There it was. Ren understood it before Brody said it. He understood it in the space between the sentences, in what Brody wasn’t saying but that hung in the air like a scent impossible to ignore.
“You profit from the auctions.”
“Yes.”
“From the money they pay for the omegas.”
“A portion goes into my accounts. It always has.”
Nausea rose up Ren’s esophagus. Hot, acidic. He brought a hand to his mouth and breathed through his nose. Brody’s scent—that damn scent of home, of warmth, of refuge—filled his lungs, and that made the nausea worse because his body was rejecting him and needing him at the same time.
“I can’t approve of that.” Ren’s voice came out small but firm. “I don’t care what you do with that money afterward. I don’t care if you use it to save every omega you pull out of there. It’s money stained with the lives of people like me, Brody. Do you understand that? Do you really understand?”
“I understand.” Brody didn’t back down an inch. “But it’s much more than that.”
“More than profiting from slavery?”
“If I cut my ties with the casino, I lose the eyes I have inside. I lose Rocco, who would no longer have a reason to be there. I lose access to the buyer records I update every month when Malachi sends them to me because he trusts me. I lose the ability to know when an auction is being prepared, who the omegas will be, where they’re getting them from.”
Brody took a step toward him. Just one.
“If I leave, Malachi won’t just cut me off; he’ll make me an enemy. And if he makes me an enemy, everything I’ve gathered over the years becomes useless because I can’t keep gathering anymore.”
“Gathering what?”
“Evidence, Ren. Actual evidence. Documentation linking specific names to specific transactions. Recordings. Financial records. Testimonies from Omegas we’ve rescued who’ve agreed to testify if the time ever comes.”
Brody paused. He swallowed.
“Every case that goes to court changes something. Every time one of these private agreements is reported, the justice system views it more harshly than the last. Ten years ago, a judge would have dismissed an omega’s complaint against their legal guardian without batting an eye. Today, it’s not that easy. There are precedents. There are rulings. There is public opinion. And every new case that comes to light pushes the line a little further.”
Ren looked at him. He studied him, beyond the massive body and the scent that clouded his judgment. He searched for the lie in his eyes. He searched for the crack through which falsehood, inconsistency, or a cheap excuse might slip.
“The more cases that come out, the harder it will be for them to look the other way,” Brody continued. “The harder it will be for an alpha to buy an omega in a room full of expensive suits and champagne and consider it a right. The closer we’ll be to the law ceasing to treat omegas as transferable property. That’s what I’m doing. That’s what I’ve been doing since I was nineteen and stood silent in a basement in front of six cells.”
Silence settled between them. Long, heavy, but different from before. It wasn’t the silence of a lie exposed. It was the silence of a truth too heavy for a single person to bear.
Ren loosened his arms. He didn’t uncross them, but he let his hands fall onto his knees. His fingers were trembling.
He believed him. He believed him not because he wanted to, not because his body was telling him to, not because Brody’s scent was wrapping his brain in warm cotton. Ren believed him because he had seen the casino basement. He had worn the latex jumpsuit. He had felt the stares of fifty men sizing him up like cattle. And he knew, with the certainty of someone who had experienced firsthand the machinery Brody described, that noone could speak of that world like that without having known it from the inside.
“How many?” Ren asked.
“How many what?”
“Omegas. How many have you brought out?”
“Twenty-three in five years.”
Twenty-three. The number pierced his chest like a fine needle. Twenty-three people who had been where he was. Twenty-three bodies that someone dressed, displayed, and sold. Twenty-three lives that Brody snatched from his own uncle’s hands with tainted money and lies sustained for years.
“And the ones you didn’t get out?”
Brody didn’t answer. But his face said it all. His jaw clenched to the point of inhumanity, his eye sockets sunken from lack of sleep, that red rim circling his gray irises like a wound that never quite healed.
Ren looked down at his own hands. Open now on his knees. Pale, thin, with knuckles still bruised from the punch he’d thrown at Brody that morning in the training room.
“Five minutes,” he murmured.
