12. Jorge
12
Jorge
Riley is staring in shock at where the dead shooter’s hand is hanging from the vent. It’s right above her, which is probably why Caleb noticed him when he looked her way.
“Riley?” I walk closer to her and she blinks, focusing on me. “Are you coming home with us?”
I don’t think it’s a good idea to let her go back to her hotel, in case the people she met up with know where she’s staying and decide to take revenge on her when she’s on her own.
“I guess so.” Then her eyes slide down to my arm. “You’re hurt!”
“It’s fine. I’ll have someone patch me up back at home.”
It’s only a cut. It hurts like hell, but I can still move all my fingers and the bleeding isn’t too bad. It can wait until we’re back.
I still when I hear loud footsteps in the hall, only for Timothy’s clear voice to calm me down. “Check the bodies. Take all ID. Don’t leave anything behind. We need everything we can get.”
He appears in the doorway, his body tense and controlled, until he sees Derrick and he lets out a long breath. Then he seems to pull himself together. “Get everyone the help they need. Get a move on!”
Those two can deal with cleaning up, it’s what they always do. I’ve got more important things to worry about.
I cross the room over to Caleb, Mathew and Vera.
As soon as we reach them, Caleb jerks his head to the door and I nod. Yeah, getting out of here is our first priority.
Vera takes Mathew’s hand and they follow Caleb, walking side-by-side, while Riley and I follow them.
We carefully make our way through the hallway, avoiding the bodies and the pools of blood, as the adrenaline is slowly leaving my body.
What just happened will probably hit me in a couple of hours, but for now, I can handle it.
The silence feels awkward as I stare at Mathew and Vera’s backs.
As my head is starting to clear more, I realise what happened with Mathew and how things could have gotten much, much worse if it wasn’t for Vera’s quick thinking.
I must have gone into a frenzy, though the details are blurry.
Then, a very clear picture pops into my head, Mathew’s face as his eyes were filled with terror. Not because he was afraid of someone else, but because he was afraid of me …
My stomach rolls and I swallow hard. Fucking hell.
No way.
That…
I can’t believe that I did something to make him fear me.
“Mathew…” I reach out to him, tugging on his arm and he turns to me slightly, his eyes normal, exhausted, but normal. “What did I… Did I…?” My eyes shoot over his body, trying to find anywhere I could have hurt him. “What…”
He stops, turning to me more as he takes my hand. “You didn’t do anything to me. I promise.” He steps closer, sliding a hand up over my shoulder as he cups the back of my head. “I promise.”
Then he crashes his lips into mine, kissing me hard, and I grab hold of him, pulling him as tightly against me as I can, kissing back as hard as he’s giving me.
As he kisses me, his pheromones become stronger, soothing and sexy, but no trace of anger or fear in them. Whatever happened between us that made him look like that, nothing of it remains, we’re still the same as we were before.
After long moments, he pulls back, keeping my gaze, making sure I understand what he’s trying to tell me through his pheromones. “Nothing bad happened. I just want to go home.”
I nod.
I’m sure that a lot of things happened, including something that made him look at me in terror for some reason, but none of that matters until we’re back home. We can deal with it then.
As we’re about the leave through the side-entrance, Mathew stops Riley, his gaze troubled. He waits until Caleb, Vera and I have walked past them before he talks.
“Before we go any further, I need to know something. Depending on your answer, I might have to kill you, as taking you with us could put all of us in a lot of danger.” His voice is cold, making shivers run down my spine, and I catch the glint of his knife as it appears in his hand.
Fuck. He’s seriously willing to kill her, even though he knows she’s a scent match for us and it will leave a scar in our pack forever.
“Okay.” Riley looks at him calmly, like this is somehow a reasonable request.
What the hell?!
She just saved our asses. She’s good people. Why is he suddenly suspicious of her?
I was the one who didn’t introduce them before, that didn’t have anything to do with her.
He has to understand that, right?
He can’t blame her for that. Right?
I can’t lose her. We can’t lose her. She’s ours .
“Mathew! Stop it! She’s not a danger to you!” I try to go over to him, but Caleb grabs my arm, holding me in place.
“Don’t interfere.” His voice is low as he uses his Alpha powers, his gaze intense as he looks at them. He knows what this is about. He’s waiting for Riley’s answer. He’s waiting for Riley to give the right answer. Whatever that may be.
“What?! You can’t be serious.” I stare at him and then notice the light distress in Vera’s pheromones.
“What’s happening?” She stares at Caleb and then at Mathew and Riley. “He’s not going to kill her, is he? He can’t. Please.”
“Shut up.” Mathew glares our way and the fury in his gaze makes my blood run cold.
Oh, no. I’ve seen that look before.
It’s been years, but it’s hard to forget the first time you watch your fated mate’s face go from laughing to murderous in a fraction of a second and for them to stand up from the table, cross the restaurant and kill someone.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him kill, but it was the first time it had happened out in the open, outside of ‘work’ situations. It was the moment I realised how dangerous he really was.
There’s only one thing that I know that makes him like this: when he’s confronted with people who knew him when he was still held by the Hearts.
The fact that he’s asking her to explain herself and he hasn’t killed her yet means that he doesn’t want to, he really doesn’t want to have to kill her. But he will if she’s a danger to him, or to us…
Riley, what did you get yourself into? Was I really so wrong about you?
“What do you want to know?” How does Riley manage to look so calm when he could kill her in moments? She must know that he’s not joking.
“Are you working for the Hearts?” His voice is cold, and Riley’s face goes white as a sheet as she covers her mouth while shaking her head. Even from this distance, the caustic note in her pheromones reaches us.
“No. Fuck no. No way in hell. ” Her words are like venom as she spits them out.
My body runs hot and cold, relieved at her answer but still nervous about why Mathew would be suspicious of her in the first place.
“Any of the other Suits?” He looks to relax only a fraction.
“No. No way.” Then she glances back down the hallway, anger and upset in her gaze. “You think that some of the people I met with tonight were part of the Hearts?”
“I know for sure. Someone recognised me.” Mathew turns around and I don’t know why until I realise I’ve got my arms around him tightly.
Trying to wrap him in my pheromones, trying to cleanse him of all the bad memories, trying to cleanse him of the bad scents that haven’t touched him in a decade.
Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.
Someone recognised him. No, not just that.
Someone recognised him and was confident enough of their safety to confront Mathew with his past. That’s what set off the fight.
Fucking hell.
“Timothy checked them.” My voice breaks. How can we have been so careless?
“It was someone we hadn’t met before. So we didn’t have any real information on them.” He grips the back of my jacket and leans his head on my shoulder.
I wrap protective pheromones around him, trying to soothe him, trying to show him I’ll always protect him, that nothing bad will happen to him as long as I’m around.
Then I glance at Riley, who looks at us in confusion, looking even more confused than she did before. “Did you have any idea?”
She shakes her head. “No clue. I would never do business with anyone from the Suits Syndicate. No fucking way. I’d kill myself before I’d ever consider taking a job from them.”
Mathew slowly lets go of me, looking at her. “How did you meet them?”
“I’ve never met any of them in person before. They were acquaintances of acquaintances. They heard I was going to be in the area and they wanted to meet, see if we could maybe work together in the future.”
She eyes Mathew. “If I’d known that they were connected to the Hearts, I would have killed them before the meeting could even start.”
Mathew sighs. “None of us knew. We’ve done business with some of them before and they’re clean. But the people they took with them were connected to the Hearts. Which is troubling.”
Which means that Timothy, his team and I will be doing a lot of work in the coming days to figure out where the hell things went wrong. Because, once again, the Hearts have gotten much closer to us than we thought and we didn’t have a clue.
“Can I ask?” Riley’s voice is careful. “What did you mean when you said that they recognised you? From where?”
Mathew runs his tongue piercing along his teeth for a long moment, the sound cold and sharp, as he stares down the street, not looking at anything in particular, lost in his mind. Then his eyes go to Vera and Caleb, resting on the large Alpha, before they meet mine.
He lets out a long breath and my heart breaks as I wish I could stop him from saying the words. As I wish I could avoid the pain he’ll have to reveal. Even though I know that he’ll tell her, no matter how much it hurts.
“Before I was Mathew Page, I was Michael, King of Hearts. That was more than a decade ago. I was the top performer at one of their brothels. The person who recognised me was apparently one of the ‘clients’ I met at the time.” He keeps his voice level.
Angry pheromones roll off Riley as she realises what he just told her. The implications of his words.
“And, another thing. There’s something I should clear up before we go any further.” Mathew’s voice doesn’t change, though he’s moving tensely now. “Unlike what you may have heard, I’m not an Alpha, or a Beta, I’m an Omega.” He undoes the top buttons of his dress shirt and then pulls the back down, revealing his marks.
He slides his hand into mine, his palm sweaty, his grip slightly shaking. “ I’m the Omega Jorge has been waiting for for years.”
My mouth drops open as I stare at him. Did he really just?!
He glances my way, his face red from blushing as he gives me a shy smile. “Could you not be that surprised about something you’ve known for years? I thought you wanted me to tell her.”
With a grin, I wrap my arms around his shoulders, pulling him close.
I might have known for years, but this is the first time I’ve heard him tell anyone about us, and the confident and cool way he did it simply fried my brain.
Fucking hell.
I had no idea he could make me feel this proud.