Holy shit. That acreage wouldn’t have been cheap, which led me to believe Stone had a considerable amount of assets at his disposal. I couldn’t begin to guess how much, but it would not be a tiny sum.
He looked like some kind of fucking vagabond who roamed from town to town, owning only the shirt on his back. Well, lookswere deceiving. “This is unbelievable.” And not fucking good, but it wasn’t Zephyr’s fault. “Great job.”
“There’s more.” Zephyr eyed me and lowered his voice. “Josef Wylde must have known something big was coming because he did the same thing the Neals did. They set their kid up with a fortune.” He tossed me another document.
My eyes bulged like a cartoon character as I stared at the massive numbers. There were a whole lot of zeros and commas on the left side of the decimal point.
I didn’t buy it.
“This can’t be right.”
“Bet your ass it’s right.” Zephyr chuckled. “The account hasn’t been touched, so it’s accumulated a shit load of interest over the years.” A shit load. Of course. There were about ten zeroes to that, too. “An offshore account made auto deposits up until last year. And there’s a safety deposit box registered in their names.” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “But the trust was left under the name Aliza Wylde.”
I’ll be damned. Dad had taken everything from Liza except her first name.
“The whole thing is fucked up, Ty.” Zephyr massaged his temples with both hands as if to stave off a headache. “It was all heavily encrypted. Banking usually is, but this was over the fucking top. I had to quickly erase any backtrace that might lead to me. Whoever your father hired to cover his tracks did a damn good job of it.” He smugly smiled now. “Unfortunately for them, I’m not the average hacker. Either way, I didn’t want them to catch wind that I was on their trail or that I’d cracked their code, so to speak.”
“Thank you for doing all of this, Zephyr.” It wasn’t like I didn’t pay him, but he’d given me a lot of information.
“No problem.” He paused. “I have to ask, what are you going to do now that you have all of this information?”
“Hell if I know.” I stood and pulled my wallet from my back pocket. “Here’s a deposit for all your hard work. I’ll wire the rest to your account tonight.”
I tossed a stack of cash onto the desk and gathered up the documents.
I walked to the car, trying to make sense of the information Zephyr had dumped in my lap. There was no way I could sit quietly after this. Liza had a fortune waiting for her. A fortune her parents had set up for her. A fortune that would see her, her kids, and her grandkids all set up for life.
I had no idea what my next move should be, but it seemed the decision was being made for me when a text message from Dad popped up on my phone screen.
We have a problem.
Instead of wasting time texting Dad back, I dialed his number and waited for him to answer. This was better done with a phone call.
“Hey, Ty. I know you’re at work and you have shit to do, but we have a situation.” I didn’t miss the urgency in his voice.
I sighed. “Yeah, Dad. I just got your text. What’s going on?” Whatever it was, I’d just add it to the list of shit I already had going on.
“Stone Black has made a move. I guess he’s tired of us dragging our feet.”
Well. Fuck. “What kind of move?” I buckled my seatbelt and pulled out onto the road, heading in the direction of the estate.
“I’ve just been made aware that the Heather Falls property is currently being developed.”
“Developed? Into what?” Not that it mattered.
Fuck! Stone’s mission was clear, which I should’ve expected. He’d said as much when we chatted outside the ice cream shop. Stone had big plans, and he wasn’t waiting around to move forward with them.
He was going to rebuild the Wylde pack and restore them to their former glory, and he couldn’t do that without Aliza, their omega princess.
This was going to get ugly.
26
LIZA
The scent of lavender always made my stomach turn, though I was standing in the middle of the banquet hall kitchen without so much as a sprig of lavender in sight.
It had been many long days and a few longer nights since I’d suffered through that awful dream, but I hadn’t been able to shake it. The details continued to linger, and I often found my thoughts drifting back to that snowy day when screams had filled the air, when I’d stood by and watched the kind woman shift before falling to the floor.
