Blood and Heat (Omegaverse)

Chapter 1

ONE

The gun feels heavier than Marco’s coffin had.

Turning it over in my hands, I trace the grip one last time before sliding it into the hidden pocket I’d sewn into my jacket lining.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly as I catch my reflection in the mirror above the sink.

Even in the expensive suit I bought to pull off the lie, I still look like shit.

Dark circles shadow my eyes from too many sleepless nights, but that just makes me look like every other overworked contractor in this city.

I run the water cold and wash my hands until the shaking stops. Wipe them dry on paper towels that smell faintly of cigarette smoke.

When I look up again, I barely recognize the person staring back.

They say death changes the people left behind.

What they don’t say is how much of yourself you bury alongside them.

For me, that was six months of erasing Luca Moretti to become this ghost with a grudge so I could destroy the man who took my brother from me.

And in less than five minutes, I’ll be walking into his empire with nothing but forged credentials, a fake name, and nine millimeters of justice pressed against my ribs.

Square up, Luca.

I straighten my jacket and push through the bathroom door into Eclipse’s lobby.

It’s quiet and empty. The clubs on the first and second floors won’t come alive until after dark, and for now, the only person here is a guard scrolling through his phone behind the security desk. The elevator bank gleams beyond him like the gates to hell.

I clear my throat as I approach, and he looks up at me like I’ve interrupted his whole fucking life.

“Morning.” I slide my ID across to him.

He barely glances at it. “David DaCosta?” He squints at the card, then at me, like he actually gives a shit. “New consultant?”

“Security analyst.” I keep my voice flat, my face blank.

The second dose of suppressants I choked down this morning sits like battery acid in my gut, but it’s working.

No omega scent bleeding through, no tells.

As far as anyone knows, I’m just another beta contractor here to tell the Valerio family how to better protect their money laundering business.

“I have a meeting with—”

“Yeah, yeah.” He waves me through, already back to his phone. “Third floor. Someone’ll meet you.”

That easy, huh? I half-expect him to ask for more details, but he just keeps on scrolling. I make myself walk toward the elevators before my hesitation starts to look suspicious.

The ride up takes forever. Three floors shouldn’t feel like ascending to a guillotine, but the slow climb gives my mind too much room to wander.

I wonder if Marco got waved through just as easily that night—the night he walked into Valerio’s warehouse thinking it was just another pickup. Same job he’d done a hundred times. No reason to expect anything different.

Bet he had no idea it’d be the start of a nightmare that would end with his body in a cell and my life burning down around it.

I shove the thought down before it can sink its teeth in. Can’t afford to lose focus now. Not when I’m this close.

The elevator chimes and the doors slide open.

I step out to what looks like a corporate executive floor.

My eyes immediately scan the space. There’s a reception desk, a waiting area with leather chairs, and frosted glass conference rooms beyond.

Two visible exits, probably more hidden.

Cameras are everywhere, at least four, maybe six covering just this reception area.

The angles are professional, no blind spots.

I’d mapped the first two floors of the club easily enough through public records and careful observation. But the third floor had been impossible. I couldn’t find any blueprints of the layout or leaked photos.

This is where Enzo Valerio conducts his real business, and access is invitation-only.

And now I’m here.

Everything in the space screams money, from the black marble to the chrome fixtures, lighting designed to make you look dangerous or fuckable, depending on your taste. The legitimate business veneer is almost convincing.

But that’s the game, isn’t it? Hide the crime and blood under paperwork and tax filings. Make it look legal enough that nobody asks questions.

To any outsider, Eclipse is just another upscale club. But to anyone who knows better, it’s one of the many tentacles Valerio uses for his dirty work.

I’ve been in places like this before, back when Marco thought he could keep me separate from the life. I remember sitting in reception areas with magazines I never read while he disappeared into back offices for “meetings.”

He tried so hard to shield his omega baby brother from how we really survived. Working double shifts so I could afford to go to school. Lying to me about where the money truly came from.

“Mr. DaCosta?”

I turn. The woman approaching is in a sleek navy pantsuit, her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun. She looks mid-forties. Beta, judging from the neutral scent.

“Ms. Esperanza,” I greet her with a smile, keeping my spine straight. I’ve memorized the names and faces in the chain of command. Maria Esperanza has been Valerio’s personal assistant for over a decade. She runs the day-to-day at Eclipse, and aside from family, no one gets closer to him than her.

She returns the greeting with a crisp nod and a clipped, professional smile.

“Mr. Valerio wants the security assessment done before the end of the month.” She gestures toward a hallway that leads deeper into the building, already moving. “We’ve had some… concerns about vulnerabilities in our system.”

Yeah. I fucking bet.

I’ve pieced together enough from my own digging to know exactly what kind of “concerns” she means. Viktor Sokolov, Valerio’s top underboss, has been skimming for months. I’ve traced at least three shipments that never made it to their destinations—inventory that vanished into thin air.

Marco had stumbled onto one of those shipments while doing a routine pickup for a mid-level crew. And it had cost him his life.

The timeline fits too perfectly to be a coincidence. Marco makes the pickup on a Tuesday. By Friday, cops are kicking down his door with an anonymous tip and planted evidence.

Three weeks later, they called me to identify what was left of him.

His jaw was swollen and wrong, knocked loose from the hinges.

His fingers were cold when I touched them.

Purple bruises and broken bones told the whole story.

He had been beaten to death, yet the guards claimed they “didn’t see anything. ”

The grapevine said Valerio ordered the hit himself.

Couldn’t risk anything that would connect my brother to Sokolov and then to the organization.

Whether Sokolov lied to him about what Marco knew, or whether Valerio just didn’t care enough to verify before signing off on the execution, the result is the same.

My brother is dead because someone in the Valerio organization needed a convenient fall guy, and Valerio either ordered it or was too sloppy to notice his underboss running a side operation.

Either way, he’s responsible.

I’m going to put a bullet in his head for that. Then in Sokolov’s. Hell, I’ll put a bullet in everyone’s head if it comes down to it, even this woman who looks sweet enough to bake cookies but apparently clocks in for Satan every morning. Shame.

“The main servers are in the sub-level,” Esperanza is saying, leading me through a maze of hallways.

Cameras line every corridor, and the back of my neck prickles with the feeling that I’m being watched.

Security gets tighter as we move deeper into the building.

There are guards at each corridor entrance.

Unlike the distracted asshole scrolling through his phone in the lobby, these men are alert, eyes tracking my every move.

We reach a checkpoint with keycard access, and Esperanza swipes us through into another long hallway. This one has a guard in tactical gear, armed to the teeth. He watches me like I’m a threat worth remembering.

So, the downstairs security is for show. This is the real thing.

Noted.

My hand drifts toward my side, feeling the gun’s weight through the fabric.

“But Mr. Valerio wants to speak with you first before you begin. He likes to personally vet anyone with systems access.”

My heart kicks against my ribs.

He wants to see me now? It wasn’t part of the plan to walk into Valerio’s office blind on day one. My intel said Esperanza handles all outside consultant onboarding, that I’d report to her, not directly to Valerio.

That was supposed to buy me time to map out every detail of this floor and draw up an exit plan before meeting the fucker face-to-face.

But with security this tight, shooting him now would be suicide. And I’m not ready for that.

Yet.

“Of course,” I hear myself say. “I understand the need for caution.”

She takes me through another corridor and finally stops in front of a heavy wooden door, a guard flanking either side. She knocks twice before opening it.

“Mr. Valerio? David DaCosta is here.”

“Send him in.” The voice rolls through me like distant thunder, and my suppressants choose that exact moment to falter. In that brief slip, I catch a scent that makes my whole body go still.

Alpha. Pure, potent alpha, strong enough for his scent to coat the back of my throat.

Fuck.

I walk into Enzo Valerio’s office like I’m not screaming inside my own head.

He’s standing with his back to me, looking out floor-to-ceiling windows at the city I grew up in.

The same city that chewed up Marco and spit him out in a prison morgue.

The skyline glitters like broken glass, beautiful and sharp, and the man silhouetted against it looks like he owns every inch of it.

He probably does, with how deep Valerio connections run in New York City.