Chapter 137: FORENSICS AND FAMILY
CALLUM’S POV
My boots clicked against the marble floor as I made my way around the corner to doctor Fenn’s office.
As I pushed the door open, she looked up from the documents on her table she was hunched over and her eyes widened. "Alpha."
I raised the black polythene bag in my hand. "I need this examined."
Her gaze dropped to it, and whatever she’d been doing before I arrived was immediately forgotten. She pulled on a pair of gloves, cleared the table with one sweep of her arm, and gestured for me to set the bag down. "Where did this come from?"
"An abandoned warehouse near the eastern border. I want to know everything you can tell me about what’s in there. I need to find out who used it."
She opened it carefully, laying each item out one at a time as though they might shatter if she moved too quickly. The syringe first, then the torn drug packets, and last, the knife, its blade still darkened near the hilt.
She lifted it toward the light, turning it slowly. "This blood is old. Too old, could be over four months. Possibly longer." She set it down with the same care she’d picked it up with. "But if whoever handled this cut themselves in the process, there’s a chance I can still pull something usable from it."
"Enough for what, exactly?"
"DNA. If I can extract a clean enough sample, I can run it against pack records. It won’t tell us a name immediately, but it will narrow the pool considerably, assuming whoever did this is registered anywhere in our systems."
"And if they’re not?"
"Then we’ll have confirmed at least that this isn’t a member of the pack or is working with someone out of the pack. People who cover their tracks that carefully rarely act alone." She looked up at me. "How long do you need this kept quiet?"
"For as long as it takes you to have an answer."
"Then I’ll need a few days. I won’t rush this and risk destroying what little evidence we have."
"Take what you need. Just don’t let anyone else near it. Not staff nor council, no one."
"Understood." She hesitated before I could turn for the door. "Alpha. Whatever this is connected to— I hope you’re prepared for possible failure. I can’t guarantee that I can help."
I didn’t have an answer for that, so I gave her none, and let myself out.
Without wasting time, I made my way to the kitchen and the kitchen staff quieted the moment I stepped through the door, the way every room in this estate did whenever I entered it. I raised a hand before the head cook could abandon her station to fuss over my presence.
"I’m not here to inspect anything specific. Continue your work."
She didn’t look entirely convinced, but she returned to her station regardless, and I let my eyes move slowly across the room. Trays stacked along the counters. A boy was hauling a crate of vegetables through the back entrance. Nothing that looked out of place, which told me nothing at all, because whoever I was looking for had clearly understood the value of looking unremarkable.
"How are deliveries logged out of here?" I asked, addressing the head cook without turning to her directly.
"Every tray that leaves this kitchen is recorded. Time it left, who carried it, and where it was delivered." She gestured toward a thick ledger sitting on a shelf near the door. "Same when it’s returned, if it is."
I retrieved the ledger and paged through it slowly, scanning names and timestamps. "And that camera by the entrance. Has it always been there?"
"For years now. Feeds into the same system as the rest of the estate, as far as I understand."
I returned the ledger to its exact place on the shelf. "Good. Keep things running as they are."
I left without asking a single question about the maid who had delivered Keisha’s food that day. She still believed, as far as I could tell, that no one had noticed her. I intended to let her go on believing that for as long as it served me to.
By the time I returned to the mansion, the sun had already begun sinking behind the western wall, throwing long shadows across the courtyard. I climbed the front steps with the kitchen logbook and the investigation still kept ringing in my mind, already considering which records Rowan would need once I obtained the camera footage of the kitchen too.
A movement at the top of the staircase caught my attention and I looked up.
Nadia.
She stood by the banister with a glass of water in one hand, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond the windows. She hadn’t noticed me yet.
"Nadia."
She stiffened almost imperceptibly before slowly turning around. The moment her eyes met mine, whatever softness might once have lingered there disappeared behind a carefully composed expression.
"I was hoping we’d talk," I said quietly.
"There isn’t anything to talk about." She turned as though to continue upstairs.
"Nadia." My voice stopped her a second time.
For several long seconds, neither of us spoke. Then she let out a slow breath, her shoulders rising and falling before she looked back at me.. "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
Her eyes searched mine with an intensity that made something inside me tighten. "Did you love my mother?"
The question caught me completely off guard. "What?"
"My mother. Mum." Her voice remained calm, but there was something dangerously angry beneath it. "Did you love her?"
I frowned. "You know I did."
"No." She shook her head slowly. "I know you said you did. I want to hear you say it now."
"I loved your mother with everything I had."
She swallowed hard. "Then..." Her voice faltered for the first time. "...how could you?"
Confusion settled over me. "How could I what?"
Her eyes simmered. "How could you get Keisha pregnant?"
Everything inside me went still.
Oh shit.
For one suspended heartbeat, I simply stared at her.
She knew. The realization rid me of every possible thing I could have said and I just stared at her. "...Who told you?"
"No one." She laughed bitterly, though there wasn’t an ounce of humour in it. "I wasn’t supposed to hear it."
My brows knitted together.
"I heard Lyra talking to Keisha when she said it." She looked away for a brief moment before meeting my gaze again. "She didn’t know I was there."
Nadia had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Oh goddess. I couldn’t lose my daughter.
"I see..."
"No." She shook her head again, tears finally gathering in her eyes. "I don’t think you do."
She drew in a shaky breath. "Every time I looked at you... every time I looked at Keisha... I thought I understood what I was seeing." A humourless smile tugged briefly at her lips. "Turns out I was the only person who didn’t."
"Nadia..."
"I kept wondering why everything suddenly felt different." Her voice cracked despite every effort to steady it. "Why she pulled away. Why you looked at her the way you did. I thought I was imagining things."
"You weren’t meant to find out like this."
"I wasn’t meant to find out at all! Isn’t it?" Her voice cracked.
When I finally spoke, my voice was quieter than before. "I won’t pretend I handled this well."
"No." She nodded faintly. "You didn’t."
I couldn’t say anything.
Then came the question I had been dreading without even realizing it. "Do you love her?"
I closed my eyes briefly. When I opened them again, there was no point hiding from the truth. "I never stopped loving your mother."
Her lips trembled. "That isn’t what I asked."
"I know." I held her gaze. "I loved Elena until the day she died."
The words came easily because they had always been true. "And somewhere along the way..." I paused, feeling the weight of every word before speaking it. "...I fell in love with Keisha too."
A tear escaped despite Nadia’s efforts to hold it back. "I don’t understand."
"I don’t expect you to."
"Does that mean you loved Mom less?"
"No." The answer came immediately. "Never."
I stepped forward but stopped myself before getting too close. "My heart didn’t replace your mother, Nadia."
She lowered her eyes but I continued. "It simply... found room for someone else."
She stood there quietly, wiping at her cheek before another tear could fall. "I need time from you both because I don’t know how to feel."
Right.
"You don’t have to decide today. Just please... don’t pull away from me or Keisha. I’m so sorry, Nadia."
Without another word, she turned and disappeared upstairs, leaving me standing exactly where she had left me.
I watched the empty space for a long painful minute before I trudged up to my study. The study was dark except for the single lamp burning on my desk, and Elena’s photograph was exactly where it always did, her smile so bright it hurt.
"She knows," I said to the photograph, as though it might offer counsel it never had before. "She knows about Keisha now, and I stood there and watched her hold herself together even though it hurt, and there was nothing I could do to spare her any of it."
The photograph offered nothing in return and I almost laughed, what did I expect? It never did.
"I still love you," I said quietly. "I don’t believe that ever stops, not truly. But I love Keisha as well, and I won’t apologize for it, even knowing what it’s already cost our daughter."
I sat with that until the pain in my chest eased into something easier. Whatever this circumstance demanded of me, I would find a way to make it right with Nadia in time. And I would find whoever had done this to Keisha before they were given the chance to do it again.
The door to the study was struck hard enough to rattle against its frame.
"Alpha!" One of the estate guards stormed in breathless, his composure entirely abandoned. "It’s Beta Dane. He’s been found unconscious. It’s serious."
What?
I was already moving before he finished speaking. "Car. Now."