Reckless Regrets
Chapter 33

Marisol

Kade and I talked, and it was now time for me to step up and get him the information he needed to take my dad down. And that started with getting him to confess to altering the DNA test and getting a recording of it. He was never a fan of helping me, so I knew that the best route to take was to make this about him.

I opened the voice recorder app on my phone and tucked it into my back pocket then went to replace him. He’d been spending more and more time in his office lately, so I was pretty sure that would be where he was, and I was right. I took a deep breath and gave myself an internal pep talk before I knocked and waited for his cue to enter.

“Come in!” he barked. It was like he knew it was me, so he already was annoyed and full of attitude.

I plastered on my concerned face and walked in, making sure to check the hallway before I closed to door behind me to make the show that much more believable.

“Marisol, whatever this is, it will have to wait. I’m swamped with this investigation and don’t have time to indulge you. If you and Kaden are still not getting along, you’ll need to figure it out on your own.”

“This isn’t about Kade, well it is but not directly. This is about Nathan and Cameron.”

Dad’s eyes narrowed at my words, and he gave a slight nod, prompting me to continue.

“Nate sent me a text message; he believes Cameron is his son, and he’s going to tell Alpha Black to run another test. If that happens, we’re all screwed. Well, you are,” I said.

“There is nothing to worry about. The omega can run the test if he wants, it takes weeks for results to come back, and by the time they do, all of this will be over,” Dad replied with a casual flick of his wrist.

“Alpha Black got the Elder Council to send an investigator the next day. There is a minimum six-week backlog, and he got someone here the next damn day. Don’t you think he has the money or resources to expedite a DNA test? I’m sure he wants Kade back, so he’ll do what needs to be done, Dad!”

I could see the gears turning, but he wasn’t talking. I needed words, not looks or thoughts.

“Please tell me you know how to fix this. We won’t survive going against the Council and Blue Moon; there is no way.”

He began to tap his pen repeatedly on the desk, a habit I’d learned only popped up when he was nervous.

“I need to talk to Miranda in the clinic. She’s the one who altered the first test for us; maybe she can help out again,” he thought out loud.

Bingooooo! Now it was time to see what else I could get out of him.

“You’d better ask her soon. For all we know, Nate has already taken a test to prove his theory; it could already be too late,” I prompted.

“I don’t need any help from you, Marisol. This mess is all your fault to begin with, being mated to a f*****g omega. It’s clear that you can’t do anything right, so just let me do the thinking here,” he snapped.

“I don’t control who my mate is, none of us do! And if you’d just let me and Nate be together like the Moon Goddess intended, then you wouldn’t be in this s**t now. Don’t you dare blame me for any of this!”

I was livid that he would make me the bad guy here. It was his selfishness and inability to see past ranks and titles that did this, not me. When I felt the tears stinging the back of my eyes, I decided that I’d had enough. He’d already confessed to altering the test and to knowing that I had a mate; that was more than enough.

“I hope they replace out all you’ve done, and you get everything you deserve. And when you do, I’m going to be right there watching you go down.”

I turned and walked out of the office and rushed to my room before I broke down into a blubbering mess in the corner. All my life, I’d only wanted love, and the one person who should have given it to me unconditionally preferred to provide hate and disdain instead. Then when I finally got my mate, he ruined that for me too. I was sick of it and refused to live under his tyranny any longer.

I pulled myself up and walked over to my desk, where I found my headphones and connected them. I needed to make sure that my phone had a clear recording of the conversation. Otherwise, I’d have to go back in, and I didn’t think I could do that. There was a bit of useless static and rustling when I’d first pressed record, but thankfully I had his confession, clear as a bell.

I spent a few minutes getting the clip to a manageable size and sent a copy to Kade and another to my email. I then deleted the message to him for good measure. No one ever had my phone but me, but it was better safe than sorry. Before I could delete the recording from my phone, my bedroom door flew off the hinges, and my father burst in with two guards behind him.

“You must think I’m an i***t, Marisol. I guess I am in a way, twice I’ve opened up to you when I shouldn’t have. Give me your phone,” he stated.

“Why? This is my personal property; I don’t have to give anything to you!”

“You do, and you will, or you’ll suffer the consequences. Now be a good girl and hand it over.”

I held it tightly behind my back and backed into the corner. I didn’t know what kind of power trip he was on, but I wasn’t giving up without a fight.

“I thought you were smarter than this, Marisol, but clearly you take after your mother.”

He motioned for the guards to move in, and in an instant, they spun me around and had the phone yanked from my hands. I watched as one of them tossed it to my dad, who skillfully navigated to the voice recording and pressed play. When he heard his voice come from the speaker, a mixture of sadness and fury marred his features.

“I never thought it would be you of all people. But you’ve always been a b***h, so I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s too bad if I can’t trust my daughter, then who can I trust? Get rid of her gentlemen, and do it quietly. I don’t want Kaden to know anything about this,” he said.

I began to hyperventilate. What did he mean by “get rid of”? What was he going to do with me?! Before I could ask, I was hit at the base of my skull so hard that everything immediately went dark, and my body went limp.

***

Kade

I’d gotten Marisol’s message, and as soon as I saw it was a voice recording, I forwarded it to Xander. I knew that she’d done it and gotten the proof we needed, and right in time too. I wanted to talk with her about it and see how she was afterward, but Marisol was late for lunch. Even though we’d still been pretending to avoid one another, we still had lunch together every day, along with the rest of the ranked pack members. After a few minutes, I noticed that Gabby was also missing.

Seeing that it was both of them, I didn’t see a need to worry. Women disappeared with their best friends all the time; Morgan and Taylor were forever running off somewhere without letting anyone know where they were going. Thorne then took his seat at the head of the table and looked a little worn around the edges, which made me smile. We’d been hitting him back to back, and he was about to get the surprise that Xander and I had planned for him any minute now.

“You alright? You look like you could use a nap,” I looked over to him and said.

“I need more than a nap, but it’s nothing that I can’t handle; don’t you worry.”

Ha! It was him who needed to worry. He downed his wine, and I saw the beads of sweat that were building on his forehead and running down his neck. What was his deal? We were just in the beginning stages of this; if he was breaking down already, there was no way he was going to survive.

“Hello, everyone. Alpha Thorne, Mr. Thomas, could I bother you gentlemen for just a moment?” Lewis appeared at the table and stated.

I didn’t know if the timing was perfect or not at this point. It didn’t look like Thorne could handle too much more, but I guess we’d just have to see. I stood up and walked away from the table, following Investigator Lewis to a small conference room on the main floor. When Thorne arrived, it looked like he had pulled himself together a bit on the walk over; at least he wasn’t sweating all over the place anymore.

Lewis pulled out his voice recorder, sat it on the table, then dove right in.

“I’m going to be blunt here. Alpha Thorne, are you aware that your daughter Marisol Thorne is mated to Nathan Reed, an omega member of your pack?”

“Excuse me? Marisol has not found her mate; we were under the assumption that she did not have one,” he lied.

“So, you’re saying that you were not aware of their pairing? It’s been almost four years since she turned eighteen and would have felt the pull. In all that time, are you stating for the record that you had no idea?” Lewis asked.

“Yes, that’s what I’m stating. Where is all of this coming from? If Marisol and Nathan are mates, why has no one said anything until now?”

“Nathan confided in Alpha Black that he is Marisol’s destined and chosen mate and that you have been blocking their relationship. He also testifies that he is the true father of Cameron Thorne, despite the DNA results stating that Mr. Thomas was the father.”

“Wait. Can you repeat that? How can DNA results be wrong? We had our doctor look at them; she confirmed that the DNA matched,” I said, as convincing as possible.

“Nathan claims that the test was tampered with, and the DNA was his, not yours.”

I was a terrible dancer, painfully horrible, but in my head, I was dancing my a*s off in celebration of the look of defeat on Thorne’s face. He seemed to have aged twenty years in the past two minutes.

“These are serious allegations, Alpha. So serious that I have to ask you to return to the Council chambers with me to be held until we can clear this up.”

“How can I be held based on the word of an omega? He has no proof that I’ve done anything wrong. And if the test was tampered with, I did not know about it. I deserve more respect than this. As an alpha with an untarnished reputation, I’d believe that the Elders would at the least give me the benefit of the doubt,” Thorne stated.

“You are 100% correct, Alpha, and any other time an omegas word would not be nearly enough. But we don’t just have his word. We also have yours. An anonymous source sent this recording to the council about an hour ago. Can you explain it?”

Lewis pressed play, and the three of us quietly listened to Thorne and Marisol’s conversation. I could see the gears turning in his head as he was trying to figure a way out of this, but it was no use. He was f****d. When the recording ended, three men walked into the room and surrounded Thorne.

“Alpha Bill Thorne, you are being detained under suspicion of unauthorized interference in a Class A investigation. Your detainment will be indefinite and will only end when we have thoroughly combed through all the evidence to either confirm or disprove your guilt. If you are found guilty, punishment can range from removal of your position and title to death, all at the discretion of the Elders.”

I watched in glee as the b***d drained from Thorne’s face as Lewis’s words sunk in. As the guards moved in to take him away, his eyes darted to me, and for the first time, I let my real feelings show. I flashed him the brightest smile I could, then a firm salute as he was escorted out and paraded through the house and into the awaiting vehicle for all of his pack to see.

All except Marisol and Gabby, who were nowhere to be found.