Chapter 45 Dominic
Dominic
The hospital chair has been designed by someone who has never spent fourteen hours sitting in one.
Amos is asleep in the bed with his torso wrapped in compression bandages and a morphine drip feeding into the back of his left hand.
The monitor beside him tracks his vitals in green lines I've been watching for hours.
His breathing is shallow, and every time he shifts in his sleep his face tightens with pain.
Mattaniah is curled in the second hospital chair on the other side of the bed, his legs tucked under him, his hand resting on Amos' forearm above the IV line.
He fell asleep around three in the morning with his head tipped against the chair back, the bond marks on his neck settled into the silvering purple of scars slowly becoming permanent.
The room smells like antiseptic and Mattaniah.
His pregnancy scent has grown strong enough to compete with hospital chemicals, settling into the air around him in a warm layer.
I've been breathing him in for fourteen hours.
It's the only thing keeping me in this chair instead of driving to wherever Father is being held.
My phone buzzes at six forty-five. The caller is Detective Morales, the officer assigned to the case after Father’s arrest.
I step into the hallway to take the call. The corridor is empty and smells like nothing. The absence of my mates' scents makes the bond marks ache.
"Mr. Hale." Morales sounds like he hasn't slept. "We've completed the initial review of your father's phone records from the past forty-eight hours."
"What did you find?"
"Your father received a text message at six fourteen yesterday evening.
The message read: 'All three working late tonight.
One guard after six. Floor empty by seven.
'" He pauses and I hear paper shuffling.
"The message was sent from a number registered to a prepaid phone purchased at a convenience store in midtown three weeks ago.
We traced the purchase through store security footage. "
"Who bought the phone?"
"A woman matching the description of your stepmother, Mattaniah's mother. We're confirming the identification now but the footage is clear enough for a preliminary match."
The hallway stretches in both directions, empty linoleum reflecting overhead lights. My hand is gripping the phone hard enough that the case creaks.
"She told him when to come."
"The text chain goes back further than yesterday.
There are seventeen messages over the past two weeks between your father's phone and this prepaid number.
The earlier messages contain information about your daily schedules, Mattaniah's doctor appointments, and the security arrangements at your apartment building. "
Seventeen messages over two weeks, all surveillance data fed to the man who broke Amos' ribs.
"The messages reference specific times and locations.
" Morales continues. "Yesterday's text included the detail that Mattaniah would be present at the office and that the security presence was minimal after business hours.
The implication is that the sender had knowledge of your routine and deliberately provided a window of vulnerability. "
"She knew there was one guard after hours."
"The text specified 'single guard, executive floor, elevator bank.' That's detailed operational intelligence, Mr. Hale. Whoever sent those messages was familiar with your security setup or had help."
She leaked the photos and fed Richard intelligence for two weeks. She gave him the timing and the security gaps that let him walk into my building and put his fists on Amos.
"I need the full text chain, the store footage, and whatever identification you get on the purchaser." My voice is level. "All of it."
"I can have the records to your attorney by noon.
The footage will take longer because we need the store's cooperation for a formal release.
" Morales hesitates. "Mr. Hale, I should tell you that if the identification is confirmed, we'll be pursuing conspiracy charges.
Providing operational intelligence that facilitates an assault is a separate criminal offense from the assault itself. "
"Good." I end the call.
I stand in the empty hallway and let it settle. The cold settles in and the planning starts. The damage she did last night is mine to address.
I go back into the room. Amos is still asleep. Mattaniah's eyes are open. He's watching me from the chair. The bond must have woken him.
His scent has shifted since I left. The air between the door and his chair tastes like fear.
"Who called?" His voice is rough with sleep.
"Detective Morales." I sit in my chair and lean forward with my elbows on my knees. "They pulled Father's phone records."
"Richard isn't my father." The correction is automatic and quiet.
"They pulled Richard's phone records. He received a text yesterday at six fourteen confirming that all three of us were working late with minimal security after hours.
The text came from a prepaid phone." I hold his gaze.
"Purchased three weeks ago at a convenience store in midtown.
Security footage shows a woman matching your mother's description. "
"How many messages?"
"Seventeen over two weeks. Our schedules, your doctor appointments, the security arrangements at the apartment." I keep my voice steady. "She's been feeding him intelligence since before the board vote."
Mattaniah's hand lifts from Amos' forearm and covers his own mouth. His eyes close. Through the bond something goes flat in a way I haven't felt from him before. His scent curdles, the sweetness souring so fast that Amos' monitor spikes on the next heartbeat.
"She knew I was pregnant." He says it behind his hand. "She knew about the baby and she sent him anyway."
"The texts include your doctor appointments. If she was tracking the Vasquez visit, she could have inferred the pregnancy from the specialty." An Omega seeing a post-suppressant pregnancy specialist at Metro North isn't a routine checkup.
"She knew." His hand drops from his mouth and his eyes open. "She always knows. She's been tracking me my entire life, counting the days from the heat the same way she counted the days on my blocker schedule."
The room is quiet except for Amos' monitor and the distant sound of a nurse's cart in the corridor. Mattaniah stares at the IV line running into Amos' hand.
"Two broken ribs." His voice is barely above a whisper. "Because my mother told a drunk Alpha exactly when and where to find us."
"I'm going to destroy her." I say it without inflection. Not for revenge and not because she's been working against us, but because she will never stop. "She'll keep feeding information to anyone who can use it against you, and next time it won't be broken ribs."
"I know." Mattaniah's voice is quiet.
"I need you to hear what I'm saying." I lean closer. "I'm going to use the phone records and the security footage to make sure she faces criminal prosecution. I'm filing a restraining order covering you and the baby. Every asset she has access to through Richard gets frozen."
"You're going to leave her with nothing."
"I'm going to leave her with the consequences of sending a violent Alpha to attack her pregnant son."
Mattaniah looks at me for a long time. Through the bond something resigns in him.
"She's my mother." He says it without emphasis.
"She is." I don't soften it. "And she sent Richard Hale to your workplace knowing you were there, knowing you were pregnant, knowing the security was thin. She chose that."
His throat works and his eyes move from me to Amos in the hospital bed. "Do what you have to do." He says quietly. "I won't stop you."
"I'm not asking for permission to go after her. I'm asking whether you need me to wait. If you need time before the charges are filed, tell me and I'll hold them."
"File them." His voice firms. "File them today. She made her choice when she sent that text." His hand finds Amos' on the hospital blanket. "Amos would tell you to document everything. So document everything."
"He'd also tell me to preserve the phone records before her lawyers can petition for destruction." I pull out my phone.
"Which is why I'm calling our attorney now."
"It's six fifty in the morning."
"Our attorney bills four hundred dollars an hour. She'll answer." I dial the number and stand.
"Dominic."
I turn to see him sitting in the hospital chair with one hand on Amos' arm.
"Thank you." His eyes hold mine. "For asking instead of just doing it."
The gratitude in his voice cracks open something I've been holding locked since my father's fist connected with Amos' ribs. My hand lowers the phone from my ear before the call connects.
"Come here." He says it quietly.
I cross the three feet between our chairs. He reaches up and pulls me down by the front of my shirt. The hospital chair creaks under the sudden weight as I land in it. Mattaniah is already climbing into my lap, his knees bracketing my hips, his hands fisting my jacket.
His mouth finds mine and the kiss is bruising. His teeth catch my lower lip and his tongue pushes past it. He tastes like hospital coffee and salt from crying, with the pregnancy sweetness underneath. I grip his hips and pull him closer and his weight settles against me, warm and solid and alive.
"I need this." He breathes it against my mouth. "I need you to be here."
"I'm here."
His hips roll against mine and the friction is immediate, his body pressing down against the hardness that the proximity and the scent and the desperation have produced without my permission.
My hands slide under the back of his shirt.
The skin beneath my palms is warm and his scent blooms at the contact, thickening into something richer until the air around us is so sweet my head swims.
I grip his hips harder and set the rhythm, pulling him against me in slow rolls that make his breath stutter against my neck.
He buries his face there to muffle the sounds, his lips and teeth working the skin above my bond mark while his hips chase the pressure.
The hospital chair groans with every movement.
Three feet away Amos' monitor beeps its steady rhythm and neither of us stops.
"Quiet." I say it against his ear and my hands tighten on his hips. "Amos is right there."
"I know." His voice is wrecked against my throat. "I can't stop."
My right hand slides from his hip to the front of his pants and presses flat against him through the fabric.
He shudders so hard his whole body clenches around me.
I work him through the cloth with my palm, slow firm strokes timed to the grind of his hips against mine.
His mouth opens against my neck in a silent gasp I feel in the damp heat of his breath.
His hand pushes between us and finds me through my pants. The contact makes my jaw lock. His fingers wrap around me through the fabric and squeeze with a pressure that borders on pain. I thrust up against his hand while my palm presses harder against him.
His hips stutter and his thighs clamp around my waist. I feel him come apart against my palm, his whole body going rigid while his mouth locks against my neck to trap the sound.
His release slams through the bond and detonates in my gut.
I grip his hips hard enough to bruise and come in my own pants with my teeth sunk into the collar of his shirt.
The monitor beeps. Amos doesn't wake up.
Mattaniah stays in my lap. His face is pressed into my neck and his breathing is ragged against my skin.
His scent is everywhere, layered so thick that the hospital room smells like us instead of antiseptic.
My hands are still under his shirt, pressed flat against the warm skin of his back, his heartbeat slowing against my chest.
"We're a mess." He says it into my neck.
"We are."
"Amos is going to smell this the second the morphine wears off."
"Amos is going to be furious he missed it." I press my mouth against his temple. "We'll make it up to him when his ribs heal."
A sound from the bed makes us both freeze. Amos' voice, groggy and thick with morphine, drifts across the three feet between us.
"I'm on painkillers, not dead." His eyes are barely open. "And you're both terrible at being quiet."
Mattaniah's face goes scarlet against my neck. I feel the laugh building in his chest before it escapes, shaking and wet and caught between mortification and relief.
"Go back to sleep," I tell Amos.
"Can't. The chair is squeaking." His eyes close again. "Also I can smell both of you from here. You smell like a bad decision in a hospital room."
"Noted." Mattaniah's voice is muffled against my skin. "We'll debrief later."
"Looking forward to it." Amos' mouth curves without his eyes opening. "Now call the attorney before I lose consciousness again and miss the legal strategy, too."
I shift Mattaniah off my lap gently. He settles back into his chair with his cheeks still flushed and his scent still thick in the air. His eyes carry something that wasn't there twenty minutes ago.
I step into the hallway and dial the attorney. She answers on the second ring.