Chapter 20 #2
Leon didn’t even glance at her as he released Elena’s arm, heading off to the right as a maid came up to her, a tight gesture of her arm waving Elena in the opposite direction.
She glanced back the once, feeling strangely abandoned, but he paid no attention to her now.
Struggling to keep her head held high, Elena followed the woman to a set of doors that led into a spacious parlor.
There wasn’t a friendly face to be found among the women scattered throughout the room, all of them looking at Elena as if she’d tracked mud into the house.
Seven in all, they ranged in age from old enough to be her mother to not much older than Elena herself.
“Well, come in,” a pale beauty said, her brilliant blue eyes shards of ice as she gave Elena a thorough once over.
The first to speak, she must be the first Omega in this house. She was older, with fine lines around her eyes and lips, but her belly was swollen with child and the snug fit of her dress made it all the more apparent.
Elena gained all of two steps, hands twisting together at her waist before she remembered herself and dropped them at her sides. Smoothing the lines of cool gray hugging her hips, she offered up a fractured smile.
“Good evening. It’s a pleasure to meet all of you,” Elena said, feeling nothing so much as the sheep readying for the butcher’s block.
They shared a look between one another, excluding Elena all together before they turned their judging gazes back to her, finding her wanting.
“You are the one my Leon has mated,” a dark haired woman demanded, raising two fingers to signal the young woman hovering nearby. The maid brought her a small glass of wine that didn’t dare tremble as she handed it over.
“Yes, I am.” Elena took a steadying breath, taking in Leon’s mother with a surreptitious glance. She was beautiful, with thick, lush curls of dark russet and eyes of almost the same shade. Those same eyes that held nothing but contempt and derision for Elena now.
The same eyes Leon turned on her again and again.
“I told you she had to be at least pretty, Francesca,” one of the younger Omegas whispered loudly.
“Strange eyes will not make my boy happy, Nicoletta,” Francesca murmured, having only a little more tact as she continued to stare boldly at Elena.
Raising her voice, she addressed Elena again, “Just how did you manage to convince my son to take you on? An Omega without a family, living in squalor and without propriety.”
“I was hardly living in squalor.” Elena’s cheeks warmed and, try as she might to keep her chin high, her head bowed as her social transgressions were laid out before her.
“I see you don’t argue the rest,” another dark haired woman scoffed. She and Francesca could be sisters for all their similarities, but the way they sat on opposite sides of the room made Elena think they were anything but close.
“Dinner is ready, madams,” a different Beta man in a suit announced as he opened the doors without knocking.
Just how many servants did it take to run this household?
Elena gave a mental shrug, glad to quit the parlor as she turned on her heel and rushed after the man, following him to the dining room to get as far away from the caustic miasma of the other Omegas.
They hated her, thought her less than for her situation when Leon took her.
Acted as if she’d had any choice in the matter when he did.
“She is a beauty, I’ll give you that,” a deep, rumbling voice said as Elena entered. “Come here, girl, show yourself.”
Elena would have turned right back around had Leon not caught her arm, forcing her forward to meet the owner of that growling tone.
She glanced up just the once, given an impression of a far older version of Leon, honed to a precision that the younger man had yet to achieve, though he was sharp in ways this one would never be.
Back snug against Leon’s front, she was held still for inspection.
Her nerves frayed the longer it went on until she gave the slightest shift of her weight to convey her discomfort to Leon.
It went unnoticed as they began talking over her, listing her attributes as if she were a prized mare to be admired.
Her skin crawled as she felt their combined gazes roving over her.
“This is my father Salvio, Elena,” Leon finally said after a lengthy discussion about her shape and form and how it might lend itself well to pregnancy.
“Good evening,” Elena murmured, keeping her eyes cast down at the shiny tips of Salvio’s shoes.
The rest of his family were introduced in order of importance.
Patricia, the Beta wife. Lisa the first Omega.
Francesca, Antonella, Bianca, Maria, Christina, and Mariella.
There were siblings, most of which Elena hadn’t even known about, but they were numerous and wouldn’t be joining, so weren’t introduced before they were sent away to other endeavors.
There was one absence she noted.
Anthony wasn’t there, and she felt more than a little betrayed by it. He was supposed to have helped her, and now he wouldn’t even show his face in light of the disaster her life had become. Or perhaps he didn’t want her to see his guilt at not being able to stop his elder brother’s insane resolve.
Acting the part of demure Omega, Elena took her seat with Leon’s help, letting him drape her napkin over her lap as if she was incapable.
Let him play his part. She knew what he was really like when other eyes weren’t watching.
Leon Marchetti was callous and cruel, and nothing he did to make her body sing could change that.
Only instincts.
“I’m sure it will blow over, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get ahead of it, Leon,” Salvio was saying as he served his wife from the tray of tender sliced beef.
“No one cares about it, father. It’s done,” Leon said, the faintest growl limning his words as he served Elena in much the same way.
“Everyone is still talking about it,” Francesca murmured, not once raising her voice or eyes, but Elena felt the seething resentment as a cold slap to the face from across the dining table.
“She has my name and that is not changing,” Leon snapped, setting the cut glass pitcher of water down hard enough to rattle the dishes.
“As if an Omega was never set aside,” Francesca said, raising her eyes to meet Leon’s for a brief moment before turning back to her meal.
“Mind your tongue,” Salvio growled.
“She’s right, my love,” Patricia put in, smoothing her hand over Salvio’s where it rested upon the table. “This doesn’t affect just Leon. Your name and business are in danger with her past as well.”
“Is this why I came all the way out here,” Leon demanded, hand going to Elena’s knee beneath the table and squeezing hard enough she wanted to wince.
They were talking about her, the danger she was to them.
How the stain of her presence would never be washed clean.
There would be no climbing back from this spectacle, only the hope that it would indeed blow over and she’d be forgotten with the next scandal.
There’d been no ceremony, no courting even.
He’d stolen her in a single afternoon and made her his.
Everyone had known her circumstances when it happened.
Elena kept her features smoothed into a neutral facade by sheer will alone.
“I will not sit by as you degrade my mate,” Leon continued, slapping his napkin onto the table. “And she is my mate, in case you’ve forgotten. She isn’t some fancy I’ve picked up to be tossed aside at a whim. She’s carrying my child for Gods’ sakes.”
“She’s pregnant,” Antonella squeaked, losing all sense of her graceful decorum, dropping her fork and knife to clatter over her plate. “You are certain it’s yours?”
Leon dragged in a breath, chest expanding to make him seem even larger.
He didn’t respond, not even when his father barked at his Omega to be silent.
Rising, Leon gripped Elena’s hand hard enough to crush the small bones as he brought her to her feet.
One hand at her waist, he guided her around the chairs towards the doors.
Elena glanced over her shoulder as his entire family cried for him to come back, his father telling him not to act like a spoiled boy.
Leon didn’t rise to the bait, leading her to the front doors where the car still waited.
Pulling his keys out, he let Elena into the car and latched her belt with constrained violence making his every movement quick and precise.
“They had no right to speak to you that way,” he growled as he started the car and began to retrace the journey back to his home.
“It was the truth,” Elena murmured, hands twisting together slowly in her lap.
Painful as it was, it was the truth. Nothing they said wasn’t being whispered about in a dozen other homes now that they’d been seen in public together.
Elena hadn’t even thought of that during her little shopping trip with him.
Their entire world knew now that he’d claimed her as his own, and now the stain of her existence was his.
“It is not,” Leon shouted, the engine revving as he paused at a stop sign.
“I was in… certain circumstances when you did this. People are going to talk. It endangers anyone under the Marchetti name.”
“You had no control over those circumstances. Your father’s death and his inability to provide for you after it put you into that position.”
“You said yourself I was stupid for being in that hotel,” Elena whispered, careful to keep her gaze averted to the window so he wouldn’t see how much that still hurt.
She’d known it wasn’t smart, and if Jamie hadn’t demanded different, she’d have been in an even more dangerous location than the Talbot hotel. Still, she’d had so few options, and no idea what was to come next. What had he expected her to do?
“That doesn’t mean you deserve to be treated like you’re very name is anathema.”
“That’s exactly what it means.” Elena wrapped her arms tight around her middle, discouraging any further talk as she angled herself towards the door. Watching the scenery fly by as he took it at too great a speed for comfort.