Chapter 163

The Newton’s cradle on Andrew’s desk ticked back and forth. Its metallic clang echoed throughout his home office. Yet not even this hypnotic rhythm could calm Andrew’s buzzing mind as he waited for Mr. Smith to appear.

Before Andrew lay the note from dinner the previous night, its red envelope discarded to the side. He stared at the piece of paper and read its typed message again and again:

Alpha King Andrew Dubois~

I know you are investigating Bob and his possible connection to your recent tragedies. You will stop this immediately, or more tragedies will befall you and your loved ones. Your friends, your family, they will all pay the price—starting with Lisa and Crystal.

I know how to get to them. Your parents, your siblings, all of your former in-laws…harm can and will come to them if you continue on this path, and you will never be able to connect them to me or to Bob.

Remember, accidents DO happen, Your Highness.

If you want what is best for everyone involved, you will stop falling down this rabbit hole. It will lead you nowhere but to a Wonderland of pain and misery.

There was no signature, no return address, nothing to indicate who had sent it, except for a small whiff of Bob’s scent. He could try and write it in third person, but Andrew knew better. Bob’s handiwork was all over this note.

A knock on the door pulled Andrew out of his thoughts.

“Enter!” he called out.

Parker came in first, followed closely by a very agitated-looking Mr. Smith, a briefcase slung over his shoulder and a red envelope clenched in his hand.

“Your Highness, I have a Mr. Jasper Smith here to see you,” Parker announced.

Andrew nodded.

“Thank you, Parker. That will be all.”

Parker bowed to first Andrew and then Mr. Smith before backing out of the room.

As soon as the doors were closed, Mr. Smith charged to Andrew’s desk. He slammed his hands on the wood, crushing the envelope beneath his palm. He leaned surprisingly close to Andrew, given how intimidated people normally were around the Alpha King.

“What is the meaning of this, Your Highness?”

Mr. Smith raised the crumpled envelope in his fist.

Andrew eyed Mr. Smith’s fist calmly before responding.

“I’m guessing that it’s a threat, much like the one I received.” Andrew lifted his own note, then set it back down on the desk. “I assume that this isn’t the first time that you’ve received one while on a job.”

Mr. Smith took a deep breath, gritting his teeth.

“No, but it is the first time that the note specifically mentioned my wife and daughters by name,” he said. “How is that possible? No one should have that information.”

Andrew rubbed his eyes, trying to not show how truly concerning he found that revelation.

“Perhaps…Bob might have broken into my home office and gotten into my financial records. I only ever pay your company, but he might have connections of his own that tracked you down from that alone.”

Mr. Smith stood up straight and started pounding his fist against his palm.

“We cannot continue this investigation,” he declared, “not with my family’s lives on the line. I won’t allow it.”

Andrew held his hands up placatingly.

“Wait a moment, Mr. Smith. Let’s look over the evidence you have gathered first, then we can discuss what to do.”

Mr. Smith stared at Andrew for a moment as though he were crazy, then nodded and placed his briefcase in the chair directly across from Andrew. He pulled out his laptop and opened the screen. He turned the laptop toward Andrew.

“We have quite a bit to go over,” he began. “To start off, we have a paper trail that connects Bob to a car bomb manufacturer around the time of Lisa’s bombing.”

Andrew leaned forward, skimming through the paperwork that Mr. Smith had pulled up. It included payment records, emails, and other forms of communications. Andrew could feel the anger boiling inside him, but he kept it under control so that he could get through all the evidence.

“Then there’s security footage from a warehouse in an older district that shows Bob meeting with the Hannigan Brothers and Ciaran Murphy,” Mr. Smith continued, cuing up the footage. “That took some haggling with some drug lords, but I managed to keep it restricted to monetary exchanges only.”

When the footage was finished, Mr. Smith next brought up an audio file.

“This is a confessional from a former guard of yours,” he explained. “Please listen to the entire sample before expressing any questions, comments, or concerns.”

He pressed play on the laptop.

“Can you clearly state your name for the recorder?” Mr. Smith asked in the recording.

“Daniel Longsworth,” another male voice replied. Andrew immediately recognized the voice as belonging to a guard who had just quit a couple weeks prior—no notice, no reason given.

“And why have you come to me today?”

“I wanted to confess to my involvement in the harassment of Crystal Blanchard.”

Andrew shifted in his seat as he impatiently waited for Mr. Smith’s reply.

“In what way were you involved?”

“I drugged her food.”

Andrew’s eyebrows shot up. Mr. Smith motioned for him to keep listening.

“And why did you do this?”

“Her ex-boyfriend—Lisa’s fiancé, Bob—hired me to do it.”

Mr. Smith stopped the recording.

“He goes into more detail about how he was paid, when, and everything else Bob had him do, like delete the footage that showed Bob putting glass into Crystal’s lunch,” he explained.

Andrew had suspected that Bob had been behind everything that had happened to Crystal and Lisa, but it still shocked him to see the evidence mounting in front of him. He had never thought that the corruption had seeped in to his guard, and he felt like a fool for not having suspected it before.

Mr. Smith closed his laptop and put it back into his briefcase.

“Any of this would be enough to put him behind bars for a long, long time,” he said, “or at least get the police to investigate him themselves.”

Andrew steepled his fingers, his eyes lost in thought. After a moment, he shook his head.

“No. We can’t go to the police, not yet. We have to continue the investigation ourselves.”

Mr. Smith’s eyes widened.

“Your Highness, we can’t. You’ve seen the evidence, same as I. He’s already gotten away with so much…can you imagine what he would do to our families?”

He started pounding his fist against his palm again.

“We need to hand this over to the police and let them handle it. That way, we’ll have protection in case…”

Mr. Smith could not bring himself to finish that sentence.

“You will have protection either way. I will assign a couple of my guards to your family until the investigation is over.”

Mr. Smith did not respond.

“Look,” Andrew continued, “if this case is not airtight, then Bob will find a way to weasel out of it. We can’t hand it over to the cops until we are certain that there are no holes that Bob can exploit.”

Still, Mr. Smith did not respond.

Andrew sighed.

“I will double your rate if you continue the investigation.”

Mr. Smith pursed his lips. Reluctantly, he nodded.

“Fine, I’ll do it,” he replied, “but if anything happens to my wife or daughters, it will be on your head, Your Highness.”