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“Whoa.” His eyes widen. “What happened there, baby girl?”
I shake my head and croak out, “nothing. Nothing happened. I just… you should go. So I can sleep. Please.”
He frowns and watches me for a moment longer before he picks up my hand and presses a kiss to my palm. “Okay, Vee, whatever you need.”
He kisses the pulse point on my wrist and then carefully sets my hand back on the bed, like I’m breakable or something precious. “Get some sleep. We’ll be by to bother you tomorrow.”
The panic in my chest eases a bit as his gentle teasing and I manage a smile for him. “Okay.”
He watches as I roll onto my side, pulling my knees to my chest and folding my hands under my cheek. Then he flips off the light. A moment later, I hear the security system activate and the front door click.
Sleep drags at me, and the last thought I have before I drift off is, how do they know the alarm code?
Rule 19: Sometimes people prove you right
I wake up the next morning feeling refreshed as hell, even as all the information I learned yesterday comes slamming back into me. They had a reason. Not a very good one, in my opinion, but a reason nonetheless. They never intended to bond with Yasmin. They were just trying to buy us time. In order to give me the life they thought I wanted.
That’s probably what makes me the most upset. That they thought I needed money in order to be happy in my life with them. It was never something I wanted from them. I made a point of it, in fact, working over the summer and after school to pay my way right along with them.
Well, for the most part.
There were a few instances where I would never have been able to afford to pay my share, like the time we spent four days at an amusement park in the largest suite they offered. But I took them all out for dinner to make up for my inability to cover my portion of the flight or the room.
They should have realized I’d much rather have them than any amount of money. I would happily swim under a mountain of financial aid and student debt if it meant having them swimming right along with me.
Hell, I would have put off going to college all together to work to help pay the bills so Jackson could finish.
But I know that’s not in an alpha’s nature. They want—no, need—to be the providers. They never would have put me in a position where I needed to work, not that they would keep me from it if I really wanted a job. It’s ingrained in their very makeup to take care of their omega, to give them anything that they require.
So I can see them being all newly presented, that the alpha instincts would have been driving them hard. I can’t even blame them for it. Sometimes even my suppressed omega nature makes me do stupid things, like let Asher finger me in public. My omega wanted her alpha’s touch and so she took it.
And it was fucking phenomenal.
There’s still the question of why they never found me, though. If they thought I was theirs, if they still think I am, then why didn’t they find me? The paper work for me to be adopted into the Kinsella pack is public. My grandmother had to sign it, so she knew exactly where I was until her death three months ago.
Why didn’t they ask her about me?
I frown up at the ceiling, at the streaks of sunlight. They would have. Absolutely, they would have.
Was she just petty enough to not tell them? Did she resent me that much?
I can’t imagine that being the case. If anything, she would have been eager to reconnect us. She always thought they would take care of her as well as me, since she was my last living relative. Once all of them had access to their trust funds, why wouldn’t she have told them?
My frown increases as I throw off the blanket and stand from my bed. In the kitchen, the coffee is brewed and waiting for me, thanks to Asher. I’m smiling as I pour myself a cup of coffee and doctor it up with enough creamer that it’s a pale brown.
The smile stays on my face, even as I turn my attention back to my grandmother and her apparent lack of money hunger. Which is ridiculous, because that’s all she’s ever been.
The only reason she wouldn’t have been salivating to tell Jackson and his pack about where I was hoping they would bond me and take care of her is if she was getting money elsewhere.
The number of zeros in her bank account is enough for me to think that must be the case.
I set my coffee cup on the island and head into the spare room, pointedly ignoring the book Davis picked up last night and grabbing the first of two file boxes that arrived with the other gifts from the Werth pack.
Topher followed through on his promise to print me up ten years of account statements from my grandmother’s account and sent them over, along with the influx of presents.
Yes, this would be easier to download them to my laptop and use spreadsheets to find recurring transactions, or large deposits, but this makes me feel more like an investigator. Plus, Topher went through the trouble of providing them to me, so I’m going to use them.
I drag both boxes out to the living room, grab pens, a notepad, a handful of highlighters in different colors and my coffee, and then I get to work.
