"Who are you? What do you want from me?"
The shorter one keeps chuckling while the taller guy says, "We might as well tell you. We’re old friends of your dad’s. We came here to settle some unfinished business from the past."
"I don’t get it. What kind of business? Like a debt or something?"
He smirks. "You could call it that. He took a lot of money from us. We once won the lottery, but he robbed us of most of it. We managed to hide about half a million, but the rest well, I’m guessing a good part of it went into that lovely property your family lives on."
I stare at them because I honestly don’t understand any of this. I know nothing about my dad’s past. He once told me his story wasn’t the best, but that I would learn all the details when I turned eighteen.
Still, driven by curiosity, I asked Jordan, our housekeeper and my uncle, what he meant by that. Jordan told me I should patiently wait for my dad to tell me himself, because, and this is his exact quote, Dad wants our childhood to pass without a shadow that would put the burden of knowing what happened in his life before he met my father.
Now those words come back to me. What if these people are part of that shadow?
"So what do you want from us, money?"
"Sure, that’s obvious, but that could be hard to pull off, and we’d have the police back on our backs again. We don’t even know if we want to get involved with that. What we want is the sweet taste of revenge. We’re not the kind of people who forget a grudge."
The taller of the alphas, the one who has been silent until now, stands with his arms crossed and then says,
"I have to admit, dear Lake produced a litter of really handsome kids. You’re probably growing into an alpha, but thatface of yours is seriously cute… a beautiful alpha? Really fucking pretty… Looks like a case of good genes from the parents."
Only now, watching them, I notice a family resemblance between them. Could they be brothers?
"Did my dad do something to you in the past?"
The first one who spoke to me, a shorter guy with a tattoo, shrugs.
"You could say that! Because of him our whole lives fell apart. We let him go willingly, our dealings were closed, but he simply couldn’t forget and move on. Instead of being a good, obedient omega keeping his mouth shut, he started talking to the police, and then…the infamous Omega Red Line Agency got involved. Everything went downhill, unfortunately for us. The agency’s lawyers picked us clean and threw us in jail. But… now we’ll at least take a little of what’s ours…"
I still don’t understand what they mean. I just stare, trying to find a way out of this, to say something that will save me, to say something that will fix everything, to turn back time so I never walked into this grove. Why didn’t I listen to Dad’s intuition and stay close to the house?
The taller, quieter alpha pulls something from the backpack on his shoulders. It’s a camera with a long lens. He flips the screen toward me and shows a photo of… my dad sitting on the patio.
My heart stops.
"I have to admit, True Mate magic has kept your dad in perfect shape. He doesn't seem to have aged much from when we first met him… What a sweet little omega he was, so innocent and delicious. We may have broken him a little, but your father seems to have fixed everything right up, now our precious Lake is blooming!
The lower alpha chuckles menacingly.
"We're going to enjoy sampling his sweet hole all over again!"
I feel like I'm about to faint… My voice is trapped in my chest, I want to scream, I want to say something, but all that comes out is a silent cough, my whole body burning up.
Finally, I manage to croak out a protest.
"N-No! Please…"
"You don't get a say here, kid. You'll wait here quietly with us until your daddy gets back."
"No! Please, you can't hurt him, my dad… my dad is the best person in the world! He's…"
"No begging, little boy. It's useless. We'll do whatever we want with him. Now shut up."
Both alphas laugh coldly, their eyes empty, faces frozen in cruel masks devoid of humanity. Did they already have it before? Or did the prison just make them worse?
The shorter alpha stares at me, eyes squinting as if he’s thinking something through, then leans down toward me and growls,
"You know what? Maybe I could consider giving up your dad’s hole… but I’d need a replacement, ‘cause years in prison leave a man starved…"
