Page 99 of Sold to the wrong Alpha
Reznov let the silence work for him for a few seconds.
“What I’m wondering is whether Brody understands what that might cost him.”
The eighth imperfection in the paint was shaped like a comma. Ren focused on it.
“Malachi doesn’t know where you’ve been these past weeks. Not yet. But I’m a naturally curious man and I have a habit of finding things out before sharing them.”
Reznov pushed away from the window and walked to the broken chair. He examined it as though it were a museum piece. He ran his fingers along the splintered leg.
“Brody has always had this tendency of his to collect broken things. Lost omegas, impossible causes. His uncle tolerates it because Brody is useful to him and because blood counts for something, but there are limits. Even for family.”
Ren counted the ninth imperfection. The tenth.
“Do you know what Malachi does when someone puts his business at risk?”
It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Reznov left precisely the right pause for the image to form on its own in the listener’s mind.
“He’s not a man who enjoys violence, I’ll grant you that. He’s violent on principle. For reputation. Because in this business reputation is the only thing that separates a man with power from a dead man. And his reputation has been… affected.”
Reznov released the broken chair leg and cleaned his fingers with a handkerchief he produced from his inside jacket pocket.
“Not only because of you. Two omegas were lost that night, not one.”
Ren stopped counting.
The movement was minimal. A blink that lasted a fraction of a second longer than normal. His jaw unclenching. The fingers on his ankles loosening just enough for someone observant to notice. And Reznov was observant.
The omega in the red latex.
Ren saw him every time he closed his eyes for too long. That pale face under the auction room lights, dark eyes fixed straight ahead with a rigidity that wasn’t courage but pure dissociation, his body packed into that obscene jumpsuit while the men in the room appraised him like livestock. Ren didn’t know his name. They hadn’t exchanged a single word. But he had watched him tremble with fear, and something about the way the other omega had curled in on himself had lodged under Ren’s skin like a splinter he couldn’t extract.
He had escaped.
The triumph rose warm from his stomach. Small, silent, but fierce. Someone else had run that night. Someone else had torn their body from the hands that meant to possess it and disappeared into the dark. Ren didn’t smile. He didn’t change the expression on his face or look at Reznov or do anything that might betray the savage wave of satisfaction flooding his chest. But he felt it. He felt it completely.
“Two omegas in one night,” Reznov continued, his tone hardening by a degree. “Seven hundred thousand for mine. Nine hundred thousand for the other. Malachi lost more than a million and a half dollars and the confidence of buyers who have been investing in his auctions for years. That kind of blow isn’t absorbed. It’s collected.”
Reznov approached the bed. He didn’t sit. He stood a meter from Ren, close enough for his shadow to fall across him.
“If Malachi discovers that his own nephew has been hiding one of the omegas who cost him that humiliation… Brody won’t only lose his position. He’ll lose something considerably harder to recover.”
Ren swallowed. The movement was involuntary, and he hated himself for it the moment it happened.
“Think about it. You have time. Not much, but some.”
Reznov moved toward the door. He stopped with his hand on the frame and turned halfway, offering Ren his patrician profile.
“Ren.”
The voice was softer. Almost pleasant. The kind of softness that precedes a blade.
“If you decide to abandon this pointless, defiant attitude you’ve been maintaining these past few days… perhaps I can forget that I know where you’ve been. And with whom.”
Sergei held the door for him. Reznov left. The bolt turned.
Ren stayed motionless on the bed with his eyes fixed on the closed door and his heart beating in his throat. He lowered his hand to his belly without thinking, a gesture that had already become automatic, and pressed his fingers against the fabric of his t-shirt.
Three days.
