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“Now?”What the fuck?I knew I was running out of time, but six weeks? That was crazy. “How about the end of the year? I’ll be ready by then.”
“You’ve said that before, Andro. We can’t keep waiting for you to get your shit together. Who’s it going to be?”
“Who do you have in mind?” Maybe it was better to just let him pick someone and get it over with.
My father grinned in a way that I rarely witnessed. He usually reserved that particular look for when he was about to put a bullet in someone’s head.
Which made me realize what I was doing. “Wait, I have someone.”
All heads turned to me, shocked by my declaration.
No one was as shocked as I was. I had no idea what I was saying, but I couldn’t back down now. “I wasn’t ready to tell anyone because we haven’t made it official yet. But…” I wracked my brain, trying to come up with a story that made even a tiny bit of sense. Not much came up. “I’ll officially propose this weekend. After the gala. And we’ll make an announcement next week.”
My father nodded as if he was fine with my plan, but I could see the distrust in his eyes. He didn’t believe me. Which almost made me smirk back because he was smart enough to know when I was lying. “Excellent. We can’t wait to see the engagement announcement on Monday.”
I cleared my throat unconsciously and shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “You’ll be the first to know, Father.”
Now I just had to find a mate and get him to agree to marry me…in four days.
No problem at all. I could do that. But it was going to be like I told Louie. I’d find the most unsuitable omega in the state.
My father would rue the day he decided to force my hand.
2
JOEY
“You coming or what?” Mario held open the door and waited for me to get out.
“Yeah. Just a sec.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to mentally prepare myself for a night of pretending to be in a loving family. Or even just alikingfamily. We couldn’t let anyone notice that no one in my family liked me. I most certainly couldn’t let anyone know that my family downright despised me.
Being a weak omega in a crime family was a recipe for disaster.
Mario’s voice turned rough, and I knew I’d hesitated too long. “We don’t want you here any more than you want to be here, but we need to show a united front.” He grabbed my arm and yanked until I was tumbling out of the car. “Just smile when there’s a camera pointed at you, and keep your mouth shut. And remember, this isn’t about you, Joey. You’re nothing. We’re here for me and Richie.”
Mario and Richie were my dad’s primary confidantes. The three of them ran our family like a dictatorship, and I was in the “boys club” by name only. As the only omega son, Dad didn’t havemuch use for me, which meant my brothers didn’t have much respect for me. The rest of their business associates and hired men felt even more disdain for me than they did.
According to them, I was either in the way, causing drama, or not carrying my weight because I wasn’t out in the field, beating the shit out of people who didn’t make their payments on time or whatever the fuck my brothers did all day.
Dad ran loans for the tri-state area, and my brothers were his muscle.
My responsibility to the family was at least as important, but since my family didn’t have the same kind of mind for numbers that I had, they didn’t appreciate my value. As a certified accountant, I managed the books for the various business entities. It was easy work, but mostly because it wasn’t exactly within generally accepted accounting principles.
In fact, they were as far away from accepted as possible. Essentially, my job was to create the numbers my dad asked me to create. And do it in a way that would never draw suspicion.
It wasn’t anywhere near honest work, but I was good at it. I could hide money better than anyone.
If I wasn’t generous enough or if I took too long to get my work done, I got a beating.
If I didn’t respond to their questions or texts fast enough, I got a beating.
And if I even looked at any of them wrong, I got a beating.
Then there were the days when I got a beating just because I existed.
Why they forced me to come to these events where we had to pretend to be a happy family was beyond me. I would have been just as happy to stay in my room at home, like usual. No, that wasn’t right. Happy was not something I would ever use to describe my state.
Content. I would be content to stay home and out of the limelight.
