Chapter 7 Tomas
TOMAS
THREE MONTHS LATER
Numbers obey me. Alphas lie. Omegas tend to cheat.
Today I can't get through a single page.
Jennifer Sullivan has been dismantling my focus for three months.
Her name alone is enough to tighten something low in my gut. Something territorial that I have no interest in examining and even less luck ignoring.
I sit behind my desk in Milan with forty-seven pages of acquisition documents spread open in front of me, and all I can see is an omega in a red dress staring at a roulette wheel like she had nothing left to lose. Beautiful in the dangerous sense.
Soft mouth made for smiling and biting. Dark honey hair pinned up badly enough to invite interference. Curves generous enough to make a patient man forget patience entirely.
Those pins caught my attention first, pretending they could hold that dark honey hair in place.
Then Santos got there before me, sliding them free one by one like he had every right.
Jealousy hit hard and mean, sudden enough to make me want to break his wrist for touching what I wanted.
I flip a page I haven't read.
She'd stood in our suite with the zipper of her dress half down, trying to hold onto dignity while three alphas watched her like starving things, and the moment she understood we weren't judging her, that we were wanting her, the relief in her trace had nearly brought me to my knees.
Rose and strawberry, warm and a little bruised, opening up like something that hadn't been tended to in far too long.
I set the papers aside.
The door opens without a knock.
Only one person in this city is that committed to irritating me before noon.
Santos strolls in carrying sunshine and arrogance. Open collar. Tan skin. Gold watch. Ink curling down one forearm. Smirk already assembled.
"You look awful."
"Thanks," I say, not in the mood for any type of conversation. Especially when I can't get one omega off my mind.
He drops into the chair across from my desk and steals the glass of water meant for me.
He studies my face for half a second and grins wider.
"You're thinking about her again."
"And?" I say defensively.
I should deny it. I can't be bothered.
"Do you ever shut up willingly?"
"No. It weakens the brand."
He leans back and stretches out like he owns the room. Santos has always moved like the world exists to entertain him. Women love it. Men resent it. I've tolerated it for fifteen years because we were friends before we even became a pack.
"Three months," he says. "It's a long time to be haunted by one omega."
"Especially one as fine as her."
The words are out before I decide to say them.
Santos goes still, then laughs so hard he nearly chokes on my water.
The door opens again.
Matteo enters with two espressos and the expression of a man already regretting his associates. Dark suit. Black hair immaculate. Blue eyes sharp enough to cut glass.
He hands me a cup and surveys the room with the efficiency of someone who's already reaching conclusions.
"Why is he laughing."
"Tomas talking about Jennifer."
Matteo's gaze comes to me. Something moves through it, unreadable and quick. Then it's gone. He takes the remaining chair and slides a folder onto my desk.
"The Nakamura delegation arrives next week," Matteo says, ignoring what both I and Santos said about Jennifer.
"Nakamura-san, yoroshiku onegaishimasu," Santos says with a pleased little bow.
Show-off bastard.
"Don't bring him," I say.
"I speak Japanese," Santos says immediately.
We know. He never stops talking about the fact that he speaks eight languages. He loves learning, and he loves showing off too.
Matteo pinches the bridge of his nose.
On any other day, I'd have read the file, improved the terms, and insulted everyone before lunch. Instead, I'm tasting espresso and memory at the same time.
Jennifer barefoot on the sofa, laughing with her mouth full of bread because Santos ordered enough food for twelve when there were only four of us.
Jennifer in the dark before dawn, asleep with her fingers curled around my wrist, as though some quiet animal part of her expected to be left behind and meant to make it difficult.
I set the cup down harder than I intend to.
"It would've helped if she had our number," I say.
Santos goes still.
"You said you'd leave it," he says to Matteo. "In Milan. When we talked about the note. You said you'd leave the number alongside the money."
Matteo sets his espresso down.
"I changed my mind," he says.
The room is quiet in a way that has weight in it.
"You changed your mind," Santos says. Flat. Not a question.
"I thought a clean break was better," Matteo says. "For all of us."
"You decided that," Santos says. "Alone. Without asking either of us."
Matteo says nothing.
"You didn't just leave money, Matteo." Santos's voice has dropped to something low and controlled that is worse than shouting. "You took away her choice to reach us. You made that decision for her and for us and you did it without saying so."
Matteo's jaw tightens once.
"I know," he says.
It is the first time I have heard those two words from him without a justification attached, and they land in the room like something final.
Matteo's fingers stop on the folder. Santos stops smiling. Small things tell truths before mouths do, and both of them just told me everything.
I look at Matteo.
Slowly.
Then it dawns on me, because he has guilt written all over his face.
"What was in the note?"
His jaw tightens once.
"I handled it."
"That wasn't the question."
Fuck. What did he write?
"We agreed Vegas was a mistake."
Santos sits forward. "Also not the question."
I don't raise my voice often. Don't need to. My voice drops instead, the way it does when I'm done negotiating.
"What was in the note, Matteo."
He meets my eyes.
"I left money."
Heat hits me hard enough that my collar feels too tight. Santos is on his feet before Matteo finishes the sentence, chair scraping back hard against the marble floor.
"You did what."
The words land flat and sharp, the way Santos gets when the charm burns off completely and what's underneath comes through instead.
Matteo sets his espresso down with the careful precision of a man who has already decided how this conversation ends and refuses to be moved by anything as inconvenient as emotion.
"It was generous."
"You left her money, Matteo. Like she was something purchased."
"The responsible thing under the circumstances."
Matteo doesn't back up an inch.
Santos's scent spikes hot through the room, voice dropping lower and rougher in a way that's somehow worse than shouting.
"She woke up alone in an empty suite with cash on a table. Do you understand what that communicates to an omega?"
"We didn't know her."
Every line of Matteo controlled, armored, immovable.
"We knotted her," Santos bites each word off clean. "So think harder about what you did."
I get to my feet because staying seated any longer means doing something that costs more than this office is worth. My scent has already gone wrong, silver and white pepper sharp in the air, anger sitting high in my chest where focus usually lives.
"You left her alone," I say.
Matteo's gaze moves to mine.
"Cleaner that way."
"For who."
His jaw tightens.
"All of us."
I laugh once. The cold kind, the kind that isn't a laugh at all.
Matteo's gaze cuts to mine.
"We said no more omegas. Chiara left three years ago. She was with us for five years before that and she chose to leave. That was her decision and I have not spent three years wishing it undone."
"No more women playing angles." I look at him steadily.
"Jennifer lied about nothing. She walked into our suite carrying heartbreak like hand luggage and still managed to be funny.
She flinched when complimented. She blushed when she was wanted.
She offered trust with both hands and asked nothing for it. "
Santos plants both palms on my desk.
"Do you know what she thought when she looked at us looking at her."
Matteo says nothing.
"She thought we'd find something wrong." Santos's voice has dropped to something rough and quiet.
"She was standing there trying to joke her way through humiliation, and you watched her scent go sharp and thin, we all did, and then you went ahead and confirmed every rotten thing someone had already taught her to believe. "
Something shifts in Matteo's eyes before he gets the shutters up. A fraction of a second. Enough.
"You knew," I say quietly.
"She'd lost her job," he says. "I thought five grand would help her."
I shake my head.
"She must have really got to you, because what you did was low, even for you."
We're close enough now that only fifteen years of history keeps this from becoming something else entirely. He doesn't retreat. I'll give him that.
"I thought you'd move on," he says.
"I can't."
The words come out rougher than I intend. No artifice in them, no calculation. Just the truth, which I've been keeping at arm's length for three months and apparently ran out of distance to do so.
No one speaks.
I turn toward the window. Milan below, elegant and indifferent. Traffic. Sun on pale stone. Men moving through their days toward places they'd rather not be.
Somewhere in another city is a woman who thinks three alphas wanted her for a single night and paid to make sure it didn't become anything more.
My hands curl at my sides.
I want her mouth. I've wanted it every morning for three months, the exact softness of it, the way she'd made that small helpless sound when I'd finally gotten my hands into her hair.
I want her against me again, warm and real and smelling like roses.
I want to kneel in front of her and spend an hour undoing every miserable thing someone else did to her.
"I wake up thinking about her mouth," I say to the glass. "I hear her laugh when Santos said something stupid."
"Frequently," Santos mutters.
"I remember how she looked at Matteo when he said something kind to her. Like she hadn't been spoken to gently in years."
I turn back.
Matteo's face has gone very still, which is how I know he feels everything.
Good.
Santos drags a hand over his jaw.
"I miss her too." He says it like the feeling offended him personally, which is very Santos. "I miss watching her eat."
Almost gets a smile out of me.
Matteo looks between us. For once he has no prepared answer, no clean strategy, just a man who made the wrong move and knows it.
"I thought I was protecting what we built," he says.
"You were protecting yourself," I reply.
He accepts that. You can see it in the way his shoulders lower half an inch before he pulls himself back together.
Then he straightens. Decision made. I know that look.
"We leave for the island Friday."
"We find Jennifer first to fucking apologize for what you did," I say.
His eyes meet mine.
"And if she refuses. It has been months since we saw her."
Yet, it feels like only yesterday.
"Then we earn a different answer."
Santos grins slow and a little dangerous.
"And if there's some idiot boyfriend. Maybe she went back to him."
My scent spikes again before I can stop it.
"We'll assess the idiot," I say.
Santos barks a laugh.
"There he is."
Matteo picks up the discarded folder. Sets it down again. For the first time all morning he looks less like a machine and more like the man I've known most of my life.
"Find her," he says.
I sit. Pull the acquisition papers toward me. Read the first paragraph and understand every word.
Funny, what clarity a direction brings.
Somewhere out there is Jennifer Sullivan. Sharp and soft and far too generous with her trust for someone who'd been given so many reasons not to be.
This time, if she lets me close enough to touch her, I intend to take my time.