"Why?" I managed as Marco rinsed soap from my hair, his hand shielding my eyes from the water. "Why… me? All this? Why… elaborate… seduction? Or… coercion? Whatever… this is.Must be… easier targets. More… willing omegas. Less… sarcasm. Better… attitudes."
The question encompassed everything—the kidnapping, the pleasure, the possession, the care. Why had they chosen me? Why were they treating me like something precious after systematically breaking me down?
The three alphas exchanged looks over my head, some silent communication passing between them. Finally, Stefano spoke, his voice gentler than I'd ever heard it.
"Because you're ours," he said simply, as if that explained everything. "You were always meant to be ours, from the first moment we scented you. Everything else—your father, the cottage, the isolation—was just an inconvenience to be overcome."
"Been waiting," Marco added, his fingers still massaging my scalp with hypnotic slowness. "Waiting for the right moment to claim what's ours."
"And now we have," Matteo concluded, his hands moving up my legs, checking for any harm they might have caused during their enthusiastic claiming.
I wanted to argue, to reassert that I wasn't property to be claimed, wasn't something that could belong to anyone but myself. But exhaustion was pulling me under, my body completely drained from their thorough attentions. My eyelids felt impossibly heavy, my thoughts slow and disjointed. I was like a computer running too many programs simultaneously, processing power at maximum capacity, forced shutdown imminent.
"Sleep," Stefano murmured, noticing my struggle to stay awake.
As darkness claimed me, I had one final, terrifying thought—they'd rewired something fundamental inside me tonight. My body would never be the same, would never stop craving theirtouch, their approval, their possession. What they'd done went beyond physical pleasure, beyond sexual manipulation. They'd found all my secret needs, all the places where I was vulnerable, and exploited them with surgical precision.
They'd broken me open and remade me in their image, and I wasn't sure I could ever put myself back together again. Or worse—I wasn't sure I wanted to.
nineteen
. . .
Present Day
Rain lashed against the bulletproof windows of Stefano's office, matching the dark violence pulsing through his blood as he watched Leo through the surveillance feed. The memory of his winter jasmine scent clung to his senses despite the physical distance, a ghost of pleasure that had haunted him since they'd first claimed their little prince in the forest a year ago.
On screen, Leo paced the cottage living room like a trapped animal, fingers raking through ash-blond hair that caught the afternoon light. Three days since his father's funeral. Three days since the legal documents had transferred Leo from Kenji Yamamoto's protection to the Vitale Brotherhood's possession.
Three fucking days of watching their omega grieve for a father who'd never deserved him.
"The Nakamura shipment cleared customs," Matteo reported from across the office, amber eyes flicking between his phone and the business documents before him. "Product arrives at midnight. Distribution channels secured."
Stefano barely registered the information, attention fixed on Leo as he paused at the cottage window, forehead pressing against rain-streaked glass. The oversized sweater slipped off one shoulder, revealing that perfect juncture where throat met collarbone—the exact spot where Stefano's teeth would mark him, where his claiming bite would finally end this torturous waiting.
His cock hardened instantly, primitive possession surging through him at the memory of their last visit—Leo pinned against the garden bench, struggling between them as Stefano's fingers invaded his mouth, forcing him to taste his own surrender. The way Leo had fought even as his body betrayed him, winter jasmine scent spiking with arousal despite his futile resistance.
"Stefano." Marco's voice cut through his obsessive recollection as his brother entered without knocking, tablet in hand, expression dark with barely controlled violence. "You need to see this."
Marco's tablet displayed Leo from another angle—the camera hidden in the cottage bookshelf capturing their little prince curled into the armchair, face contorted with grief as silent tears tracked down flushed cheeks. The sight ignited something primal in Stefano's chest, his vision edging crimson as his alpha nature howled against Leo's distress.
"Three more days," he growled, the promise more threat than statement. "Not one fucking day longer."
His mind flooded with images from their calculated cottage invasion—Leo's shock when they'd established themselves in the garden, the way his sharp tongue had faltered when Matteo had hung Leo's underwear on the laundry line with deliberate intimacy, the naked vulnerability in his eyes when Marco had bandaged his bleeding finger in the kitchen. Six months of methodical infiltration, of breaking down Leo's defenses pieceby piece until there was nowhere in his world that wasn't marked by their presence.
Nowhere to hide from the alphas who owned him.
"The suite is ready," Matteo confirmed, voice carrying that deadly quiet that made lesser men tremble. "Security protocols in place. Staff briefed on appropriate behaviors."
Appropriate behaviors. The euphemism nearly made Stefano laugh. What he meant was: any staff member who looked at Leo wrong, touched Leo without permission, or even breathed in Leo's direction without explicit authorization would be eliminated with extreme prejudice.
"Three years since Kenji approached us," Marco said, moving to the floor-to-ceiling windows, rain lashing against glass as thunder rolled in the distance. "A year since we broke him in the forest."
Stefano's cock pulsed at the memory—Leo half-drowned from the pond, clothes clinging to that lithe frame, fighting like a trapped animal when they'd overpowered him. That first spanking that had nearly shattered Stefano's control, the way Leo's hole had leaked slick despite the suppressants.
Every moment calculated to imprint their ownership on Leo's omega biology.
"Worth it," Stefano replied, voice rough with restraint as he adjusted himself beneath the desk. "Kenji Yamamoto knew what he was doing, keeping Leo isolated. He's an omega prime, even if he doesn't know it yet. Worth more than the entire fucking Yamamoto empire."
