt the wave of unease he caused. Her skin prickled with awareness, her spine rigid, she felt a heavy weight seem to settle on her shoulders and she felt her breath come out in small and slightly strangled. That last part Was a threat. Rita felt like just surrendering but sixteen years of living a hard life, a fucker of a father and her mother’s constant manipulation had hardened her. She would not surrender to anyone. Let alone the prick that was bringing on the sensation.
His eyes scanned the gathered crowd. The orbs searing the each person. Before they could reach her, she swept her braids to cover her face. Rita was not sure if that helped anything, he definitely was not human. He was not a vampire or a faery. Not a mage or a wizard by the looks of it, so he could be a shifter. And with the way the other shifters in the room acted, he was not just a shifter. An Alpha.
You could feel him move more than you heard his footsteps. From a gap in her braids Rita watched him leave with all the grace of the predator he no doubt was and all the confidence of a King, Mr Delrio behind him.
Rita continued to gawk at her laptop screen feeling like a total idiot. Asking herself the same question over and over again. ‘What kind of rock have I been living under?!’ She did not know but if she had to guess, her pick would be some kind of volcanic rock. Tons of it. How had all this gone completely over her head?
She had been so focused on not getting fired that she had not seen it the first time and the tiny detail was shoved in the lowest deepest drawer in her mind labelled ‘Not important at the moment’ which just happened to be important right now. Then the Theo incident completely knocked it out of her head.
Her search for details on Irina Verushka had yielded a great deal of things. Like the fact that Irina was the owner of a multi billion dollar shopping chain with a side rumor that the chain sometimes dealt with or was a coverup for more illegal activities like outlawed weapons sales, stolen artwork, hydra catnip and wolfbane.
Why a werewolf, an Alpha for that matter, would partner with someone who potentially or possibly had their whole company’s worth of wolfsbane at their fingertips was beyond her. That was just practically the same as dangling a man o’ war a few centimeters from your mouth. Madness. Or premeditated suicide, and with how werewolf structure was, possibly even premeditated genocide.
But who was she to know. Rita’s outright gawking turned to laser point rage that would have melted her poor computer if she was anything but human. She was more angry at herself than anything else. God, how could she have been so stupid. Back then and even now.
After that morning’s incident, Rita had jumped onto her phone and googled “Current CEO of Deleze Inc” and there he was. She used three different search engines and stopped at three different cyber cafes before performing the same search on her home computer.
How could she have remained so oblivious for so damn long?! The results from the search addressed him as Samuel O. Princeton, age thirty-two, Current Alpha of Astoke Pack, second largest Pack in the country. Astoke Pack was fourteen miles away. Some of the results, mostly magazines dubbed him one of the states hottest bachelors and proactive players. He was on Forbes’ Top Ten Billionaires.
Worse still, if he was the company CEO he probably–no, definitely!–knew about the incident with Theo. Dear God, he knew everything! Considering everything she had said to him before his unceremonious exit from her life, the bastard was probably laughing his ass off.
Rita could feel a headache coming on. She got out of her chair, the furniture scrapping against the floor harshly thanks to her anger and albeit, shock. This just could not be happening. It just could not. Rita walked to the kitchen and opened the cabinet, eyeing the bottle of painkillers that sat beside the bottle of sleeping pills. She had never had that much trouble with sleeping. It was never so bad that she needed to take pills for it. Another thing she had to thank Theo for. Rita gritted her teeth and took the bottle of painkillers. She unscrewed the cap, took a pill and swallowed it before getting herself a glass of water to wash it all down. The pill, anxiety and the trauma. The last one, she could never get to go down.
Rita had been back to work for only three and a half weeks. The workload was stable and only something you would take home when Miss Irina was not feeling too generous. Which meant Anthony would walk into the office the next day looking like a hulk sized freight train had hit him square on. She shook her head. Poor guy.
There had not been any work to take home so she had set to finding out as much as possible about her new department head. Then she found…that. God, she was such an idiot.
Rita turned away from the cabinet after putting the pill bottle back and closing it. She took out a cup from the drawer before heading to the dispenser. She was usually a bit more picky with cups. She had no idea why. It was the reason she had so many and hardly used any. With her current mood, Rita just picked one, a red one with a white interior that had a elf like curved handle.
She took a mouthful of water, popped the pill in her mouth and swallowed, all the while feeling like laughing like a maniac and breaking something. Hell, she felt like tearing the whole damn place apart. Just why?! Just the hell why?! It could have been anyone but that Jackass. It just had to be him. Why was the universe all in on jacking up her life? To be slightly fair, the universe–or whatever was in charge of how dandy or downright shit your day to day life was–was doing that all the time to most people but why her specifically right now?
Rita put the cup down a bit too harshly and a chuck of the handle the handle broke off. “Argggrrgh” Rita half screamed half groaned and got the dustpan. She thought of what the heck she was going to do. She could not stay in Deleze anymore that much was certain but she did not have anywhere else to go. She finished clearing the chunks of ceramics on the counter and threw the in the trashcan with aggressive abandon.
There were several reasons and well enough times she could have left the company before He came, but she did not. And now it was biting her in the ass. Hard.
Rita stormed back into her room, looked back at her laptop perched on the desk and felt the urge to fuck it, pack up and just leave. She could quit her job and find somewhere else to stay afterall she had the bakery. She could lean on that. The thought brought back her last conversation with Lucinda. Rita felt a lump in her throat and the already bubbling rage within her become seething. No one. No one was going to make a fool out of her like that ever again.
Some part of Rita was telling her she was being irrational and making a solid decision this way was not a good idea. It made her feel like she was running from her problems instead of facing them. Rita shook her head, clearing away such thoughts. It was not like she was leaving the city. She was not running from her problems. She was making a much needed switch in her life. And it was not because of him, it was because she had had enough of everything. Looking over her shoulder at work, straining her ears to see if she would catch the topic of discussion and hope and pray it was not her.
Then and there she made up her mind. It had been on her mind for months already. Rita strode back to the desk, sat back down in the chair and faced the laptop again. She deleted her previous search not before giving His picture one more scowl. Fueled by determination and the heady excitement and fear of starting anew, she started a new search. Or more specifically, the months old searches in her history.
Samuel spotted Rita in the crowd that morning and was glad to pleasantly realize he had gotten her out of his system. Finally.
Their meeting, however small and insignificant it was, was entirely coincidental. He had planned to never actually come face to face with her. Mostly because he did not care to and a very miniscule part of him was still bugged about the way they parted three years ago. She did not notice but she had shattered his pride and a man’s pride was nothing to be tampered with, especially a man like him.
The usual route would be to make her understand this but he had chosen to be benevolent. So far she and this city had intrigued him. And tickled his curiosity.