His Secret Nest: Trapped by the Alpha Boss novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Basement Lab

The bay emptied in ten minutes.

Fletcher stood in the middle of the concrete with his phone in his hand.

"Anyone sheltering him shares his charge," Fenella read out loud. "So that's all of us, then."

"That's me," Fletcher said. "I'll make it clear it's only me."

He drove them back to Sewickley Heights with Maddie asleep across the back seat.

He spent the whole day in his study with the door shut, on the phone.

Through the floor Noel heard his voice getting colder every hour.

Noel ran bottles in the basement until he couldn't see straight.

At two in the morning he was still sitting on a stool under the fluorescent lights.

Thirty printouts lay on the bench in front of him.

The stairs creaked.

Fletcher came down barefoot, in gray sweatpants and an old Penn State T-shirt with a hole at the collar.

"You should sleep," he said.

"So should you."

"I'm the Alpha. We don't sleep. We brood."

He stopped at the bottom step, ten feet away, the way he always did.

Exactly where rule four kept him.

"The board meets at eight," he said. "Clay's called an emergency session."

"Over me."

"Over me. You're the excuse."

He came two steps closer and looked down at the printouts.

Eight. Six. Eleven. Seven.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"For what?"

"I don't know yet." He shook his head. "Something. My company did this. My brother's plant did this. Somebody I trusted did this, and I didn't see it."

His hair was in his eyes, and the hole in his shirt showed a stripe of collarbone.

For three years Noel had watched him across lobbies and elevator banks.

And now Fletcher was standing in his own basement apologizing, barefoot.

Noel stood up.

He walked the rest of the way.

Fletcher didn't move. He didn't breathe.

"Noel," he said. "Rule four."

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