Glass Omega (The Mafia Darlings Omegaverse #1)

Prologue

I first saw Edison Keane and Rhodes McCreary when I was eighteen years old.

I wish I could say that it was at a nightclub or some other meet cute that all of the girls my age would usually gush about.

But no.

When I met them for the first time they were covered in blood and I had one foot in the grave. Chronic myeloid leukemia was what the doctors called it after they caught it a year ago after I passed out at a swim meet. I figured it was anemia or something—not out of the usual for me seeing how hard my father pushed me on a regular basis. Nope. Cancer.

What came after that was long months of treatment, the loss of my hair, and sympathetic looks from every adult I came into contact with.

My lovely parents had taken what they needed from me, just the way they always had. I’d learned very quickly that my younger brother and I were props to them. Pretty children to make them look better to their investors and to help bolster my father’s political career. My cancer was the perfect fodder to help my father out in his last mayoral election… because who votes against the guy with a sick daughter?

You would think that their only daughter having a life threatening disease would terrify them, but instead they’d made sure to trot me out whenever my doctor signed off on it. Which, thankfully, wasn’t a lot.

Turns out dying was a great excuse to get out of dinner parties and charity galas.

Not that Dr. Stedmeyer would ever admit that I was dying. He was my ever optimistic oncologist, and as sad as it sounds, my best friend. Ever since the test results came back he was the person in my corner when even my parents weren’t.

Dr. Stedmeyer was the sort of doctor that gave all of himself to his patients which meant that he lived and breathed nearly every moment at St. Stephens General Hospital.

It was also why I knew that if I wandered the halls long enough that I would find him.

The main building of St. Stephens had been constructed in the mid-eighteen hundreds and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. I was already regretting leaving the comfort of my room as I wandered through the dark halls, ducking out of sight when the occasional night shift nurse passed me on their rounds.

The pediatrics floor where I was still being treated despite turning eighteen a few months ago was in the furthest corner of the building, so the trek to where the doctor’s offices were was long and I was out of breath by the time I made it. Yet another lovely side effect of chemo. I used to be able to swim miles and miles every day and now a short walk was nearly doing me in. Gripping onto my IV pole for support, I took a quick break, shivering from my chilly surroundings.

Even with my thick, grippy hospital socks the floor underneath my feet was ice cold. I should have put on my slippers before leaving my room, but I also sort of liked it when Dr. Stedmeyer fussed over me for not taking care of myself. It was proof that at least someone cared.

My parents clearly did not. As the leukemia progressed and my chances started dwindling from the optimistic seventy five percent to only forty five percent, their visits had likewise become much rarer.

Our nanny, Mrs. Rosetti, still came every day and still brought Romey, my fifteen year old brother, every chance she could even if he spent most of their visits with his head buried in his phone. Romey still wasn’t used to me being sick—even if he would never admit it out loud. I had always been the one to take care of him, so me being sick had flipped our dynamic on its head.

Meanwhile, Ethan and Miranda Chandler had better things to do than to visit their daughter in the hospital. The press would have a field day if they knew the true extent of my parent’s negligence, and if I cared any less about them I probably would have spilled the beans.

But I couldn’t find it in myself to expend the effort it would take to stick it to them, and every time I brought it up to Dr. Stedmeyer he just told me that some people weren’t built to be parents and that they didn’t know how to cope with my sickness.

I didn’t mention that my sickness and the chemo had wrecked one of the things that made me the most valuable in my parent’s eyes. My designation.

One thing they don’t tell you about being treated for leukemia is that all the radiation will completely obliterate an omega’s nervous system. I’d only been awakened as one for a year before my diagnosis, but the difference in my body was staggering.

I couldn’t smell whether someone was an alpha, beta, or omega anymore. The world around me had turned into a mixed blur of the anesthetic scent of the hospital and the dull, faraway scents that should have made my instincts go haywire.

Instead, there was almost nothing.

As if that wasn’t disconcerting enough, the hospital staff provided their version of nesting materials for me, but they usually were left in a heap at the end of my bed. I had no energy or desire to nest and make my hospital room cozier.

I felt like a prisoner, no matter how many scratchy, scentless blankets they gave me.

Then there was my heats.

I’d never been able to have one, but they told me that if I survived that I might not ever have a heat at all as they were directly tied to my fertility.

Heats were what made an omega an omega. If I didn’t have that, what was even the point of the little omega symbol on my driver’s license or my membership to the county omega center?

I kept telling myself that it wouldn’t matter if I never had a heat. My designation had never been solely mine to have in the first place. As soon as I awakened, my father used it as a bargaining tool to win himself more political clout. The promise of an omega had lots of donors perking up and paying attention, and if I hadn’t gotten sick, then I’d probably already be on my way to the altar to marry the highest bidder.

As I circled back around to the silver lining of my predicament, I let my increasingly morose mood spur me on through the quiet halls of the hospital.

It always amazed me how quiet things got in the middle of the night. All of the hospital dramas I loved watching never prepared me for what life as a near-permanent resident would feel like. I always thought there would be much more, I don’t know, drama . You know, stumbling into an empty room to find doctors in the throes of passion or medical interns causing a ruckus.

But no. It was all pretty boring and the most exciting thing I ever saw was when one of the nurses broke up with her doctor boyfriend and he cried in the hallway. I was scolded by Dr. Stedmeyer about it whenever I brought it up because he was friends with the doctor.

My thoughts about the friendly doctor seemed to conjure his voice out of thin air, because as soon as I turned the corner and stepped into the long corridor where the offices were, I could hear him arguing with someone.

“Edison, I can’t just keep treating you like this. There are rules and regulations. I could lose my license,” I heard him say, sounding completely exasperated.

“You used to help me all the time, Eli, and you know I can’t go to the hospital the normal way,” a deep growling voice said in return. Just the sound of it made something in my stomach flutter as I crept in closer.

Dr. Stedmeyer’s office was the only one with a light on and the door was cracked open. I know I shouldn’t have, but I peeked inside, careful to stay out of the line of sight of the three people within.

“Yeah, I did help you… when we were in college when treating your bullet wounds was exciting and I lived life on the edge. There isn’t anything exciting about this,” Dr. Stedmeyer told the shirtless man in front of him. Despite his protests, it was clear he was, in fact, treating the man because he was wearing a pair of blood covered latex gloves.

“To be fair, you treated me more than him,” I heard another man joke. He was the only one I could see clearly and he cut an imposing figure as he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.

Dangerous , a voice in my mind whispered as I peered through the crack in the door at him. He was tall and lean with high cheekbones and neatly trimmed facial hair. The light brown hair on his head looked a bit wild, sticking up on its ends like he’d been running his fingers through it. He was handsome in the way that a knife was beautiful. Perfect to look at, but I somehow knew that he could slice me to smithereens if he really wanted to.

I watched as he shifted from one foot to the other and caught a flash of something silver underneath his brown leather jacket.

Dr. Stedmeyer scoffed at the man’s words with a shake of his head. “I remember, Rhodes, you were like a slice of Swiss cheese by graduation. The things you two do on behalf of the Keane family boggles my mind.”

Keane . I knew that name and it spelled out trouble. My father had been trying to get into their good graces for years… but everything that I’d heard about them pointed to a life of crime and danger.

“You know what they say about blood being thicker than water and all that, Eli,” the first man—Dr. Stedmeyer had called him Edison—snorted.

“Yeah, try saying that once a stray bullet knicks an artery and suddenly all that thick blood is on the floor in front of you,” Dr. Stedmeyer scolded as he dropped something metallic sounding in the metal tray on his desk, making me jump. “Seriously, I can’t keep doing this for you. I’m an oncologist for crying out loud, someone is going to find out eventually.”

“We appreciate all that you do for us, Eli, and if you wanted, the Keane family would hire you outright,” Edison’s words were low and rough, tinged by the tightness of pain from having something pulled from his body.

Dr. Stedmeyer just shook his head. “No, I like working here with the kids. Much more satisfying than patching up mobsters.”

“As one of those mobsters, I have to say that I’m offended,” Edison joked, his words harsh, but even I could tell there was no malice behind it.

I was just about to back away, my instincts telling me that this wasn’t a conversation that I should be eavesdropping on, when the door to Dr. Stedmeyer’s office was yanked open and the man who had been previously leaning against the wall was now standing in front of me and glaring at me with dark eyes.

I’d been too focused on the conversation between my doctor and the shirtless man that I hadn’t even seen him move.

“ Perrie !” Dr. Stedmeyer gasped and stood up from his stool, starting to head in my direction with a frown. “What are you doing out of bed?”

I wanted to answer him, but my eyes were too busy zigzagging between the two men who were currently glaring at me.

The man in front of me was even more handsome up close, his dark brown eyes taking in my face like he was trying to decide if the skinny bald teenager in front of him was a threat.

The one behind him had a pair of the most unique gold eyes I’d ever seen. They were practically molten as he stood with a grunt and pressed a hand to what was clearly a half-bandaged gunshot wound in his chest.

“Who the hell are you and why were you spying on us?” the dark eyed man asked as he stepped in close. Even with my limited sense of smell, there was the ghost of chocolate on my tongue as he advanced towards me.

Then Dr. Stedmeyer was stepping in between us and all I could see was the back of his white coat. “Back off, Rhodes, this is one of my patients.”

Turning, Dr. Stedmeyer hustled me out of sight and back into the hall, shutting the door to his office firmly behind him.

“Who were those two?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me despite the alarm bells ringing in my head to just leave it.

“None of your business, young lady, and what have I told you about leaving your room?” he scolded, redirecting me away from the mysterious men still in his office.

“Wait a second, Eli,” the same gruff voice from before said and we both turned to find the man who’d been shirtless heading in our direction as he shrugged a dark suit jacket on.

His gold eyes found my face and seemed to measure me up. “How do I know she’s not going to say anything about us being here tonight?”

Now that he was closer, I got a better look at him. Where the other man seemed to ooze danger, this one seemed much colder, and more calculated. It was like he could look at me and see any number of outcomes from our little interaction, like he could calculate the chances of me selling him out with just a glance.

“Edison, come on,” Dr. Stedmeyer said, his expression shifting as he nervously stepped in between us again. “She’s a cancer patient. Cut her some slack.”

I wanted to reassure the strange man that even if I wanted to say something—which I didn’t—no one would ever believe me. That is, if they even came to visit in the first place.

The taller man hovered just behind his shoulder, a hand tucked inside his brown leather jacket, and I had a sneaking suspicion that I wasn’t going to like whatever it was he was reaching for.

“Does the cancer make it so she can’t speak for herself?” Edison growled, his eyes still on my face.

Swallowing, I shook my head. “No,” I managed to croak, suddenly regretting leaving my room at all tonight.

There was a pause as the two men seemed to be sizing me up. “So tell me, little one, are you going to tell anyone what you saw here tonight?”

The strangest sensation of fear and something I couldn’t quite put my finger on filled me.

“No,” I said, shaking my head again, more fiercely this time. “I would have had to see something to say something.”

The golden-eyed man blinked with surprise before a rattling chuckle left him. “Smart girl.”

“All right, if you’re done bullying a teenage girl, I’ve got to get her back to bed before the charge nurse realizes she’s gone and kills us all.” Dr. Stedmeyer put a hand on my back and began to turn me away.

I blanched at his words. I’d forgotten Nurse Alcott was on shift tonight. She was the strictest person in the ward and wasn’t someone I wanted to piss off if I wanted anything other than porridge for breakfast this week.

The two men said nothing as Dr. Stedmeyer hurried us both away, and despite my brain telling me not to, I turned to look over my shoulder at them one more time.

They stood together in the dim hallway, the one who’d been shot pressing a hand to his chest while the other one continued to watch me until we turned a corner.

During my time at the hospital I only ever saw them once or twice more. Despite his protests, Dr. Stedmeyer always helped them with whatever wounds they came in with.

But never again did they speak to me, and then one day they stopped coming altogether and I never laid eyes on them again.

And then they crashed my wedding.