Julian’s POV

    The private jet was split into severalpartments. Because we were leaving so early in the morning, Alice was still sleepy, so I put her in one of the small bedrooms near the rear of the ne. Alice sat the ‘living room‘ area in the center of the ne, on one of the soft sofas there, while I moved to the office area nearer the cockpit. O

    There, I immediately called back to my Beta to check in, just as I had done nearly every morning since leaving the pack. Even while I was here, my pack was still very important to me. I wasn’t going to neglect them while I pursued more personal matters.

    The nature of my call this morning however was a little bit of both professional and personal developments.

    After informing me of what was going on with the pack, and after a few decisions from me, my Beta said, “bI /bhave some updates from our research team on the things they’ve been digging into on your behalf…”

    “About Alice?” I asked.

    “No,” he replied. “About Olivia.”

    “Ah.”

    Olivia’s betrayal had sparked some curiosity within me about how much she had been lying to me over the years and what about. I’d also wanted to coordinate the information Chase had given me, not truly trusting him at all, even if I hadn’t detected any lies when he had revealed the information to me.

    People would say anything when they were afraid, and I was very certain that I had both intimidated and frightened Chase through and through.

    “Tell me,” I prompted.

    “We looked deeper into Olivia’s finances, and we can confirm now that there has been a substantial transfer of funds from Olivia’s ounts to Chase for the past three years, but most especially in the past few months.b” /b

    That information gave credence to Chase’s ims. For him to receive that money meant that he likely had been in a rtionship with Olivia, at least in the part of a kept man. That it had increased in the past few months likely indicated that she wanted more from him than before, and he was raising his prices.

    “Good work,” I said.

    “That’s not all, Alpha,” my Beta continued, surprising me.

    “Oh. Pleaseb, /bcontinue.”

    “We searched deeper into Olivia’s ounts. For a woman who does not work and has limited investments, our researchers found it odd that her money continued topound, increasing exponentially month to

    month.”

    That did seem strange. “What did you find?”

    “There are many strange deposits from unverified ounts,” my Beta said. “We are still looking into it, but we have reason to believe that she is either taking part in moneyundering or embezzlement. Possibly both.”

    Olivia had been a woman I had trusted for many years. Before Amber, I had thought she was my mate.

    To hear all this… Gods, did I even truly know her at all?

    For her to target Alice, I had thought that perhaps something had happened to her, like losing our child might have triggered some kind of jealousy in her mind and heart that made her lose touch with her own sensibilities.

    But this… This went back even further than that.

    Maybe she’d always been this vicious, and I’d just been blind to it.

    It made me wonder, what else about her had I been unable to see?

    “Keep digging in,” I said. “If we can get enough evidence, we can bring down whatever she’s orchestrated.”

    “Yes, Alpha,” my Beta said. “Uh… There is one more thing.” He hesitated. Clearly there was more, but he was holding back on me. This was strange. My Beta was dutiful, exceedingly good at his job, and someone I trusted implicitly. For him to hold back like this meant that what he was about to say had to be really bad.