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“Is he still alive?” The thought of Cyrus killing his own brother for me didn’t sit right. “I assume he was the man with a cane.” That was the only other person I had seen, and it would explain the strange familiarity he’d had.
They all froze. “Did he hurt you himself?” Weston asked. His voice had gone so cold, I was almost afraid to answer. But there would be no more lies between us. I nodded, and he started to move before Hayes and Sterling held him in place.
“No. Not yet,” Hayes said, the tone patient as if it were a reminder.
He didn’t look convinced until my hand wrapped around his.
“Don’t leave me.” I hated how vulnerable I sounded, but after what I’d just survived, it would take years of therapy to function like a normal person again. I didn’t look forward to those nightmares. “How long has it been?”
“It happened yesterday,” Hayes answered. “They had you for just under two hours.”
“It felt like days,” I admitted. Every second with Danny had stretched on, feeling as if it were taking forever with no end in sight. The memories were laced with pain and fear. I wanted it out of my mind, but they refused to stay silent.
“I’m sure it did,” Cyrus said. “It will never happen to you again.”
“Who are they? Who is it you work for? What did I do to deserve this? They wouldn’t even fucking believe my answers.”
“You did nothing wrong. They will pay,” Cyrus said vehemently. “The Shaw family is infamous around here for our connections, power, money, influence, however you want to say it. We have the best assassins in this territory, and our hands are in several things that are… not exactly legal.”
Did that mean…
“The trafficking?” I asked in a whisper.
Cyrus shook his head. “The one thing we don’t tolerate. But it seems my Family has been keeping some secrets from us. We’ll get to the bottom of it, but only when we know that you’re safe and healing.”
The fact that they were pushing aside that betrayal to make sure that I was alright had my chest tightening. Since we’d started this relationship, there were so many times I had questioned if we could make this work. We had too little trust and too many secrets. But now they were centering around me.
That meant our bond was stronger than I’d realized, and I could no longer imagine my life without them. They had come for me, and now it was my turn to put it all on the table. They deserved to know my secrets as well.
“My phone?” I asked.
Hayes pulled two phones from his pocket and held them up, giving me a lopsided grin.
“Which one?”
I pointed to the simple Syndicate phone, and he handed it over. I unlocked it, expecting something to be on the screen, but it was as blank as ever.
“Has it gone off at all?” They shook their heads no, so I set it aside. It wasn’t exactly shocking they were radio silent. The Syndicate was prone to dropping a text or random bit of information here and there while otherwise keeping their distance.
“Is it safe to talk here, or is your Family listening in?”
“We swept the room and got rid of any bugs,” Sterling promised. Again, he used the bond to try to quell my panic and worry, but it was so out of control it did little to help. He pulled a chair over and sat down, wrapping his fingers around mine. It was like they couldn’t stop touching me, but I was glad for the contact. It was helping keep the panic at bay and holding me together.
“Have you ever heard of the Underground Omega Syndicate?”
My words hung in the air for a second while I waited for them to react. Sterling and Weston seemed confused, but Cyrus and Hayes both nodded.
“I had a feeling they were involved,” Hayes admitted. “It was one of my theories.”
“Who are they?” Sterling demanded of his brother, but it was his father who answered.
“I’ve known about them since your mother. They helped her find peace and move on the best she could. They’re the only reason she had an actual life.”
“They’re not all sunshine,” Hayes said. “They blackmail people and do whatever it takes to keep omegas in power. If anything stands in the way of their mission, they don’t hesitate to eradicate it. They’re dangerous, but their end goal is to keep omegas from being taken advantage of. I’ve run across them over the years while diving into rabbit holes for jobs.”
“So the senator and his new law…” Weston said, putting it together. “See, I knew that you working for him didn’t make sense.”
“It didn’t, but I had no choice. If I didn’t participate, I would go to jail or be killed.”
