Page 19 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

Damien scoffs from the window. “The boy is six. He can read, he can write. What exactly has he missed?”

Reid goes red from the collar up, and he looks at me instead of at Damien, which won’t save him. “I would ask you to reconsider, sir. A human woman should have no say in the education of the young master.”

I put the pen down and get to my feet. “Did I ask for your opinion?”

Every drop of blood goes out of his face at once. He’s on his knees on my study floor before I’ve finished coming around the desk, head down, both hands on his thighs.

“No, Alpha.”

“Get out and do what I told you.”

He’s already moving, and I let him get as far as the door. “Reid.” He stops without turning. “Ariela is Luca’s mother. She’ll be given proper respect in this house.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

The door closes behind him. Damien props himself against the window frame with his arms folded and looks at me until I look back.

“I thought you were planning to get rid of her at some point. Now you’re fighting with staff over her?”

“I haven’t decided what to do with her yet, but she is Luca’s mother, even if not his birthmother. I won’t have her disrespected.” I sit down and glance at him. “Do you have something to say about it?”

He lifts both hands. “Not me. I think it’s good to have the mother here. She’s the only parent that boy has ever had, and a change this size takes a child months.” He glances back at the glass. “Besides, she cares about him. You can see it from up here.” He pauses then. “I may not have a problem with it, but that doesn’t mean others won’t. She isn’t one of us. Every day she’s in this house she gets closer to working out what Luca is. We don’t bring humans into this unless it’s through mating, and there’s a reason for that. The elders will have a problem with it.”

“I’ll deal with it later.” I pull the folder on the blotter toward me. “You looked into what I asked?”

“Now that I’ve got her real name, it wasn’t difficult.” He takes the chair opposite without being invited, which he’s done for twelve years. “I started with the money, but there’s no trace of it anywhere. I know it left the account. But it wasn’t her who took it.”

My hand goes still on the folder, and Damien continues.

“Maya Reyes walked out of your program at seven months pregnant and checked into a women’s shelter on the north side eleven days later.” His voice is steady. “She stayed there until it was time to give birth. Her intake record listed what she arrived with, and it was the clothes she was wearing. She arrived with no bag or phone. Nothing was ever deposited anywhere under her name. A woman sitting on half a million dollars doesn’t spend six weeks in a shelter dormitory.”

So Ariela was right.

I lean back in my chair. “What do we know about her?”

“Next to nothing, and that’s her doing.” He stretches his arms over his head, yawning. Neither of us has slept since last night. “The sisters shared a father but had different mothers. Ariela was orphaned at ten, and Maya took her. Maya was eighteen at the time. They lost contact when Ariela was seventeen because Maya fell in with a bad crowd. Just before she went into the clinic, she co-signed loans with a boyfriend. He fled the country, leaving the debt behind. That’s most likely the whole reason she became a surrogate.”

“Then why the false name?”

Damien shrugs. “Who knows what goes on in a woman’s head? Maybe she didn’t want her old life following her in. Could be she worked out that if anybody looked at her properly, she’d never clear the screening at all.” He tips his head. “She was good, though. Our systems didn’t so much as blink at that identity, and she built it herself.”

“When did she make contact with her sister again?”

“She called two days before she gave birth from the shelter. They keep records of all phone calls, and the clerk I bribed managed to find Maya’s file.” He pauses. “According to the police report, Ariela witnessed the car accident, so I assume Maya was on her way to meet her.”

Even the air in the room forgets to breathe. “She died a few hours after giving birth,” Damien goes on. “I’m still working it, Callum. But I don’t believe she stole from you, and if she didn’t, then we’ve been missing something for six years.”

Six years of investigators went into that surname and hit a wall every time. I invented the woman on the other side of it, a thief who took my money and ran. I’ve hated her comfortably ever since.

“Have you called Isabella?”

“She’s on a flight home tonight.” Damien’s mouth thins. “Considering she’s the only one who met Maya face to face, I told her she needs to get here fast.”

I straighten the folder. “Get the entire story from her again, every interaction she had with Maya. She was volunteering at the clinic at the time. If we have been looking in the wrong direction all these years, then we’ve probably been asking the wrong questions as well.”

Damien nods slowly. “For what it’s worth, whatever went wrong, Ariela had nothing to do with any of it. She was seventeen and out of contact.” He rubs his jaw. “Do you think there’s a chance Maya worked out what you were? That she ran because of it?”

“No.” That one I’m sure of. “The whole point of that clinic was to draw in human surrogates. Nobody on that staff has let a thing slip in eleven years. She ran for some other reason.” I turn the folder over. “Arrange a driver for Ariela from next week. He’ll be taking her to work.”