The Alpha I Was Sent To Betray

Chapter 2: The Deal

Kieran

The FBI field office was a concrete box. Fluorescent lights. Recycled air. The particular shade of gray that existed solely in government buildings. They put me in an interrogation room and left me there for what felt like hours.

My left wrist itched. The patch, still in place. Still working. But the chemical sting was sharper now, a hot needle against my skin that meant my body was working overtime to keep me invisible and a headache was building behind my eyes.

The door opened. The woman from before—Agent Morales, she introduced herself—slid into the chair across from me. The granite man took position by the wall. Agent Reeves. I didn't look at him directly, my instincts wouldn't let me. Every time I tried, my gaze skittered away like water off a hot surface.

"You've been busy, Mr. Voss," Morales said, opening a thin folder. "Graduated three weeks ago. No employment history. No criminal record." She paused. "Until tonight."

A printed screenshot slid across the table. The surveillance feed. Timestamped. Watermarked. My digital fingerprint all over it. Why didn't I just hide my location.

"This is a felony. Multiple felonies. You're looking at fifteen years."

The room tilted. "I didn't—" My voice came out thin. "I didn't know what it was. I thought it was a crypto scam. The encryption was bad. Like, really bad. Have you considered upgrading your—"

Reeves made a sound low in his throat. Not quite a growl, but close. The air pressure in the room shifted. I stopped talking.

Morales leaned forward. "Here's the situation. You're a ghost. No family, no connections, no one who'd notice if you disappeared—"

"My roommate would notice." She didn't acknowledge the interruption. Just kept going in that same calm, measured tone. "You're also a very talented hacker. Talented enough to crack encryption that should have taken a team of specialists weeks." Well that shouldn't have made me smile giventhe situation but what can I say.

She looked at me and the smile dissappeared then reached into the folder and slid another photo across the table.

The man in the picture was striking. Dark skin, sharp jaw, close-cropped black hair with precise lines. His eyes were deep green—almost human, but with something predatory and watchful lurking behind them. A stillness that wasn't quite stillness.

Dante Moretti.

I knew the name. Everyone knew the name. Owner of Moretti Pharmaceuticals and Moretti Tech. Head of the Moretti family. A Wolf Alpha who'd built an empire on the backs of suppressants and scent patches and everything that kept people like me hidden.

Something low in my stomach tightened. Which was ridiculous given you could not have a stress response to a photograph. A headshot with murder eyes, sure, but still just a photo. Still just ink on paper. Apparently my body didn't because my patch itched.

"He's untouchable," Morales said. "We've been trying to build a case against him for years. His real records are kept on an air-gapped terminal in his private office. No network connection. No remote access."

She placed a small device on the table—a thumb drive, sleek and black, with a faint LED glow. "The only way to get to it is to physically be in that room." Silence.

"Ah, Why me?" My voice came out steadier than I felt. "You've got an entire agency. Trained agents. People who do this for a living." I gestured vaguely toward the granite silhouette in my peripheral vision. "Him, for example."

"Because," Morales said calmly, "Reeves wouldn't make it past the front door. The Moretti family screens everyone. And Alphas—real Alphas—recognize other Alphas instantly."

"Then send someone else. A Beta. A human. You must have—"

"We've tried sending agents before." Her voice didn't change. Still flat. Still administrative. "Four of them. One disappeared. One was returned unconscious with a note pinned to his chest." The room felt colder.

"The Morettis don't miss much." She let that settle before continuing. "Which means one of two things. Either they have a source inside the Bureau feeding them names, or their screening is good enough that a trained operative might as well walk through the front door waving a badge. Either way, I'm not risking another agent. Which is why you're sitting here, and why the only people in this room who know about this mission are me, Reeves, and now you." Her eyes met mine. "No one else knows. No one else will know."

"Then why are you risking me" I asked because this made no sense. They didn't answer, of course they couldn't what could they say we are sending you to your death and hoping you don't die. So I tried to processed this. A snitch inside the FBI. Or a security system so good it ate trained operatives for breakfast. Neither option was comforting.

And the fact that she was telling me this—the fact that I now knew something the rest of her agency didn't—meant either she trusted me to be useful, or she trusted me to be expendable. But I'm pretty sure it's the latter.

"You're unremarkable on paper," Morales went on. "No job history. No affiliations. You're exactly the kind of person a corporation like Moretti would overlook."

Her gaze dropped—briefly—to my wrist. Not long enough. But long enough.

"And more importantly, you know how to stay invisible." My blood went cold. She knew.

No. Wait.

If she knew—if she actually knew what I was—that would have already been added to the list of crimes stacked against me to blackmail me into this suicide mission of theirs. If she knew, she wouldn't just be holding it over my head quietly. She'd have said it out loud. Unless she wasn't sure. Unless she was fishing. Unless the glance at my wrist was just a glance, and my guilty conscience was filling in the blanks. I forced my hands to stay flat on the table and not touch my wrist. I forced my breathing to stay even.

"We get you in as low-level IT," Morales said. "You fix printers. You keep your head down. And when you find an opening, you plug that drive into the terminal." She folded her hands. "You do this, and the charges disappear. Clean slate."

"And if I say no?"

Morales smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. It didn't even try.

"Then you disappear, Mr. Voss." Her tone was the same one she'd used to talk about the encryption. Administrative. Clinical. "No record. No trace. No roommate filing missing person reports."

Jamie. She was threatening Jamie, and she sounded like she was filing paperwork.

I looked at the thumb drive. Then at the photo. Dante Moretti's green eyes stared up at me—unreadable and magnetic and dangerous.

"Think about it," Morales said, standing. "You've got until morning."

She left the photo on the table and I sat alone in the gray room, the thumb drive glowing faintly in the fluorescent light, and tried to remember how to breathe.

Jamie's face flashed behind my eyes. His voice, yelling my name. My glasses on the floor. Our ruined apartment.

Fifteen years in prison.

A den of Wolves.

I reached for the photo. Dante Moretti stared back at me, and my thumb brushed the edge of his jawline—just once—before I dropped it like it burned.

Ridiculous. He was a photograph. He wasn't even in the room.

But my wrist was still itching, and my stomach was still tight, and somewhere in the back of my mind a voice whispered: This is not going to end well.

Curiosity killed the cat.

I was really starting to hate that quote. Because I may not know about that cat but my curiosity will either get me in prison or the den of wolves. What the f**k am I going to do.