Chapter 2: Chaotic Past

**Jake**

I sit on the stool in the little bar, staring at my phone, hoping the flickering screen will show me something different than the thoughts plaguing me. My thumb swipes down on the screen, and the messages I see there are the same as they were this morning.

“I’m sorry about your father. He was a good man,” they read.

“We’ll miss him. Stay strong,” others say.

And then, one I wish was just part of a dream. “You’ll be a good Alpha. He raised you right. Don’t worry.”

I sigh into the dank air of the room. Dad’s dead, and he left me his whole godd*mn kingdom. What am I supposed to do with that?

This morning, I had been just another guy, freshly graduated from college and about to start a big career in marketing. Now, I’m the Alpha of the North Side Pack. I’ve been left a throne I fear is too big to fill.

My father WAS a good man. Perhaps, even, he was the best. He had built his pack with his bare hands and created a business empire to fund it. My father was one of the wealthiest men in the nation, and he had chosen Cumberland as his residency.

But every kingdom has those who want to see it crumble.

I had come to visit my father in his loft for lunch as we had agreed the night before. He had said he wanted to talk to me about a few things. It was important, he’d said.

Then, when I came into the kitchen, I found him dead on the floor with a silver knife in his back. Normally, something like that wouldn’t have killed him, hurt him, sure, but not kill.

There was something about that knife that just wasn’t right. However, I didn’t get a chance to investigate further because a mere second later, one of his bodyguards came in and saw me staring at my father’s body. He called the cops, and I stayed to answer questions.

My father didn’t want bodyguards and said they weren’t necessary. But I had insisted.

This particular bodyguard, the one on duty that night, said that dear old Dad had asked him to leave the room so he could make a phone call. The guard had been gone less than five minutes.

In that time, someone had come in and stabbed my father, letting me come in and find him in a bloody heap.

There was no evidence or trace of who had done it. Whoever they were, they knew what they were doing.

The place had been wiped clean, with no trace of fingerprints or hair follicles or anything else that could have been traced back to the killer. It was spotless, just like how Dad liked it.

Then it finally dawned on me that, with Dad gone, it was up to me to handle things. In his absence, I had become an Alpha, just like that. The pack’s allegiance had shifted so easily that it left me unsettled.

My golden eyes had become silvery blue, much like my father’s.

I hate it. I hate all of it.

After all the phone calls and meetings, letting everyone know what had happened, I had finally had enough. I got up from my father’s desk, my desk now, and left without a word.

I walked for what seemed like hours before I finally found this little hidden gem.

It’s quiet here, the music down to a low hum, and only a handful of customers throughout the whole place.

The bartender had seemed friendly when I walked in, but she seems preoccupied with something now. Instead of the martini I had asked for, she gave me a whiskey on the rocks. Not exactly my choice of drink, but it will do.

I take the drink without mentioning the mix-up and sip it greedily. D*mn, I needed this.

The bartender stares at me as I take the drink, waiting for me to ask something else. I slam the drink down a little too hard on the wooden countertop and look up at her.

“Can I help you with someth…” my voice trails off as I look into her eyes. Funny, I hadn’t really noticed her eyes when I first walked in. But now, I can see that they are a spectacular shade of hazel with flecks of green driven throughout them.

For a moment, we both stare at each other, daring the other to speak first, to move, to blink, to do anything.

Then, a loud thump startles both of us out of our trance. I turn around and see that a rather intoxicated gentleman has passed out in his booth.

The woman huffs and sets down the glass she had been polishing. “D*mn it, Trace,” she says, stepping out from behind the counter.

I watch as she leaves, her black leggings fitting perfectly around the curve of her bottom. She picks up the slouched man, his forehead pressed into the tabletop, and sits him back up. The man now has a red mark on his head, quickly forming into a bruise.

Despite her distance from me, I can still hear her muffled curses, swearing at both the man and herself for letting him have about one too many.

When the man is propped out, she pulls out her cell and calls for a taxi. The fact that she is calling a taxi and not an Uber is not what makes me startled. No, rather, it’s the little blue, pill-like flip phone she has cupped into her palm. A flip phone.

I almost choke on my drink as she slaps it shut and promises the man a ride is coming to take his *ss home.

I hadn’t seen a phone like that since I was a kid, and even then, they weren’t that popular. Her phone looks like she pulled it from the early 2000s and slapped on a sky-blue case. The contraption even has a little antenna sticking out of the top, one that you have to pull out to use.

She walks back over to me, takes up her position at the bar, angrily wipes it down, and rinses out cups that have been sitting out too long. Her nose scrunches as she makes little huffing noises, her cheeks turning red.

“Are you okay?” I ask before I can think better of it.

She stops short in her vigorous scrubbing and looks up at me, almost as if she had forgotten I was there.

“What?” she asks, her voice too loud and cracking slightly.

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It just looks like you’re a bit upset.”

She sighs and wipes her brow with a damp rag. “No, you’re fine. I’m just a bit tired, is all. This is the third time in just as many days that Trace has come here and drank himself into a stupor. I’m surprised he isn’t huddled over a toilet every night.”

I look back at the unconscious man, red hair hanging in loose clumps around his sweating face. Just by his pale expression, I can tell he’s no stranger to a drink or two.

“Have you thought about cutting him off?” I ask, turning back to the woman.

She scoffs at me, her lips curling into an almost smile. “Of course I have! But Jeff says he’s good for business! Can you believe that? To be so caught up with money, you just forget about the decency of caring about other human beings?

“Then again, Trace is about half of Jeff’s income, so I can’t blame him entirely.”

She sighs and picks up her rag again, twirling it between her fingers.

“Don’t get a lot of people coming through here?” I ask her, taking another sip of my drink.

She shakes her head. “No, not really. But it can get pretty busy here on Saturday nights. Not a lot of people want to come walking down a gloomy alley at night.”

“And you do?”

“What makes you say that?”

I gesture to the room. “You come here every night, don’t you? Does that mean you enjoy hanging out in an alley?”

She laughs then and gives me a real, warm smile. “I suppose I do,” she says and pours me another drink.

“So,” she murmurs while picking up a used tissue from the counter. “I haven’t seen you around here before. You new?”

“New? To town? Or the bar?”

She chuckles. “Both.”

I shrug. “No, I was born and raised here in Cumberland. I haven’t been to this bar before, though. And you? Where are you from?”

Her eyes turn a glassy shade when I finish speaking, her face pale. Then, just as quickly as it came, her frown disappears and is replaced by a smile.

“Me? I’m from all over the place. Can’t keep me in one place for too long!”

Before I can say anything else, she takes up a pen and pad, running over to a couple who’s just walked in.

I laugh to myself, suddenly forgetting everything that’s brought me here tonight. As the woman serves the new arrivals, I can’t help but think that she, whoever she is, is someone worth getting to know.