Two years is long enough for this to be unrelated to what happened to Reyna. Now I just need to figure out what that is.
I scan through the police file. There’s not a lot of information there, which is unsurprising, considering this is the Southside branch and they’re chronically understaffed and underfunded. But then I see something that makes me straighten from my slouched position on my chair.
Disappearance possibly related to Sorel family.
Fuck.
It just so happens that Reyna’s attempted rapist is involved with the big crime family we’re trying to take down? Small fucking world.
It makes a chill run down my spine when I remember the fact that the Sorel family was interested in Reyna, too.
I need to find out more about them.
We know they make omegas disappear, but this is the first time I’ve heard about them making alphas disappear.
I spin my chair to face my other set of monitors and get to work digging. After hours of finding absolutely nothing, I feel like I want to bang my head against the desk. I feel a headache starting to form, but I know I won’t be able to get any sleep right now, not when I haven’t made any progress.
I normally have a terrible time falling asleep anyway. I much prefer work to being paralyzed in my dreams.
I reach under my desk and pull out an energy drink. Might as well continue working, then.
I crack it open and take a healthy swig before turning back to my screens.
The Sorel family seems to be shrouded in mystery. I didn’t know anything about them until Stone went undercover and mentioned the name as a group of interest for the case. They must be hiding their tracks somehow. Everyone has some sort of internet presence these days.
Which means they must be somewhere on the dark web, if I’ve been unable to find them so far.
If my setup weren’t air tight, I know going onto the dark web would be stupid, considering it would probably get the pack house’s address stuck on a list somewhere. Luckily, I know what I’m doing.
I go down a rabbit hole, working backwards from The Warehouse and trying to figure out if I can trace the abnormalthings that were happening in that establishment recently back to any one group.
That’s when I find myself staring at what looks to be a grainy livestream-style video of some sort of fighting ring. It looks like some sort of preview video, some incentive to cough up some money to get something better.
I take another gulp of my energy drink, the caffeine and excitement of possibly making some headway buzzing through my veins.
Two blurs pop up on the screen, launching themselves at each other. It takes me a second to figure out what I’m looking at, but when I figure it out, the leftover berry flavor of my energy drink turns sour.
It’s two alphas. Two very, very, very feral alphas that are obviously on some sort of drugs. Probably a whole cocktail of them. Even in the grainy video, I can see the wildness in their eyes and in their vicious attacks. They barely have any humanity left.
How in the world did they end up like that?
Fuck, I should be recording this shit. This is insane. It’s one thing to have the fighting rings that Stone went to when he was undercover, it’s a totally different thing to have feral alphas fighting in a death cage.
A few seconds after I start screen recording, my computer screen flickers and then it crashes.
My room is dark, except for the first hints of sunshine peeking through my curtains.
“Shit!” I curse under my breath, standing up so suddenly that it sends my chair crashing to the floor. I run my hands through my hair, pulling at it until I feel the burn of my scalp.
I thought I covered my tracks well enough, but I must’ve done something to trigger whatever cybersecurity systems they have in place. This only means one thing. They have a fucktonmore money than you’d expect a single Southside gang to have, even if they’re well involved in the illegal drug trade.
This is a lot bigger than we thought.
I try rebooting my computer and checking how much damage was done.
“Thank God,” I mutter under my breath, when it looks like everything is fine. I’ll have to run longer diagnostics to be sure, but it looks like I’m in the clear.
I check the folder where I keep all my screen recordings and an actual grin tugs at my lips for the first time all night.