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“To be honest, I don’t know. It might be good to hint to the facility manager to start gathering some reports that show the value of keeping the building open twenty-four hours.”
“I can do that. We always make note of the number of guests overnight, and all of our tracking programs for the books and computers have timestamps. I know it's a little sparse during my shift, but the facility isn’t dead by any means.” I growled. “I can’t believe she's going for a fucking library. They’re sacred spaces.”
Tony laughed softly and pulled me onto his lap. “I agree with you. That's why I’ve been digging through these records until my eyeballs bleed. I might’ve worked a little bit harder considering what you stand to lose, but there's no way in hell I was going to let her do this without a fight.”
I let myself lean into his embrace. “Thank you for fighting for us. The library means a lot to me.”
“Pretty sure that library means a lot to all of us now. We’d have never met you without it. And it doesn’t matter who or what comes after you,” he said, voice strong. “I’m always going to fight for you.”
42
TONY
“Thankyouforbringingthis to our attention,” Mayor Carlisle said to me. “You’ve been so thorough.”
“I didn’t want to come with you with unfounded accusations. I just don’t want Harvey taking advantage of her position, and I definitely don’t want her to rob the city of such a valuable space.”
Mayor Carlisle nodded and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Between you and me, I’ve been suspicious of her for a while. She gets on her high horse about the stupidest things. But there's only so much I can do given that we’re both elected officials. I’ll have to go through the proper channels: get a quiet background investigation going so she doesn’t catch wind of it and cover her tracks. Something like that usually takes months, so you’re unlikely to hear any updates for a while.”
I nodded. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“No, you’ve done plenty already, Mx. Agani.”
Imostlytrusted the mayor, but I had still made copies of everything that I was handing over. I had no proof that she wasn’t also involved no matter what she said. I wanted to believe that none of the other councillors were involved, but Harvey had been getting away with this for twenty years which meant no one was safe. Billie had harped on me, wanting me to submit my findings to one of their lawyers just to be safe, and I’d relented, dropping off all of my research with the lawyer before arriving for my meeting with the mayor.
I sighed.
Why couldn’t people act with integrity?
I didn’t want to wait months for results. Who knows how much damage Harvey could do in the meantime? Maybe even telling the mayor would lose me my job. I’ll bet even if she doesn’t like Harvey, she wouldn’t be happy with me rooting around, despite most of the information being publicly available. It would be illegal, sure, but plenty of illegal things happened all the time, twisted around so they couldn’t be prosecuted.
The pack had supported me doing this, even knowing that we could earn enemies. Harvey had a lot of connections at both the city and state level, and pissing her off without being able to bring her to heel with the legal system was a dangerous move.
Returning to the pack house with a new stack of assignments, I sat down to work in my office. That didn’t last very long. Billie appeared to chastise me for working extra hours.
“I will literally pay you to take a break,” they said.
“You’d pay me for a lot of things, but I still like having an actual job,” I reminded them.
Billie fussed and climbed onto my lap. “I’m not going to let you work a fourteen hour day. It's just not going to happen. Now, why don’t you put this down and take me on walkies?”
I laughed. “Okay, fine. But you have to let me work when we’re at the library tonight.”
“Excuse you, I’m always perfectly well behaved at the library.”
I chuckled. “You and I have different definitions of perfectly well behaved.”
Billie hopped off my lap and tugged at my arm until I relinquished my workspace.
I admitted quietly to myself, once I was out in the sunshine, that it was exactly what I needed. There was a beautiful marshland near our property, and we walked the short distance to it.
“When do you think we’ll be able to convince Nicky to move in full-time?” Billie asked.
“Pretty sure trying to convince her is only going to slow that process down.”
Billie huffed. “But I like her living with us. I’m not going to apologize for wanting her to be there all the time.”
I snuck my hand under their hair and held the back of their neck as we walked. “No one is asking for you to apologize for that. Nicky will come to things in her own time. You learned that with Hana, and you’ll learn it with Nicky, too.”
