Chapter 171 He will let her
_Author’s POV_
The morning after Virella’s arrest started perfectly, Celeste had been up since before dawn, which surprised nobody. By the time everyone else was moving around the hotel she already had three folders prepared and a full summary of everything the legal team needed to proceed.
She sat at the breakfast table with her coffee going cold beside her and walked Alaric through every document, every charge, and every piece of evidence that tied Virella, Theodore, and Reid to what had been done over the past months.
It was a lot, even for her, it was a lot.
The trademark case against Kaelen, the facility and everything that happened inside it. The shell companies, the money trail, and the photographs on the wall in the east wing of the island mansion. Even Reid’s communications from inside Alaric’s own office.
Theodore’s financial involvement, all of it sitting in neat organized folders that Celeste had put together. Alaric was lowkey happy that she was on their side or else, they were completely in trouble.
Alaric listened to everything, asked the right questions and confirmed what needed confirming, and by the time breakfast was finished the legal proceedings were already in motion through channels that would not be slow about it.
Virella, Theodore, and Reid would all be charged. Theodore’s cooperation would factor into how his case was handled, but that was for the legal process to determine and not for anyone at this table to decide. Alaric had been clear about that from the beginning and he stayed clear about it now.
Rowena came down late, she moved towards them and Alaric personally brought her breakfast. Everyone pretended not to see a thing.
Earlier, she’d slept again after actually asking him to lay down with him. He’d been so excited and slept for a while before waking up to see Celeste.
“Is it done?”
“It’s done,” Celeste nodded and said.
Rowena nodded once and reached for the coffee pot. That was all.
Kasper was just staring at her. She just accepted the information and moved forward with her morning, which was so completely her that nobody at the table even commented out loud.
Pierre and Ezekiel came down together, everyone noticed but said nothing. Pierre looked like he had slept better than he had in weeks, which made sense given everything that had been sitting on him. Ezekiel looked like himself, he even started ordering food the moment he sat down.
It should have felt strange, sitting around a hotel breakfast table after everything. But it felt, more than anything else, like people who had been through something hard together and had come out the other side still in one piece.
It was Celeste who brought up Alice this time.
She brought it up later that afternoon, when the others had scattered to different parts of the hotel and it was just her, Rowena, and Alaric in the small conference room with the door closed. She put a single printed document on the table between them and pushed it toward Rowena without any preamble.
Rowena picked it up and read it.
It was a financial record of a transfer, specifically, from an account that had been buried under three layers of other accounts.
The account at the end of the trail was registered under a name that had nothing obvious to connect it to Alice. Except Celeste had kept pulling the thread, not wanting to believe that Alice was clean.
The transfer had happened the same week Rowena’s father died, and the very week her brother died. Both times to the same account,with the same pattern. All the payments were going out to people whose names Celeste had also traced and who were no longer alive to be questioned about what those payments were for.
Rowena set the document down on the table, looked at it for a moment without speaking. “Alice,” she said finally.
“The money traces back to her,” Celeste said. “It took a long time to find because she used several people between herself and the actual payments. But the origin is hers.”
Everyone went quiet, Alaric was watching Rowena and he could see her processing it. Her face was still but her eyes were doing something complicated that she wasn’t trying to hide, which told him how much this particular piece of information was costing her.
Her father and brothers.
She had grown up carrying the weight of losing both of them, building herself around the absence of them, and now there was a name attached to their death.
“She’s still at the mansion in the capital, right?” Alaric asked.
“She is,” Celeste nodded. “And from what my contacts have told me, she has been getting comfortable while we have all been away. Drake has been seen near our residence twice in the past week.”
Alaric looked at Celeste in shock, why the hell wasn’t that woman taking a rest? “Drake and Alice?” He asked in an almost exhausted tone.
“Unfortunately. We still need to catch him.”
“So many enemies on the loose. I’m getting used to them.” Rowena said casually and in a funny tone as she picked the document back up and looked at it.
“We need to go back,” she said.
“What about the case of your father?” Alaric asked, reminding her of the reason they came to begin with.
“Yes, but we need to catch Drake too.”
He stayed silent for a while before nodding. “Okay, tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll have everything arranged tonight. We leave in the morning.”
Rowena set the document down again and pushed it back toward Celeste. She stood up from the table and turned around.
“I need to be alone for a while, i’ll join you guys later.” Rowena said and disappeared towards the elevator.
Celeste looked at Alaric after she left. “She’ll want to handle Alice herself,” Celeste pointed out with a tiny smile.
“I know,” Alaric replied, already knowing. And of course he would let her do whatever she wanted.
“Are you going to let her?”
He looked at Celeste for a moment and nodded with a half smile, a very rare one.
“She doesn’t need my permission,” he shrugged, and looked at his phone.
Celeste almost smiled again. “No, she doesn’t.”