21. Mary
Mary
My father never left a message when he first rang me two days ago, nor did he leave one the other five times.
No message meant I didn’t know why he was calling.
I hadn’t answered. My bones remembered him, anyway.
They remembered standing in rooms with expensive carpets while men discussed me as a future acquisition.
They remembered my father’s voice going soft when he wanted obedience, because Callum McCarthy never wasted anger when affection could do more damage.
They remembered the way I’d once wanted to make him proud so badly that I’d mistaken fear for love.
Two days later, I stood in the penthouse bedroom with my hand on the edge of my half-built nest and knew I needed my sister.
Not by phone, and not through texts where Maeve could send a knife emoji and tell me to breathe.
I found Hudson and Lincoln in the study.
Hudson was at his desk with a laptop open. Lincoln stood behind him, one hand braced on the chair, both of them looking at a document.
They looked up at the same time, which still did annoying things to me.
I folded my arms before either of them could notice I had come in because I was scared. “I’m going to Surrey.”
Lincoln straightened. “Now?”
“That’s how going works, yes.”
Lincoln’s expression softened too quickly.
“Of course,” he said. “We’ll take you this evening.”
“I’ll take a cab with Sienna.”
Lincoln simply stopped, every muscle in him locking down. “No.”
I blinked. “Sorry?”
“No,” he said again.
Hudson stood up, looking taller than his six-two height. “Mary, your father called you two days ago.”
“And I didn’t answer.”
“That doesn’t make him less interested.”
“I’m not helpless.”
“No,” Hudson said. “You’re not. And you’re also not getting into a random car when Callum McCarthy has just reached for you.”
I felt the old panic stir and immediately tried to smother it with irritation. “It’s a licensed cab, not a suspicious van with sweets painted on the side.”
Lincoln’s mouth didn’t move. Usually he liked me being funny.
“Sienna will be with me,” I said.
“Sienna is one person,” Lincoln said.
“A terrifying person.”
“Still one.”
Hudson stood and came around the desk. “This isn’t about controlling where you go.”
“It has the flavor.”
He sighed. “I know.”
That took some of the fight out of me.
He kept his voice calm. “If you want Surrey, you go to Surrey. We will never stop you seeing your sister. I get you’re frightened, but we can look after you.”
“I need to see her.”
He sighed again. “Wait until this evening and we’ll take you.”
“Lincoln. He only has my number, not my address.”
“How do you know that?” He was already calling someone.
I looked at Hudson. “He’s gone all alpha.”
“A little.”
“You were supposed to deny that.”
“I’m choosing honesty.”
“Inconvenient time to start.”
Hudson’s mouth softened, but his eyes remained serious. “Let us protect you.”
“Protection becomes ownership very quickly in my family.”
“Then we keep saying the difference out loud until your bones learn it.”
My throat tightened.
Lincoln turned away, speaking low into the phone. “Range Rover. Armored. Two escort vehicles. Same route protocol as discussed. Sienna rides with Mary. No uniformed show unless there’s a problem.”
I stared at him.
“Armored?”
Lincoln covered the phone. “Bulletproof.”
“I know what armored means. I was hoping there was a softer definition.”
“There isn’t.”
Sienna appeared in the doorway ten minutes later. “Ready when you are,” she said.
“I’m being transported like a controversial politician.”
“Less waving and no kissing babies for votes,” Sienna said.
Lincoln made a sound that might have been a laugh if he hadn’t been busy looking as if he wanted to wrap me in steel himself.
I took my coat from Hudson.
He held it open for me, then let his hands rest on my shoulders once it was on. His scent wrapped around me, rain and that sharper controlled warmth that made my breathing steady despite myself.
“Call when you arrive.”
“I will.”
“If anything feels wrong, you tell Sienna.”
“I will.”
“If you change your mind, turn around and come home.”
Home.
I looked up at him. “I will. Are you finished?”
“Not remotely.”
I smiled despite the fear that I didn’t want to believe it myself. But Callum McCarthy was prepared to sell me once, if he knew I had two babies inside me, he’d lock me up until they were old enough to sell. And only three men were capable of keeping me safe.
Bratva men.
Men who weren’t afraid of the world I grew up in. Lincoln and Hudson were so far out of their depth, they thought a legal contract was enough. It wasn’t.
Lincoln stepped in, broad and warm, his hand cupping the side of my neck for one careful second. “You don’t have to prove anything today.”
“That’s unfortunate. I was wearing my proving pants.” Again, a joke. What was fear always better wrapped in fun?
His thumb brushed my pulse before he kissed me, then he pulled back and our eyes met. “Mary.”
“Please go to work and call me later.”
After kissing Hudson, the elevator took Sienna and me down to the private car entrance. There were three Range Rovers waiting. I stopped walking. “This is excessive.”
Sienna opened the rear door. “Yes.”
“You agree?”
“I didn’t say it was wrong.”
I climbed in. The door shut with a heavy sound. Sienna got in beside me rather than the front, which I appreciated more than I wanted to admit.
The convoy pulled out into London traffic. Rain slid down the darkened windows. The city moved around us in wet sidewalks, red buses, and people hurrying beneath umbrellas.
I kept my phone in my lap, screen down. I didn’t know why my heart was jumping; my father hadn’t called again.
Sienna glanced at my hands. “You can turn it off.”
“Then he wins.”
“Does he?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. He always wins something.”
Her lip curled at one side. “You look like you’re the winner to me.”
I looked at her properly. “Do you have a family?”
“Yes, but I don’t see much of them.”
“Distance or because they’re awful?”
“Complicated.”
“That’s a polite word for awful.”
She smiled. “Sometimes it can be.”
The car slid past the river, then into heavier traffic heading out of the city. I touched my stomach. Sienna noticed.
“Are you running from someone?” I asked.
Her gaze moved from the window to me. “What makes you say that?”
“Because you look like me right now. On edge.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m protecting you. I have to be careful.”
I nodded. “Do you believe in scent matching? Fated mates. Having a choice?”
“No, no, and yes.”
I blinked. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Why do you hide that you’re an omega?”
She sucked in a breath. “How do you know?”
“Honestly, I thought you were a beta at first. Your suppressants must be platinum grade.”
“Good. That’s how I want it.”
“Does anyone know?”
“You.”
I lifted my hand and made a zipping motion across my lips. “Then I’ll be unbearable about it.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
I laughed. “What’s your story? Because nothing can be as bad as a runaway mafia princess, who was married off to a man who married her sister, and then got pregnant by her ex’s dads.”
She whistled. “My life isn’t as exciting as that. I just want to be a person, Mary. Not an object of desire for an alpha, or alphas,” Sienna said slowly.
My mouth circled into an O. “Do you think I’m just an object of desire?”
“I never said that. I’m just not a normal omega. I don’t fit the mold.”
“What if you met him, or them?”
“Or her,” she replied.
“Ahh.”
“Female alphas are rarer than omegas.” She smiled. “And I believe in scent compatibility rather than matching. And I also believe trauma makes people confuse safety with fate.”
“That’s cheerful.”
“I didn’t say romance was dead. I said I don’t trust destiny.”
I looked out at the gray road. “I didn’t either.”
Sienna waited.
“I met Hudson and Lincoln in Boston. And they smelled like everything I’d been trying not to want,” I said.
“Then I told myself it was my heat. Then pregnancy. Then fear. Then convenience. Then made excuses about age gaps and terrible timing, and Damien and every other reason a person can invent to not confront the truth.”
Sienna’s face softened slightly.
“And now?” she asked.
I pressed my palm more firmly to my stomach. “Now I believe in destiny. But I’m still scared. Scared of what happens when Damien arrives. Scared for these babies more than I was ever scared for myself.”
“Hence running to your sister instead of letting your alphas protect you?”
“My father would kill them.” I looked into Sienna’s eyes. “I can’t take the risk. I’m safer with my sister.”
Sienna looked out of the window for a moment. “They might be prepared to take the risk because you’re theirs,” she replied.
“Very romantic.”
She smiled. “Surprisingly. I didn’t know I had it in me. Just don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation.”
“For what?”
“Being difficult.”
The cars turned off the main road and into lanes I recognized. Surrey in the rain looked softer than London, green hedges and old trees, fields blurring at the edges. My chest loosened a fraction as the first security marker for Maeve’s estate appeared.
“Join the club.” The gates came into view. “We’re nearly there.”
Then the sky split open with sound.
I flinched so hard my seat belt locked as a black helicopter swept low over the convoy, its rotors beating the rain sideways. The Range Rover rocked under the force of it. Sienna’s hand went to my shoulder before I could think, pressing me down and back.
“Stay low.”
She was already speaking into a comms unit at her wrist. “Aerial contact. Black helicopter. Approaching the Surrey gate. Keep moving if it’s clear.”
My phone rang. Da’s name glowed on the screen.
The helicopter banked ahead of us and dropped lower over the drive inside the grounds. The gates opened, but the lead car slowed, then stopped.
“Why are we stopping?” I asked.
Sienna’s jaw set hard.
“Artem. I need to call him,” I said.
My phone rang again.
“Don’t answer,” Sienna said.
“He’ll keep calling.”
“Let him.”