Page 88 of New Blood

Violet was right. Of the Gallaghers, she and Thaddeus had been the only ones who’d always been nice to her. She felt tears well up in her eyes. She couldn’t help but worry about what would happen to Violet once she was handed over to the Alliance. What if she was innocent?

“Lock her up,” Jude ordered, looking at his brother.

Austin nodded and dragged a protesting Violet toward the door to the basement, while her brothers and her mother cursed and complained to Jude. They were all talking over each other, threatening him.

“You’ll pay for that!” Owen spat.

“Enough!” Jude demanded, his booming voice echoing in the foyer like thunder. “If any of you can show me evidence that somebody else tampered with the brakes or that Violet couldn’t have done this, I’ll reconsider my decision. If not, I’ll hand her over to the Werewolf Alliance. You can find me in my office.”

Jude was still holding her hand. Together they walked to his office and entered. When he closed the door behind them, she let out a breath.

“There’s gonna be a mutiny,” Danielle said.

She was right, but she didn’t even know the half of it. Any moment now, he would be removed as alpha, and as much as he hated leaving this mess behind for Austin to clean up, he’d had no other choice but to expose Violet and make her pay for what she did. Now was probably a good time to tell Danielle that their lives were about to change. But as long as they were together, he didn’t care where the Werewolf Alliance assigned him as punishment for trampling on their rules and not following their explicit orders.

“Baby,” he started. “There’s something you need to know. Somebody—”

A knock at the door interrupted him. He didn’t even have the chance to ask who it was when the door was ripped open, and Eve stormed in, waving a bunch of papers in her right hand.

“There!” she said triumphantly and slammed the papers on the desk.

“Is this evidence that Violet didn’t do it?” Jude asked, surprised at Eve’s theatrical entrance.

“Violet? No! That’s her problem. These are the love letters between Danielle and my father. You said I had twenty-four hours to find them. And I did.”

She cast Danielle a gleeful look.

Jude reached for the letters and glanced at them, his eyes flying over the words. Eve was right. They were love letters. He turned the first page over and found the signature. It was just the initial D, like Eve had said.

“This is proof that she had an affair with my father,” Eve claimed, pointing at Danielle.

Danielle stretched her hand out. “Show them to me.”

Jude handed her the stack and watched her as she perused the first page. A gasp rolled over her lips, and she lifted her head, looking straight at him, her chin dropping.

“Oh my God.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“See, I told you,” Eve interjected.

Danielle pointed at the letters, her hand trembling. “This… this is my mother’s handwriting.”

“No!” Eve protested. “But you signed them!”

Danielle shook her head and tapped on the signature. “My mother’s name was Diane. She initialed it with a D.” She bent toward the desk and reached for a pen and a notepad. She scribbled a sentence on it. “Here. That’s my handwriting.”

Jude took the notepad from her. Danielle had copied the first sentence of the letter on the pad. While the handwriting had a few similarities, it wasn’t the same. Eve ripped the pad from his fingers and stared at it, then back at the love letters. When she looked up, he saw it in her eyes. She knew that Danielle hadn’t written those letters.

“You were wrong,” Jude said in an even tone.

Eve remained silent, obviously shell-shocked.

“William had those? He kept them?” Danielle asked, and he wondered whether she was thinking what he was thinking.

“Yes. No,” Eve corrected herself. “I thought they would be in Mom’s things in the attic.”

“Why?”