LUCIANO’S POV I walked up the stairs from my office exhausted. It had been a long day of putting out fires and trying to placate everybody. The Mayor was being harder to handle than I anticipated. I walked onto my floor to see Arianna pacing and knotting her fingers like she was anxious about something. Did something happen on their day out? She and Ciara may have gotten into it again. I stared at her, trying to figure out what was wrong. “Arianna, are you okay?” I asked. She looked like she wanted to pounce. Like she had a million things to throw at me but instead she said thank you for the credit card and muttered something about paying it back. “It’s fine. I had it done when you started working. It was supposed to be a surprise but I felt you would need a means of payment on your outing.” Was that what she was worried about? It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. What was happening right now? I was looking forward to falling asleep while she told me about her day. I s
LUCIANO’S POV“I may poach your chef Luciano. He knows what he is doing.” Carter said while refilling his plate with eggs. I laughed at his assertion. Chef was not leaving his kitchen for anything. I had a feeling he would sell Arianna before he let anything happen to his kitchen. The thought made me smile. “Arianna may be able to help you with that.” Dave replied to Carter. “She and Chef are in a cold war.” “Where is Arianna this morning? Still can’t stand being around me, I see.” Carter said. I wished her absence was due to him. That would have been easy to handle. “She’s busy with our healer.” I answered. “The famous healer. I may have a few things to pick her brain on.” Carter said mid chew. Did he just admit to needing a healer or was that just a passing statement. I couldn’t deal with this right now. “Carter, before lunch why don’t I show you a few park businesses that Ice claw can help mystic moon benefit from.” Carter looked insulted by my idea but he masked it quickl
ARIANNA’S POV I hated that Luciano had to leave, It didn’t help that Clair was going with him. He just told me he loved me. We should be spending the day together and not giving Clair another chance to get into my head. Why couldn’t I just have a normal sister who loved me but didn’t always like me. My life would have been a little less hard with a normal sister. O well.I walked into Luciano’s office to keep Dave company. “I knew I would find you here.” I announced as I lifted his feet off the couch so I could sit. “Can I help you with something?” He was staring at the lower part of his leg now hanging off the chair. I blow him a raspberry and sink into the chair letting out a huge sigh. Dave’s eyes close again and he dumps his legs on my tigh with a smirk on his face. I smile realising that it wasn’t just Luciano who loved me, Dave did too. Not in the same way but I had a man who loved me and a friend who loved me too. Two people cared this much about me. I had never had that be
ARIANNA’S POVDave and I were giggling out of the kitchen at a joke Chef told. It was not even close to being funny, but I was quickly learning how to be on his good side. He had promised to save me some tacos. He was messing around with a recipe while we ate and I tried my hand at a compliment. It earned me a free taco that I didn’t have to hunt for. We were halfway out of the dinning room when I heard Luciano.“I’m almost home.”I turned around hoping to find him but he wasn’t there. That voice had not come from outside my head. Had it?“Are you okay?” Dave asked, noticing my disorientation. “Yea, I thought I heard something. It’s nothing.” I brushed it off and shook myself. I was hearing thimgs now? Just when I had settled into my new normal, I run mad. Comical if you ask me. “They are close. We should wait in the office.” Dave announced as he headed for the stairs.Did he hear the voice too? How did he know? I followed after him. “How do you know that?” I asked. He waved his c
LUCIANO’S POVSomeone better be dying for Andrew to pull me out of bed. It wasn’t too late but after the day I had, the last thing I needed was a fire to put out. I stormed into the office to find Andrew and Dave waiting for me. “Alpha Luciano.” “Andrew.” I greeted back. That was what passed as pleasantries between us. “So, what was so urgent it couldn’t wait till morning?” I asked both of them.“It’s Alpha Collin.” Andrew responded. His answer was confusing, last I checked Collin was back in the Appalachians putting his house in order. “I didn’t go looking, I was moving around like I usually do. Was at this lonely bar near the mountains and I over head a couple of wolves talking. They sounded bitter, insulted. Apparently the word Collin took back was that you insulted him at the convention and their park would not stand for it.” I sat upright in my seat. This did not sound good. “The wolves talking were pissed that Alpha Collin did not want a direct confrontation but instead
LUCIANO’S POV“Luciano! I was wondering where you were. I would have eaten through this table.” “Carter, Alex, Max, Ciara. Trust you all slept well.” “We did, thank you.” Alex answered. I wondered how her and Dave were doing. If she was in on this whole plot it would break my friend. Something suddenly occurred to me. “Max, how has your stay been so far?” He looked shocked that I addressed him directly. “It has been good, you have a lovely place.” He answered.“It is, don’t you get bored staying in the house all day. You never come out with us.” “Max can be shy, don’t grill the poor chap.” Carter interrupted. “It’ll be a shame if he didn’t enjoy his visit, considering you guys are leaving soon.” The table was suddenly quiet, even the sound of silver hitting china had stopped. “Are we leaving soon Luciano?” Carter asked with a sly smile on his face. “I was thinking, you’ve been away from your home long enough, and I keep dragging my feet. I can’t be the reason the mystic moo
ARIANNA”S POV“Who watches a movie without snacks?” I scoffed, staring at the monitors with multiple live footages playing simultaneously. “It’s not a movie, it’s security footage, and we just ate.” “Snacks are not food Daveson. Security footage, movie, we are still watching something.”He ignored me and focused on whatever it is he was fiddling with on the keyboard. I had been here so long and never thought we had security cameras. This place was filled with wolves who could sniff out an intruder before any camera would pick them up. What was the point?I spun my chair around continuously, giving myself a three sixty tour of the room. It was a small room with monitors about three office chairs and tables. The man we met had excused himself and given us the room for as long as we needed. Must be fun being the beta and not having to explain why you needed to look thruogh stuff. “What are you doing?” I asked Dave growing bored “You said this would be fun.”“I lied, you believed me?”
ARIANNA’S POV“You’ve been fiddling with that phone all day.” Luciano commented as we ate the leftovers I found.“It has decided to have a mind of its own.” Sarah just left after confirming there were no listening devices but a lot of files had been transferred out of Luciano’s computer. So we had that to deal with. “What can they do with the files they took?” I asked. He had been avoiding talking about it since she left. He had suggested we raid the fridge for leftovers. I had never seen him eat this late before. He was not even a fan of my late night meals, but tonight he was all for it. He was either thinking and processing or he was avoiding. “It was mostly account information and summaries. All that will tell them is how much cash we have liquidated and where the rest of our assets are. And what companies we are part of.” he sounded like he had gone through it in his head already.“Was it just the park account info?” I asked “Some of my personal accounts were on there but n