Chapter 162 Theodore wanted in
_Author’s POV_
Ezekiel was still on the phone with his father when Pierre’s phone buzzed on the table between them.
He didn’t look at it immediately. He was half listening to his father talk about pack affairs back home, the usual updates that required him to nod and say the right things at the right intervals without fully engaging his brain.
His father liked to talk and Ezekiel had learned young that the fastest way through a call with him was to let him finish before saying anything.
“Yes, Father,” he said. “I understand. I’ll be back before the end of the month.”
He caught Pierre glancing at his phone from across the room.
“I have to go,” Ezekiel said into his phone. “Something’s come up.”
He ended the call before his father could object and watched Pierre’s face.
Pierre had gone very still as he stared at the phone. Hr read the message once, then he set the phone down on the table and looked at it like it might say something different if he gave it enough time.
“Pierre,” Ezekiel called out.
Pierre picked the phone back up and stood. “We need to find Alaric.”
Ezekiel followed without asking.
They found him with Kasper in the small conference room the hotel had put at their disposal. Alaric was going through Celeste’s latest files, Kasper beside him, both of them looking like men who had been at it for hours and weren’t planning to stop soon.
Pierre walked in and held out his phone without a word.
Alaric took it and read the message. His expression didn’t change but something in the room did, a slight shift in the surrounding, not quite big but immediate.
He passed the phone to Kasper.
Kasper read it, set it on the table, and looked at Alaric.
Nobody said anything for a moment.
Then Alaric leaned back in his chair slowly. “When did this come in?”
“Ten minutes ago,” Pierre said. “I came straight here.”
Alaric looked at the phone again, like he was reading it a third time in his head. Then he looked up at the ceiling briefly, the way he did when he was working through something quickly and quietly.
“It’s too clean,” he said.
“That’s what I thought too,” Kasper said.
“We just missed them on the island, Virella is still out there, and now Theodore sends three words saying he wants to hand himself over.” Alaric shook his head slightly. “It feels constructed.”
“It could even be her idea,” Kasper said. “Use Theo to pull us into a controlled situation. Set the terms, choose the ground, manage the outcome.”
“Virella is exactly the type to think of that,” Ezekiel said from the doorway, where he’d been standing quietly since they came in. “She’s been three steps ahead this whole time. This could be step four.”
Alaric looked at him briefly, then back at the phone on the table.
“Or,” Kasper said, “it’s genuine. And if it’s genuine, Theodore is the most direct path to Virella we’ve had since the beginning. He knows everything. Her location, her plans, her contacts, her next move. If he’s actually willing to cooperate....” He paused. “We can’t ignore that.”
“No,” Alaric agreed. “We can’t.”
The room settled into a brief silence, outside in the corridor someone walked past, their footsteps fading quickly, and then it was quiet again.
Alaric looked at Pierre directly. “Do you think he means it.”
Pierre had been quiet through most of the conversation, standing slightly apart from the rest of them, his arms crossed loosely, his eyes on the middle distance rather than on anyone in the room. Everyone had noticed. Nobody had pushed it until now.
He took a long time before answering.
“The Theodore I grew up with,” he said and paused, “was not a good liar. Not about things that mattered to him. He could be evasive, he could redirect, he could change the subject entirely and make you forget what you were asking. But if he said something plainly and directly.....” Pierre picked up the phone one more time, looked at the three words on the screen, and set it back down. “He meant it.”
“And the Theodore now?” Alaric asked.
“I don’t know him well enough to be certain,” Pierre said honestly. “But at the bar, when I sat across from him, he was the same underneath. Older, more controlled, but still the same.” He looked at Alaric. “I think he means it.”
That landed differently than the suspicion had. Kasper looked at Alaric.
Alaric nodded once, slowly, the way he did when a decision had been made internally and he was just finishing the last step of confirming it to himself.
“We respond,” he said. “But on our terms. Not his.”
He picked up his own phone and thought for a moment, then began typing. Nobody rushed him. The room stayed quiet while he worked through it, and when he was done he read it back once before showing it to Kasper, who read it and gave a short nod.
Ezekiel crossed the room and read it over Kasper’s shoulder.
The message to Theodore was not a yes. It wasn’t a no either. It was a set of conditions, laid out plainly with no room for negotiation.
Come to this address. Come alone. No weapons. And bring proof that Virella doesn’t know you’re doing this. You have until tomorrow morning.
Alaric sent it.
The delivered notification appeared beneath the message almost immediately.
Which meant Theodore was sitting somewhere right now, phone in hand, waiting for a response.
Pierre looked at that small delivered notification for a long moment, and Ezekiel, who had moved to stand beside him at some point without either of them announcing it, said nothing. Just stayed close, his shoulder almost touching Pierre.