Chapter 4: Knox
Iknocked on the entrance to the jail, flashing my badge at the beta prison guard standing inside. She pressed a button, and a loud buzz filled the air before the door clicked open.
I scanned the room, looking for Silas. My brother had said he’d meet me here. I noticed him bent over the prison logbook, signing us in.
“Who found her?” I asked.
“A beta soldier spotted her trying to slip through the east side barricade,” he said without looking up. “Completely naked. He tackled her and brought her in for processing. That’s when she noticed the brand,” he said, as he tipped his head toward the beta guard who had just let me inside.
She turned to face me. “Sir, I saw it during intake processing and knew it wasn’t like the usual ones we get. Not a lieutenant or an enforcer, but unique, so I called it in.”
Silas slid a photograph across the desk.
My eyes narrowed.
Prison guards knew the common brands to watch for. Dragons. Lions. Hawks. Each denoted rank within the varying crime families and helped us catalog their people. But this one matched nothing recorded.
It looked like a rose. More delicate than most brands, its lines precise and delicate, seared into skin just beneath the collarbone.
I’d never seen a mark like it before.
“We suspected he had a distinct brand for his wives,” Silas said, tapping the image as he finally looked up at me. “Now we know for sure.”
“The girl is an omega,” he continued. “She can tell us how to find the others.”
I frowned. "How do you know that? Even if she is one of Marco’s wives, which one? She could be a newer acquisition, and if so, I doubt she has much intel to offer."
Silas’s mouth curved into a slow smirk as he stepped through the security door, already heading toward the cells.
“I knowexactlywho she is.”
Silas didn’t break stride as he spoke. “The Bellini informant I turned last year gave us most of our intel on the wives. He’s dead now. Marco caught on before we could get much else out of him.” He shot me a quick glance, an excited gleam in his eyes. “But before that, he told me Marco ranked his omegas. Favorite to least favorite.”
“Depending on the size of the reward,” Silas continued, “his men get access to a wife for the night. The more valuable the favor, the more desirable the wife.”
“I know that, Silas. What about it? How does that intel help usidentify her?”
My brother stopped at another security door.
“Apparently, there was only one omega no one ever requested,” he said. “Marco's least favorite.”
My brow furrowed. “Did the informant say why?”
Silas’s expression darkened. “Yeah. Apparently, she’s feral and mute. Kept locked in the basement of Marco’s personal residence for years. Never shared. Never traded.”
He keyed in a code, and the door slid open.
“That’swho we just picked up.”
Her scent hit me before I even laid eyes on her. Peach laced with spice. Feminine, sweet, warm, and unmistakably omega. Though tainted with something sour. Fear.
As we passed a few empty cells, it grew stronger, more intoxicating, until we reached the source. Silas stood in front of her cell, eyes glinting with sly amusement.That lookmeant he had plans for the girl.
I peered past the bars and frowned. Her cell was empty. My brother raised an eyebrow and crouched, lowering himself close to the ground.
"She's a skittish thing," he murmured, then called, "Come out, come out, little mute."
I crouched beside him, peering into the shadows beneath her cot. A flash of light revealed wide, fearful eyes, and the omega sank further beneath the alcove, almost entirely hidden in darkness.
