Chapter 31
Alpha
Hectorhadgonemissing.
It was a good thing or Alpha would have sliced him up and strung his insides around the city. The rage he felt simmered inside him, tempered only by the pang of loss as he looked down at Zenith’s body in the morgue. Though he’d known her briefly, his sister-in-law had been a light, and he could feel the loss left by her absence.
“It’s her,” he identified her for official purposes, his voice gruff, and walked out of the room. His eye burned, the itch behind his eye patch intensifying. He fisted his hands and inhaled deeply.
He fucking hated hospitals. They brought back ugly, ugly memories of his childhood, of the time he'd spent trying to save his mother. But he couldn't be anywhere else at the moment, not with Zephyr inside sedated, not with Morana in trauma recovery from blood loss, not with Zenith, beautiful Zenith, gray in a freezer.
In a single day, his world had tilted upside down. His closest friend had been his biggest enemy, his family had gone missing, and this loss...
Morana had somehow, even injured and losing blood, managed to call Tristan long enough to tell him what had happened while on her way to the hospital. Alpha had seen the usually aloof man completely go feral on his way to the hospital, while he himself had turned the city upside down trying to find his wife and her sister. And then he'd gotten a call from an unknown number, an accented voice telling him they were at the hospital too.
One day she’d been at the hospital, and he’d killed more of his men in that duration than he had in years. Anyone who’d been found associated with Hector's crimes had been eradicated. Victor had been found knocked out in his car, completely oblivious to what his brother had done. He was perhaps the only one more enraged than Alpha was.
A car screeched to a stop. Alpha breathed out through his nose, watching as his in-laws rushed out of the vehicle he’d sent for them, both their faces confused and horrified and disbelieving of the storm that had swept their lives.
“The police said,” Zephyr’s father swallowed. “Is it true?”
He wished he didn't have to do this. Alpha nodded.
A palm struck his face, the slap heating his cheek. Her mother. He took it quietly.
“It’s all because of you,” she slapped him again, crying. “You destroyed our lives. I’ll never forgive you. All because of you!”
Zephyr's father held her mother back, and she turned to him, sobbing uncontrollably.
Alpha couldn’t even imagine the pain she must have been going through, losing a child she’d loved so much, the other in the hospital. It was one of the reasons he stayed silent, and didn’t tell her that The Syndicate would’ve come for Zenith, with or without him. She had been marked from the moment she escaped them. It was still hard for him to wrap his head around the fact that she had been one of the missing girls, had been the real daughter of Gabriel Vitalio.
Fuck, it was a mess.
His in-laws went upstairs to where Zephyr was being kept, and he leaned against the wall outside, looking up at the stars, trying to understand where everything had gone wrong. Was her mother right? Could Zenith have been alive had she not come under Hector’s radar due to his proximity or would he have found her regardless through SLF? How many other people were hiding through the organization that he didn’t know about? Was running it worth the cost of innocent life?
“Hector has gone underground.” The voice from his side startled him slightly.
Shadow Man.
Fucking moved like a shadow. But Alpha owed him now. “Thanks for bringing my wife back.”
There was a pause. “Will she live?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help her sister.”
“Me too.”
Another pause. “You should’ve sought me out sooner. I would’ve led you to him.”
Something in his tone made Alpha’s eye twitch. “Why were you following him in the first place? What’s your interest?”
A lighter flickered, showing just the line of the hand holding it. He didn’t think the guy would answer.
“He broke my toy.”
Vague.