Page 496 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection

Bravo starts shaking his head.

“That’s not on the table,” Myles says. “Detective D’Andrea has a badge. Logan and Mac have licenses. Bravo and Henry take government contracts. None of you are killing anyone.”

It takes me a moment to hear what he’s said. I narrow my eyes at him.

Myles lifts his head and meets my gaze for a moment. His eyes are more lupine than anything Drew’s “Wolfpack” could have imagined.

They might fancy themselves hunters but there’s a real hunter among us and it’s not any of them.

“Did he just say what I think he said?” Max asks in my ear.

“Yes,” I murmur. “We need to have a word with him.”

“Uh-huh,” Max agrees.

The meeting breaks up slowly. Mac collects Livvy and Bren and heads out to open his daycare. I offer Theo our bed since he looks like he’s about to fall over but he says he’d rather sleep in his own bed. When he declines, Myles takes me up on the offer and trudges upstairs to sleep. Bravo asks if Yummy can stay the day with us before leaving to coordinate surveillance of the other two Wolfpack members with Henry.

Leaving me in my office staring at Sutter.

He leans back in his chair, crossing his long legs in front of him. He’s wearing business clothes today: a tailored suit, crisp white button-down, and a red tie. He should be heading into a marketing meeting for probiotic yogurt or something, not sitting in my office asking the price of a contract on a man’s life.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” he asks after enduring my scrutiny for a minute.

“We didn’t exactly get off on the best foot, did we?” I respond. “I care about Blunts. For all its flaws, it’s my second home. It’s full of the people I love. My family. I feel a very personal sense of responsibility toward the house submissives. Threatening todisband my family and rob my friends of their employment and place of belonging doesn’t sit well with me.”

Sutter chuckles. “I could tell. I notice you did something about it, though. Faster than I expected.”

“Did you know about the Wolfpack when you threatened me at the museum?”

“I threatened the club, not you. I’m all for dramatics but let’s keep things in perspective. And no, I didn’t know about this bullshit ‘wolfpack,’ as they call themselves but I knew that some of the Doms at Blunts had very unhealthy attitudes. If you’d asked me for a list—which I notice you didn’t do—Drew and Emmett would have been on it.”

“After youthreatened me,” I say emphatically. “I wouldn’t have trusted you to tell me the truth about who you thought was a problem.”

“Do you trust me now?”

“No but I’ll take that list.”

“Ten’s on it,” Sutter says, nodding at the door Ten exited out of.

I nod. “I’m aware of his issues. We’re addressing them. Next.”

“Karl Van Haas and the man who calls himself Shedo, although I believe his real name is Jun Hayakawa, on the committee. Among the general members, Cole Ward and Hart Garibaldi. They all made disparaging remarks about age-play and the people who practice it in Saoirse’s hearing.”

“I’m sorry they intimidated her,” I say as I write down the names. Karl and Shedo are no surprise. They’ve been in Ten’s corner all along. Hart’s an unknown. He’s a junior member, only at the club on weekends, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a one-on-one conversation with him. He failed to protect Shannie from the Wolfpack, so he was already on my shitlist. Cole, on the other hand, I’ve scened with more than once, although all beforeI met Emily, and he was on my goddamn paintball team just a few days ago. If he had issues with age-play, he could have said something.

“Although Karl and Shedo are resistant to age-play, they’re not bad Doms,” I tell Sutter. “I think highly enough of Karl to trust him with the discipline of a submissive who is still exploring the depths of her masochism. I don’t know Hart very well but I already have concerns about him that need to be addressed. Cole’s a friend and I’ll have a damn word with him.”

Sutter nods. “Not everyone will accept age-play.Iaccept that. But there needs to be greater tolerance. Saoirse was just starting to let her little out and the attitude of the Blunts’ Doms towards age-play set her back months. She was so repressed when she met me, that it took more than a week for her to introduce me to her stuffies. During that time, she stayed over at my place several times and I took her on a weekend to England. Can you imagine any little being without her stuffies for that long? Just because they made her too afraid to show me—me, herdaddy—her littleness for fear of being judged.”

Knowing how important Peter Aloha Bunny and her other stuffies are to Emily, no I can’t. It makes my chest ache to know that my club brothers did that to Saoirse with their cruel, careless words.

“I can only apologize on behalf of Blunts and promise that there is change coming. It might not be as fast as you want but it is happening.”

Sutter steeples his hands in front of him and taps his index fingers against his chin. “For all that we got off on the wrong foot, I believe you, Logan. And I was surprised at how quickly you started cleaning house. Surprised and impressed. So maybe we can agree to a stay of execution. Let’s call it a probationary period.”

As tempted as I am to use my pen like a dart and see if I can stick a bullseye right between his eyes, I ask calmly, “How long would this probationary period last?”

He spreads his hands. “Up to you. You’re the catalyst of change.”