Chapter 56: The Trap is Set
The auto shop after hours held a different kind of silence. It wasn’t the peaceful quiet of the apartment; it was a thick, diesel-scented pause, heavy with the ghosts of engines and labor. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a sickly green pallor over the concrete floor stained with decades of oil.
Rhys sat in the worn leather chair in the corner office, the door shut against the cavernous main bay. The glow of a cheap, prepaid phone illuminated the sharp planes of his face.He’d bought it with cash twenty miles from home.
His personal phone lay on the desk beside him, face-up. A single text thread was open, his last message to Aurora an hour ago: Picking up a distributor.Be a while. Door locked?Her reply was instant: Yes.I made soup.
The simplicity of it, the domestic normality, was an anchor. He touched the screen once, a quick brush of his thumb over her words, then set it aside and picked up the burner.
Logging into the site felt like stepping back into a sewer. The garish interface, the pulsing notifications of available connections—it was a world of curated depravity.His gut churned. This was where he’d found her.Where she had been found.The irony was acid in his throat.
His fingers, broad and usually stained with grease, moved with unnerving delicacy over the tiny keyboard. He created a new profile.
Username: LilyInTheValley
Designation: Omega
Bio: New to all this.A little scared.I just want someone to talk to? Someone kind.He found the handle he’d memorized.ElenaX. No photo, but the bio was a masterpiece of predatory confidence: Alphas know.Betas pretend. You deserve a teacher.His lip curled.He could picture her, that smug twist of her mouth. He typed, his movements precise.LilyInTheValley: Hi. I’m sorry to bother you.Your profile says you’re a teacher? I… I think I might need one.I don’t understand any of this.He hit send. The message hung in the digital void.He leaned back in the chair, the leather creaking. The silence of the shop pressed in.The reply came faster than he expected. A notification pinged, hollow in the quiet room.ElenaX: Everyone starts somewhere, little one.What don’t you understand?
Rhys exhaled slowly. Hook set. Now to play it. He made his typing hesitant, full of misspellings he’d never normally make. LilyInTheValley: Everything. The way people talk on here. What they want. I feel like I’m speakin a different language. And everyone seems so… sure. ElenaX: They’re pretending. It’s all a performance. You seem real. That’s refreshing.
He could almost hear the condescending smile. He let a minute pass, building the illusion of a nervous girl chewing her lip.LilyInTheValley: I am real.Maybe too real. I got myself into a situation.With an alpha.It’s complicated.
ElenaX: Complicated how?Rhys stared at the screen, his eyes cold and flat. He was no longer in the shop.He was in the strategy. He channeled every shred of vulnerability Aurora had ever shown him, every whispered fear, and poured it into the fiction.
LilyInTheValley: He’s really possessive.Like, scarily so.But he’s not mine. I think he’s with someone else.Someone sweet.I didn’t know.I feel awful.
There was a longer pause this time.He imagined Elena on the other end, her interest sharpening.Drama. Weakness.A tangled knot she could pick at.It was her currency.
ElenaX: Possessive alphas are a dime a dozen. They love the idea of ownership, especially over something that isn’t theirs. It’s a power trip. Tell me about the sweet one.
A cold smile touched Rhys’s mouth.Got her.
LilyInTheValley: She’s clueless.Total omega stereotype. Soft voice, big eyes, believes everything he says.It’s kinda pathetic.He hides me from her, of course.
ElenaX: Of course.They always protect their precious little pets.It’s never about love. It’s about control.Keeping the pet docile and the secret exciting.
Rhys’s knuckles were white around the phone.He forced his grip to relax.This was the trap. Elena’s own cynicism, her hatred for anything “soft,” was the bait she couldn’t resist.
LilyInTheValley: What should I do?ElenaX: You have leverage. You know his secret. The sweet little omega wouldn’t be so sweet if she knew her alpha was sticking his knot elsewhere, would she?Knowledge is power, Lily.He let that hang. He needed her to suggest it.To make it her idea.
LilyInTheValley: I couldn’t.She seems… fragile.It might break her.
ElenaX: Some things need to be broken.For their own good. Truth is a gift, even if it feels like a knife.Send me her handle.Let’s see this perfect omega.
Rhys’s blood sang with a dark, vindictive rhythm. He typed Aurora’s old, deleted profile name, the one he’d pulled from the site's backend cache.A ghost.
LilyInTheValley: It was StarlightDreamer23. But her profile is gone.I think he made her delete it.ElenaX: They always do. To keep them isolated.Don’t worry.Deleted isn’t gone.The internet remembers. I’ll see what I can find.I’ll bet you will, Rhys thought. He could feel her curiosity shifting into active pursuit. The hunter was now the hunted, sniffing along a trail he’d laid.LilyInTheValley: Thank you.For talking. No one else gets it.ElenaX: I always get it. We’ll talk more tomorrow.Be smart, Lily.He ended the conversation there.Abrupt, grateful, scared. The perfect impression.
He powered down the burner phone and dropped it into the top drawer of his toolbox, locking it. He sat for a long moment in the buzzing silence, the scent of oil and metal grounding him.His own phone lit up.Another text from Aurora. A photo of a pot of soup on the stove, steam rising. The message read: It’s probably not good.The sudden, violent shift in his consciousness was dizzying. From the calculated darkness of the chat to the simple, warm light of his kitchen. From pretending to be a fragile girl to protecting the real one.He typed back, his hands steady now.Looks perfect. Don’t touch the stove again.Wait for me.
He stood, his body aching from the tension he’d been holding.He turned off the office light and walked through the dark shop, his boots echoing. He paused at the open bay door, looking out at the empty street, washed in the orange glow of a distant streetlight.Elena was on the scent.She was digging. And every shovelful of dirt she turned would lead her deeper into the hole he was digging just for her.
He pulled the rolling door down with a final, metallic crash that sealed the shop away. The night air was cool. He got in his truck, the real phone in his hand, Aurora’s soup photo on the screen.He was coming home to her. And he was bringing the fight with him, clutched tight in a fist she would never have to see.