Chapter 8—Shadows of the Past

Celeste's POV

Amaris did not move from where she was standing. Her eyebrow was already up before I finished asking the question.

"The Carter names," I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could manage. "Aiden and Jayden Carter. Why are they listed in the company files?"

Amaris crossed the room, leaned across the desk and tapped the section directly below the names I was staring at. "Read the part underneath."

I looked down.

Torren Grey. Ashen Hollow Representative for Alphas Aiden and Jayden Carter.

I read it twice to make sure I was reading it right.

Then I sat back slowly and let out a breath I did not realise I was holding.

They were clients. Major ones, by the weight of the file and the number of accounts attached to the name. But they were not walking through that door themselves. Torren Grey was. Whoever Torren Grey was, it was not Aiden or Jayden Carter and right now that was the only thing that mattered.

"The Carter Alphas are significant clients," Amaris said, straightening up. "Global accounts.

Their schedules mean they don't handle direct management themselves so Torren takes every meeting, every call, every correspondence on their behalf." She tilted her head slightly. "You'll be dealing with him. Not them." A pause. "Are you alright? You went somewhere just now."

"I'm fine." I closed the file and set it down. "I'm sorry. I don't know what that was."

She studied me for a moment longer than I was comfortable with. Amaris missed nothing. It was one of the things that made her excellent at her job and occasionally exhausting to be managed by.

"Do you know them?" she said finally. "The Carters."

"No." The word came out clean and steady, which surprised me a little. "I don't know them. It was nothing, I promise."

She held my gaze a beat longer than comfortable, the way Amaris did when she was deciding whether to push. Then she nodded once. "Alright." She picked up the folder from the edge of my desk and tucked it under her arm. "Do you want a coffee before the eleven o'clock?"

"Please. Yes. Desperately."

Amaris almost smiled. "I'll have Kyla bring one up." She moved toward the door, already onto the next thing before she was even out of the room, and I waited until her footsteps faded all the way down the corridor before I let my shoulders drop.

I sat back in my chair and stared at the ceiling for exactly three seconds, which was all the time I was going to allow myself to feel anything about this.

Aiden and Jayden Carter. Of all the firms in all the cities in Grissera, of course they were clients here. Of course they were.

I took a slow breath. Then another one.

Torren Grey. I was going to be just fine as long as it was Torren Grey.

I picked the file back up. Found Torren Grey's contact sheet and wrote his number down in neat, deliberate handwriting.

Professional. Detached. That was how I was going to handle this. That was the only way I was going to handle this.

I could do professional and detached. I did professional and detached my entire career and I was not about to stop now just because two names on a page made my chest feel strange.

The door swung open so fast it hit the wall.

"Why," Vaelina said, dropping into the chair across from my desk without being invited and crossing her arms like she owned the room, "did you not tell her who those Alphas are?"

I stared at her. "How do you know what we were talking about?"

"Because I was standing right outside the door the whole time." She said it without a single trace of guilt or remorse. "I was going to knock. And then I heard the Carter name and I thought, that sounds like something I need to hear, so I stayed. You would have done the same."

"You eavesdropped."

"I prefer to call it listening from a respectful distance." She tilted her head without an ounce of shame. "Out of love, Celeste. And a very deep personal investment in knowing everything that is happening in this office at all times."

I pressed my lips together hard. The laugh came out anyway, short and completely involuntary, and Vaelina pointed at me across the desk like I proved every point she ever made.

"It's not funny," I said.

"It's a little funny." She leaned forward on the desk with both arms. "Celeste. Those are the men who rejected you in front of your entire pack. They turned up in your client files on a random Tuesday morning and you just sat there and told Amaris you don't know them. That is a lot of composure for someone I personally watched cry into a phone few weeks ago."

"Because I don't want anyone here knowing about that." I set the file down. "I came here to work. Not to be the girl with the dramatic pack history."

"You are already that girl though. That part happened regardless."

"Vaelina."

"I'm just saying it is already a fact regardless of whether you talk about it." She sat back and crossed her arms, studying me with that look of hers that said she was not quite done. "I do get it though. You want to keep things separate here. Work is work."

"Exactly." I picked the file back up pointedly. "Work is work and my past is my past and those are two completely separate things that I am very intentionally keeping apart." I looked at her over the top of the folder. "So I am asking you nicely, as my friend, to please leave it there."

She went quiet for a second.

With Vaelina that was never a good sign. She went quiet the way people did when they were taking a short run up before saying the exact thing you were hoping they would not say.

"Okay but." She tilted her head to one side, slowly, with the energy of someone who already knew they were about to cause a problem.

"Why are you keeping your history with the Carter twins a secret from everyone here?"