Chapter 155 The Real Puppet Master

Isabella’s words hit two people at once. Her mother, and her brother.

For a second the whole hallway went quiet. The carts, the nurses, the buzzing lights, all of it dropped away. There was just his sister’s voice going around in his head.

Serena helped set Eira up. Serena picked the drug. Serena found the guy.

"Say that again," Alpha Sebastian said. It came out as almost nothing.

He remembered that night. The cold water. Eira white as the sheets, soaked through, so weak she could barely stand.

Luna Margaret grabbed her daughter’s arm. "Why are we only hearing this now? If you’d told us Serena was behind it, your father never would’ve gone after some stranger. You wouldn’t have spent all that time locked up."

"Because she used me." Isabella’s regret was real, just too late. " She was always buying me stuff, taking me shopping. Eira never bought me a thing. So yeah, I figured Serena was the one. If I’d known every dollar came straight out of Sebastian’s own account, I never would’ve gone along with it."

She turned to her brother.

"I’m not lying this time. Setting Eira up so you’d catch her and file, that part was me. I’ll own it. But the pills, the drink, the man? That was all Serena. She walked me through every step. She even told me not to suddenly start being nice to Eira, because the two of us never got along and Eira would see it coming."

Luna Margaret’s eyes lost their focus for a second.

"I’ll tell you one thing," she said to Alpha Sebastian, flat. "Your sister isn’t sharp enough to plan all that on her own. Serena played this whole family. You included."

"Think about it. Since the day that woman got her hooks in you, has one single thing gone right?"

"The money’s gone. The project’s gone."

She let it sit there.

"And now Eira’s gone too."

Money. His career. His mate. The three things a man builds his life on, and all three went down at once.

But it was the last one that knocked the air out of him.

Eira’s gone too.

Money he could make back. A company he could build again. But a mate bond, once it’s dissolved, stays dissolved. There’s no filing to undo it. Even the woman covering her lectures had said it flat out. Eira had to be all the way done, or she never would’ve left this quietly.

Alpha Sebastian had always known the worst thing he ever did was mate her and never touch her. She’d wanted a kid. He’d been too cold for that, too. Too cheap, even.

He never laid a hand on her. Then he almost let a stranger do it for him.

His eyes went red.

"So use it on her," Isabella said. "Hold it over Serena’s head. She doesn’t pay back every dollar, I testify. I’ll put her in a cell. She can write you a check from prison, I don’t care."

There wasn’t a shred of guilt in her. Just the money. Three hundred grand a month. If I could claw back even part of that... She’d finally be somebody. She could walk into a room full of her friends and dare a single one of them to whisper that her own brother didn’t love her, that’s why she never had nice things.

The thought put a smile on her face, right up until it pulled at her cheek. God, that slap had landed like a brick.

This is all on Serena. She’s the one who scrambled his head.

"Mom, my face is killing me. Have the desk call me a car, I want somebody to look at it."

"It’s a slap, Isabella. You’ll live." Luna Margaret didn’t even glance over.

Isabella dropped onto a row of waiting-room chairs with a huff, hand pressed to her cheek, making sure every nurse who walked past caught how wronged she was.

She’d been cleared ten minutes ago. Serena was the one still back there getting stitched up. Isabella could’ve gotten up and gone home anytime she wanted. She just wasn’t going to. Not after that slap.

Let him make it up to me. He owes me.

Alpha Sebastian barely heard any of it. He’d sunk onto a chair at the end of the row, phone loose in his hand, eyes on the floor. It buzzed. He didn’t look.

Luna Margaret sat down and gently worked the phone out of his fingers.

"Give me that. You’re in no shape to talk to anybody." Her voice went soft, which for her was rare. "I’ll handle the calls. Just sit a minute."

He was too hollowed out to argue. He gave her the passcode without looking up and let his head fall back against the wall.

That was all she needed.

"Come on." She pulled Isabella up by the arm. "Let’s go find a nurse and get more ice on that cheek before it swells."

Isabella brightened and went along, finally getting the fuss she’d been fishing for. Luna Margaret walked her a little way down the hall, over toward the nurses’ station, until they were well out of Alpha Sebastian’s line of sight.

The ice was never the point.

Luna Margaret opened his banking app and went straight to the transfers.

Line after line. Wire to Serena Winthrop.

First of every month, going back years. Same name, same day, all under real names, all dated. The kind of record a court could read straight off the page.

Her jaw set. She hit record on the screen and let it run, catching every line, even the small ones tucked between the big transfers.