Semua Bab The Alpha who was never mine: Bab 101 - Bab 110

Harper had told her to go out before she drove her insane. Harper was at home recovering and she spent most of her time sitting by her side helping her around. The party was at a house three blocks from campus that Elena had been to twice before, in the first year when things were simpler. She walked through the front door with Lila and several people near the entrance turned to look at her. She recognized the scrutiny and kept moving. Lila put a cup in her hand almost immediately. “You don’t want to be here,” “I just walked through the door,” Elena replied. “And you are already looking at it like you want to go back through it,” Lila answered cheerfully, steering her toward the kitchen. “Drink that. Talk to people. You are allowed to exist in public.” Elena drank and let Lila pull her into a conversation with two girls from her sociology seminar. Some of the people at the party had seen Vivian’s post. She could tell by the sideways glances and the whispers near the wall

Elena hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she sat down at the dining table. The chef Alexander had hired left her meals every evening and, after everything that had happened over the last few weeks, eating had become one of the few normal parts of her day. She picked up her fork and took another bite while scrolling through her phone. The housekeeper passed through the room briefly to collect a tray from earlier before disappearing back into the kitchen. The food tasted fine. Maybe a little bitter, but she barely noticed it. She was halfway through the meal when a sharp pain hit her stomach. Elena paused and lowered her fork. The pain faded almost immediately. She frowned and pressed a hand against her abdomen. Maybe she had eaten too quickly. She reached for her water and took a drink. The second wave was worse. A gasp caught in her throat as pain twisted through her stomach and spread upward into her chest. Elena pushed her chair back and stood. Her breathing became uneven

The private investigator had cost her nearly thirty thousand dollars and three weeks of patience she did not have.Three separate firms had failed before she found him. The investigator did. He delivered his findings on a Tuesday morning , he found photographs, timestamps, phone records, location data and Mona read every page twice before she made a single call.The trail led to Henrik.The same man Alexander Hale had spoken to privately at Carlos’s funeral, briefly, on the path away from the grave, before Henrik had peeled off toward a black sedan and disappeared. Most people would have ignored it. Mona had not.Her driver found Henrik’s vehicle near a parking structure on Mercer Street the following afternoon and blocked the exit. Mona stepped out and waited. Henrik recognized her immediately. Neither of them bothered with pleasantries.Mona opened the file and held up the first photograph. Henrik standing beside Alexander at the cemetery.“You know Alexander Hale,” Mona remarked.“

Elena was awake when Alexander entered the bedroom. She was sitting against the headboard with a book open in her lap, although she clearly had not been reading it. Her attention shifted to him immediately. One look at his face was enough to tell he had useful information from his investigations.“You found something.” She asked Alexander sat beside her on the bed. “I found who was behind it.”Elena straightened. The faint color that had returned to her face over the last few days disappeared again. “Who?”“Vivian.”She leaned back against the headboard and rubbed her forehead. Vivian’s face flashed through her mind. The threats. The hostility. The hatred she never bothered hiding.“I knew it.” She spat Then lowered the book onto the blanket. “I forgot to tell you something. Vivian came here. A week ago. She came to the house and found me alone.”Alexander stiffened. His jaw tightened. Elena watched the anger and disbelief move across his face simultaneously. “What.”“She threatened

Vivian Mrs. Cross did not knock. The housekeeper barely had time to announce her before she was already striding through the front door and down the hallway. Vivian heard the footsteps approaching and immediately knew something was wrong. A moment later the sitting room door swung open and Mrs. Cross entered and stopped in the center of the room. Vivian set her coffee cup onto its saucer. “Mrs. Cross.” “You recognized that address.” Vivian’s expression remained unchanged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mrs. Cross scoffed. “Yes, you do. The day Detective Marsh came to my house with that notebook. The day he showed us the address where Carlos’s phone was last detected. You recognized it. You looked at it twice. Then you handed it back and told him you didn’t know it.” “Mrs. Cross—” “Don’t.” The sharpness in her voice cut Vivian off immediately. “I have spent weeks searching for answers about my son. Then I discover the woman sitting beside me that day recognized the