The Alpha Men's Secret Club 5(3)
She was nonplussed.
“Why don’t you show yourself behind that obvious two-way mirror?” He crossed his arms. “Or do you think I’m too hot for you to handle without a barrier?”
Was he flirting with her? No, he couldn’t be.
Could he?
Alyssa pressed a button and the two-way mirror dissolved into a glass.
“I’m here,” she said. “I’m repeating my question.”
“Yes, I understood you the first time. You said, ‘If you understand me, please raise your hand’.”
“I didn’t say ‘hand’.”
“Close.”
“So you did understand me.”
“Of course. That’s how it is.”
“Are you a soul trapped in a tiger’s body when you are in that state?”
“Define ‘trapped’.”
She remembered he was a professor of Psychology. So he was playing with her.
He added, “Provided you actually believe in the concept of a soul. Are you religious, Alyssa Foley?”
She was trying very hard not to stare at his genitals. “No.”
Who was the interrogator here?
“Then why do you use the word ‘trapped’? Is your subconscious trapped in this role of your own making? Does it wear you down to be constantly at the other end of the stick? How many people have you tortured in the name of your country?”
Unbelievable.
Well, she was a seasoned interrogator and he was not going to get to her – psychologist or not.
She said, “I asked you a question. You can interpret it any way you want.”
“So you’d psychoanalyze everything I said? The short answer to your question is that I’m not ‘trapped’, Alyssa Foley. I’m liberated. Perhaps this body you see right here is the real prison. Perhaps my natural state is the beast.”
She couldn’t decide if he was pulling her leg.
“Can you transform at will?” she asked.
“Or at the behest of others, obviously, even though my subconscious is unwilling.”
“Good.” No way he was going to get under her skin. “Because we’re going to test how you react to different stimuli.”
3
Kate Penney was a woman with a mission. She stared out of the window – anxiously, purposefully. Her senses were enhanced for some reason or other, and perhaps it had to do with the little entity growing inside her womb.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Ms. Penney?” asked Hector from upfront.
“I’m sure.”
Kate caressed her rounded belly. There was a baby bump all right, one that she couldn’t hide any longer. She thought of all the possible repercussions and set her mouth in a thin, grim line.
She would do anything for this baby.
Anything.
The limousine, now at her every beck and command, cruised to the mansion which had brought along all their troubles in the first place.
*
It was great that Aaron Mitchell agreed to see her despite all the drama they were all entwined in. Of course, now that Rust was cleared of his son Teddy’s murder, Aaron had warmed up to the prospect that neither she nor Rust was the enemy.
The forbidding gates swung open again, and the limo purred into the compound. Sufficient time had passed for the reporters not to be camped outside this mansion.
Once inside, it was Aaron himself who opened the front door. He was quite unlike any billionaire she had ever met. Not that she was in the business of meeting billionaires on a regular basis. She remembered his kindness to her on the night of his son’s murder and her chest warmed.
Perhaps he would help her.
“Kate,” he acknowledged her.
“Aaron. Thank you for seeing me.”
“Not at all.” He showed her in. “I hear you’ve made yourself at home in the O’Brien manor.”
“The house is empty without Rust and his parents. I don’t think of it as home. I know I didn’t get the chance to tell you earlier, but I’m sorry about your son.”
Aaron shook his head. His handsome face was lined. He had aged five years since Kate last saw him on the night of the rave. She remembered the ebullient billionaire and philanthropist she had seen on TV when she was growing up, and decided that this was an older, wiser and sadder man.
“He pissed off the wrong person too many,” he said. “But please . . . you’ve come here about the living, not to dreg up old wounds about the dead. This is about Rust, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Kate took a seat.
“You’re pregnant,” Aaron observed.
“Yes.”
His face grew grave. “This is not a good thing right now. You do know that, right?”
“I do know that if the FBI finds out, they would want a piece of the baby.” It sounded horrible, and she cringed at the mental image of it. She met his eyes. “That’s why I’m coming to you now. I’ve thought long and hard about everything. I can’t stand not knowing what’s going on in that place in New Mexico, or wherever the hell he really is. I don’t know what they are doing to Rust and his parents.”