Chapter Eighteen: The First Real Conversation

                 Sophie Steele. 

"Who was that man?" I asked, reaching the bottom of the staircase.

Dominic turned from the closed front door, phone still in his hand. The stranger was gone. The entrance hall was empty except for the two of us, the morning light coming through the tall windows, flat, unhurried.

"Someone from Aldric's network," Dominic replied. "He brought me something." He looked at the phone screen once more, then pocketed it. "Come."

He walked toward Richard's study. I followed.

He closed the door behind us, moved to the desk, and sat on the edge of it. Not behind it, not in the chair of authority. Just on the edge, like a man who needed to be near something solid without making a statement about it.

I stayed near the door for a moment. Then I crossed the room and sat in the chair across from the desk.

"The man outside Ethan's building," I said. "Aldric's network."

"Aldric's son runs it," Dominic replied. "Erik Aldric. Thirty-four, operates a private security consultancy, three pack contracts are currently active. Gerald has been using him on retainer for eight months." He paused. "The man your contact saw outside the building was Erik's employee. Not Gerald's direct line. One step removed, which is how Gerald keeps his hands clean."

I absorbed this. "Erik Aldric. Does the councillor know?”

"That's what I'm trying to determine." He looked at me. "The man who came this morning was one of Erik's. He brought me the photograph of Ethan as a show of good faith. He wants out. Erik's been moving into territory that makes him uncomfortable."

"He came to you."

"He sent that message last night. Aldric's son, look there. That was him."

I sat with that for a moment. Gerald's network was wider than one housekeeper, wider than one councillor. It had layers, arms, people inside people's organisations who were starting to evaluate their own positions now that Gerald's moves were becoming visible.

"Richard wrote me a letter," I said.

Dominic went still.

"Vivienne delivered it this morning." I looked at my hands briefly. "He knew about the bond. Not Ethan, he didn't know about Ethan. But the bond, the fact that I left because something broke. He suspected Gerald's involvement for years." I looked up. "He couldn't prove it."

Dominic was quiet. His jaw moved once.

"He said you were always his daughter," he said quietly. "By choice."

I stared at him. "You knew he felt that way."

"He told me. Two years ago." His eyes held mine. "He said he'd never forgiven himself for not doing more when you left... For not coming after you."

Something shifted behind my sternum. "He said the same in the letter."

"He was that kind of man," Dominic said. "He regretted quietly, for a long time, without bothering you with it." A pause. "I learned that from him too, apparently."

I looked at him properly.

This was the version of Dominic I had no defence against. Not the controlled Alpha, not the man running operations, not the presence that made my wolf forget itself. This version, sitting on the edge of a desk in his dead father's study, admits something plainly, without theatre.

"Tell me about Gerald," I said. "All of it. From the beginning."

He told me.

The pressure campaign before I left, the phone call, the uncle who had been working toward a managed succession for years, the uncle who had never considered that an overheard conversation could fracture something that wasn't his to touch. He laid it out the same way he did everything, without excess, without self-pity, one fact after another until the full picture was sitting between us in the room.

I listened without interrupting.

When he finished I said, "He confirmed it was gone. To his network…After I left."

"Mrs. Harrow's predecessor," Dominic said. "A driver who worked here until nine years ago. I found his name in Gerald's old records last night." He looked at the desk. "Gerald had a report that you had left the area, had not contacted the family, and had not attempted to reach me. He considered the matter resolved."

"He told no one I might have had a reason," I said.

"No."

"He never considered that I might be pregnant."

"I don't think it occurred to him." Dominic's voice stayed even. "He saw a clean exit. A problem that solved itself. He didn't look further because he didn't need to."

I thought about that and about Gerald assessing my departure as a clean outcome, filing it away, moving on to the next thing. I also thought about Dominic on the other side of it, managing grief he probably didn't fully understand, running a pack, trying not to think about the space I left behind.

And about Ethan being born into a story Gerald had already closed.

"I want to be clear about something," I said.

Dominic looked at me.

"I understand now that the conversation I overheard was not what I believed it was." I held his gaze. "That doesn't make seven years disappear. That doesn't make Ethan's life disappear, the years I did alone, the parts that were hard in ways I'm not going to list right now." I paused. "I'm not saying any of this to punish you. I'm saying it so we are both clear about what is on the table."

"I know what's on the table," he replied. "I'm not asking you to make it disappear. I'm asking you to let me be present for what comes next."

The room held that for a moment.

"Okay," I said.

He nodded once. Then: "What is he like?"

I knew immediately who he meant.

The smile came before I could stop it, which was mildly annoying. "Opinionated," I told him. "Obsessed with pasta, negotiates everything through third parties. He once got Miriam to ask me if he could have ice cream for breakfast by presenting her as an independent consultant with a formal recommendation."

Something moved across Dominic's face, complicated, layered, not fully readable.

"He sounds like me," he said.

"He sounds nothing like you," I replied.

Dominic looked at me. Then something happened to his expression that I had not seen on it before, not yesterday, not in the bathroom, not in seven years of memory. Something that was almost, almost, a smile.

Not quite…but close enough that I felt it land.

We sat in Richard's study in the quiet of the morning, the threat of Gerald still fully intact outside this room, Ethan safe in Los Angeles with Rowan's eyes on the building, the pack council meeting set for this morning, nothing resolved, nothing simple.

But we were in the same room… Facing the same direction.

That was nothing.

Dominic's phone buzzed on the desk. He glanced at it.

His expression closed immediately. Whatever the almost-smile had been, it was gone.

"The council meeting," he said, standing. "It's moved up. Aldric called it himself." He looked at me. "He's bringing Erik."

I stood. "Why would Aldric bring his own son to a meeting about Gerald's network?”

Dominic picked up the phone and looked at the message again.

"That," he said quietly, "is exactly the right question.”