Unknown.

As soon as I said that, an uncomfortable silence settled inside the elevator, which was only thawed a couple of seconds later when my PA glanced into his iPad one more time, shook his head stiffly at me and said in that lifeless monotone that he always speaks in;

"That is false."

I stilled, felt my heart drop and then turned around slowly to cast him a glare.

"False as in..."

"The news is untrue. Only one of Late Beta Malakai’s daughters is dead."

Dead? Malakai, dead?

That was impossible. I mean, what could bring down a man of such calibre and power if not one of his usual schemes? If not him himself?

I was however about to respond when the elevator suddenly dinged and pulled open. Mine and my PA’s eyes met for a second before I stepped out, signalling to him that the conversation would be returned to later.

We walked down the too perfect halls leading up to Alpha Frostclaw’s office, and at the same time, ignored the looks that his employees cast at us as we went. I could hear their hushed whispers and even some of their thoughts. But I ignored it all, focusing on the one important thing that brought me here— which was the contract.

I sighed.

"Good afternoon, Mr Valemont! It’s a pleasure to meet with you again today!"

I was forcefully pulled out of my thoughts when a silver-haired vixen walked up to me. Her eyes were a bright shade of... is that pink contact lens? And her lips, plump and full, a testament of fillers, moved slowly as her eyes trailed from my face to my very shiny shoes.

I can see that she is one of the people that keeps me in business!

"Alpha Frostclaw is in a meeting right now so I have been tasked with attending to you from now until about the next ten minutes, which is when he will be done with his current meeting." She continued in that overly high pitched voice and I let my eyes rake from the top of her head to her red very high heels and without a word, I nodded.

"So please, come with me!" She stated, leading the way to a sparsely decorated mini suite.

I watched her lead us. I also couldn’t help but notice the way she forcefully shook her backside until she began to appear like she was having a seizure. By the time we arrived at the suit and she turned around to usher us into the expensive looking sofas, I also noticed that the two buttons on the top of her blouse had been let loose and now, her bosoms looked like they were about to spill over.

I cocked my brow.

"Thank you Ms...?"

"Just call me Yvette," she rushed out airily, "that’s what everyone calls me by the way."

Again, I let my eyes rake the entire length of her body, taking in her youthful look and innocent doe eyes. Her lips were pressed into a thin line as she clasped her hands together, as if waiting for me to respond.

But I didn’t. I nodded once again.

"Now, can we start with the meeting?" My PA butted in, his voice laced with a tinge of irritation.

At his outburst, Yvette flinched. She seemed to fiddle around for a couple of seconds before she finally managed to find coherent words. With wide eyes, she rushed out; "Oh, I’m sorry! I just wanted... needed... you all to be comfortable."

"We are comfortable, thank you." I drawled, diffusing the tension in the air and not missing the way she beamed a smile at me. Her eyes seemed to lit up when she turned to look at me and in my mind, I couldn’t help but think that:

She must be stupid.

Maybe not plain stupid but just desperate as anyone with two functioning eyes could see that I am old— way too old for her to be batting her long lashes at and smiling coyly at.

Hell, I could even be her father!

She left the room only to return a couple of seconds later with a folder containing all the documents related to the contract, and with her eyes latched on mine, she dropped into the chair in front of me, crossed her ankles and began to speak;

"I spent the best part of the past two days working on that contract, and I hope that it is to your liking now."

Her words made me slowly lift my eyes to look at her only for a brief second before they caught on to the signature remark just at the top left side of one of the papers.

It read:

Jay, ensure that both parties agree to initiate a bidirectional, latency-minimized synchronization of all cross-functional data streams via a pseudo-deterministic, quantum-resilient abstraction layer (QRAL). Said layer shall operate under a dynamically adaptive, heuristically governed neural consensus mechanism, ensuring probabilistic integrity of all transcompiled data packets.

Now wait, I am sure that that didn’t make any sense to you right? RIGHT?

I am almost a hundred percent sure that you hadn’t even read through all of the words right?

And that was exactly what drew me in. Not just that but the manner in which the words were constructed, like it was a note directed only to a particular person named Jay... and if this girl, Yvette, was really the person who worked on this file, then she would’ve known not to include that in the documents being submitted to me.

She wouldn’t even have had the guts to refer to Alpha Frostclaw as Jay. Just Jay.

This was someone else entirely.

I turned to look at my PA whose eyes found mine as well. We didn’t even need to speak to communicate with each other, and a few seconds later, he turned the screen of his iPad to me, to an article where it was stated that a particularly well known woman named Leilani Sinclair was known for always referring to Alpha Frostclaw as Jay.

This was all hers.

She still worked here, and if I was right, she did so under the shadows while degenerates such as this one in front of me, claimed her works.

I forced the sweetest smile I could muster onto my face as I pointed to that statement at the top of the paper, and with my eyes glinting with mischief, I asked; "What does this mean?"

At my words, she stopped, smiled at me then looked into the sheets only to have her face losing color when she read and reread the words over and over again without understanding a word.

I smiled at her. "You didn’t do this."