Page 84 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

“It’s plain to a wolf.” He gets up and collects his folder. “Humans want a word for it. Girlfriend, partner, and wife are the ones they use. Without one, she’ll assume she’s a woman you sleep with who happens to be raising your child. She will always be waiting for you to discard her at any given moment once you’ve had your fill.”

“You want me to marry her?”

“Do you want to?”

She’d be permanently in this house, at my table in the morning arguing about screen time, raising Luca with me, on my arm at the winter gathering with ninety people deciding what to make of her, in my bed every night for the rest of my life.

I like it.

I’ve spent ten years arranging my life so that I can never be vulnerable, and now there’s a woman in this house I can’t afford to lose. I lean back in my chair and look at my sleeping son. A family to protect, a mate I never wanted yet can’t bear to walk away from, and enemies lurking outside waiting for my weaknesses. Life has gotten exceedingly complicated.

By the time Damien enters, I’m about to go seek out Ariela. I sit back down when I see him, though. “I hope you come bearing answers.”

His sleeves are pushed up, and there’s a tablet under his arm. He doesn’t sit down, which tells me he really does have something.

“We still haven’t found anything on those rouges. They have nothing to track them with. I can only assume they lived privately on some pack elder’s estate, which is why they have no footprint, digital or otherwise. They traveled through the river, and their scent disappeared. They were very well trained, Callum. I’m still digging into it, though.”

I look out the window. The entire staff had their belongings searched. They were more than willing to allow the searches, but nothing was found. There is a leak. I know it. But I can’t pinpoint it.

“What do you have then?” I demand.

“The two IT contractors who were working at the clinic when Maya disappeared.” Damien puts the tablet on my desk. “I found the money.”

“What money?”

“Both of them took six-figure payments around the time Maya disappeared. Neither payment was salary. They were one-time transfers out of a payroll account belonging to a staffing agency in Marlow.”

I look down at the dates on the screen. Six years ago, Maya disappeared from a clinic with my child inside her, and every record that could have told me where she went was corrupted beyond recovery. Now the two men who had access to those systems turn out to have been paid before they disappeared themselves.

“Who owns the agency?”

“That’s where it gets slow. The agency was bought and sold three times. Two owners back, there’s a holding company, and that holding company had a credit line with a firm that used to do freight brokerage for two businesses in the Thorne portfolio.” He watches me take that in.

“And the IT guys?”

“Still no bodies. Whoever made them disappear knew what they were doing. I’ve got people going through landfill permits, abandoned properties, and quarry records around Marlow for that quarter.”

I look down at the dates again.

“Maya disappears. The clinic records are destroyed. Two IT guys with access to those records get six figures. Eight weeks later, they disappear too.”

Damien nods once. “That’s what it looks like.”

“Maya didn’t have the resources for this. She had no reason to run.” I get to my feet, walking over to the window. “Somebody wanted her out.”

“But why?” Damien looks toward Luca. “I would understand if they wanted to get their hands on the heir, but Maya disappeared.”

“Or they wanted Luca dead,” I murmur.

“Neither of which happened.” Damien interjects tightly. “So maybe Maya wasn’t just running from you. She could have been running from them as well.”

A thought strikes me, something I’ve never considered. “Investigate the car accident. The one that killed her.”

My beta gives me a sharp look, his brows furrowing. “You think that wasn’t an accident?”

I turn to face him, the gears in my head turning. “When we checked the records from the hospital, Maya was said to be deceased. The adoption happened on the spot. That would explain why nobody ever came for Luca after he was born.”

Damien presses his lips together thoughtfully. “And if she was staying at a shelter and had no money, and hiding on top of it, she wouldn’t have tried to contact anyone, even her sister. When she initiated contact, her whereabouts must have been discovered. Nobody knew she had a sister, so nobody paid attention to whom she called.”