Alle Kapitel von The Alpha's Lost Mate.: Kapitel 11 – Kapitel 20

Vivienne Steele"You're hovering, Gerald."He stopped beside the mantelpiece as he looked at me with that pleasant face he kept ready for exactly these moments. "I'm grieving, Vivienne. Same as everyone.""You're watching the room though," I uttered. "There's a difference…And you know….” He smiled. "Old habit.""Yes," I said. "It is."He held my gaze for a moment, decided there was nothing useful to extract from this particular exchange, and moved away toward Councillor Aldric. I watched him go and then I set my glass down and turned back to the room.The guests were thinning now. Staff were collecting plates and glasses with the quiet efficiency of people who understood that the work of grief was also logistical. Outside the windows, the afternoon had gone flat and grey and the estate grounds looked exactly the way they always looked after something significant had happened in this house, which was completely indifferent.I had lived here for thirty-four years. I

Dominic Steele"I need everything," I told Lena. "Who knew she was coming, who had access to her contact details, who on the staff has been here long enough to have history with Gerald. All of it."Lena did not write anything down. She never did. She looked at me with the particular focus she brought to things that mattered, nodded once, pulled her phone from her pocket."How fast?" she asked."An hour ago," I replied.She left without another word. That was one of the things I valued most about Lena. She did not require explanation, motivation, or context beyond what was necessary to do the job. She simply moved.I closed the door to Richard's study, the room I had been using since the gathering ended, walked to the window, stood there without looking at anything outside it.Sophie's voice in the bathroom this morning was still in my ears. Not the argument, not the part where she told me to get out. The part before that, when her voice had dropped and cracked slight

Margaret Harrow"Thomas, the glasses on the east table need collecting," I told him as he passed me in the corridor. "Don't leave them sitting. It looks untidy.""Yes, Mrs. Harrow."He moved off. I watched him go with the mild satisfaction of a woman who had learned that a well-run house required constant small corrections. People left to themselves became careless. That was simply the nature of people.I collected my own tray from the side table, slid three empty glasses onto it, and moved toward the reception room. The gathering had wound down fully now, the last of the guests gone, the villa settling into its after-event quiet. This was the part of my job I found most straightforward. The duration was managed. The after was just restoration.I had been restoring this house for fifteen years.I knew every room's particular disorder. I knew which surfaces collected dust the fastest, which corridor lights flickered in winter, which staff members needed reminding, and whic

Sophie Steele"I'm not going to knock twice."I pulled the door open. Vivienne stood in the corridor with a white envelope in her hand, dressed already, composed already, the kind of woman who was never caught between states.She looked at me for exactly one second. Then she held the envelope out.I took it.She turned and walked back down the corridor without a word, her footsteps measured, fading.I looked down at the envelope in my hand.My name is in Richard's handwriting. The writing looked meticulous, slightly uneven, the handwriting of a man whose hands had been giving him trouble toward the end, compensating with slowness.I closed the door.I did not open it immediately. I stood with it in both hands, feeling the weight of it, which was light in the physical sense, heavier in every other sense. Richard had written this. Richard, who was in the ground now, who had tried his best in the quiet way that he did everything, had sat down at some point in his fina

Gerald Steele"She's gone," my assistant confirmed over the phone. "Left before five this morning, and took one bag.""Did she speak to anyone before leaving?""Not that we observed.""Thank you." I ended the call, set the phone face down on the breakfast table, and picked up my coffee.So…Margaret Harrow was gone. Severance paid, record sealed, removed from the equation with the particular efficiency that Dominic applied to problems he wanted handled quietly. No confrontation, no public record, just clean.I drank my coffee.The move was faster than I had anticipated. I had given Dominic credit for being sharp, but I had calculated that the threads between Mrs. Harrow, the payments, and the messages, would take him three days to assemble fully. He had done it in less than eighteen hours.I have revised my assessment of Lena considerably upward.The question now was not what had been lost. Mrs. Harrow was a line of communication, not the strategy itself. Losing a