Because if they reveal his past, his story will show people that they can break away from the Hearts, and the Hearts don’t want that.It will show that the Hearts aren’t as all-powerful as they like to pretend they are.It will hurt Mathew, but could hurt the Hearts even worse.
Our intentions to take down the brothel haven’t changed, but we might need to adapt the plans now this is all over the internet.
We’ve carefully been working with some smaller organisations and groups of people, to try and build a network that can help the kids when they’ve been taken from the Hearts.To provide places to sleep, places to heal, new identities.Anything to get them a new start in life.
Most of those people haven’t responded negatively, many have actually responded really positively.Though, that might be because Vera and Luca have taken most of that on.So, they’ve been dealing with a headstrong Omega and a soft Beta the whole time.
But we’ll have to be careful for a while.Until we can be sure that nobody is going to rat us out to the Hearts.Until we can be sure that we’re not going to be betrayed.
And that isifall this attention doesn’t spook the Hearts and makes them nervous enough to change the security or potentially close down the brothel entirely.They won’t want to close it, because it makes them a lot of money and it will also spook too many of their ‘customers’, but if they feel nervous enough, they might do it.
That would mean that the kids who are there right now will be spread over all the other brothels, and they might even end up in places we have no idea of.It means they’ll get hidden even deeper in the system and makes it much harder to get them out.
Right now, we can only wait.Wait to see what the Hearts will do, wait for things to die down and wait for more information so that we can slowly build our plans to take the brothel down.
I’m not that good with waiting.
‘You want company?’Vera’s message lights up my phone.
‘Sure.’I’m in my room, in the closet, hoping that the quiet and calm will help my mind to stay on task and not spin all over the place.
It hasn’t worked, not entirely.
Instead of reading horrible articles and people being mean, I’ve been scrolling social media to read all the comments where people are drooling all over my pack mates.More positive, but just as bad for my brain.
I agree with every compliment they give them, but also hate that anyone is talking about my pack mates in that way at all.It’s...complicated.
The door to my room opens, and a few moments later, Vera slowly opens the door to my closet.She looks at me, her eyes unreadable, before she slides right under the blankets, curling up against me closely, letting her sweet honey pheromones out.
“Everyone doing okay?”I’ve been up here for a while, but when I left the office, everyone was working hard and we didn’t know much yet.
“Not much has changed.It appears that the photographer shared the pics with some close people first, many of who started sharing them around, before she started selling the pics.At this point, we just presume everyone has seen them, makes things simpler.”She lets out a long breath as she nuzzles against my side more.
“Are you okay?”The articles exposed all of us, it wasn’t just Mathew in those pictures.
“If anyone is mean to Mathew, I’ll just have to get rid of them.”The venom in her voice makes me shiver.
Yeah, that’s definitely not an empty threat.
It makes me so proud of my cute Omega, how protective she is of her pack members, how willing she is to protect them, what she’s willing to do for them.
I chuckle, kissing the top of her head.“I was wondering howyouwere doing.”
She looks up at me, surprised.“Oh.I’m fine.Now I know that Mathew is safe, I’m fine.”
I’m not entirely sure that I believe her, but this will have to do for now.
She leans her head against my shoulder, taking my hand between two of hers, slowly sliding her fingers along mine.“Everything has changed now.We knew this was going to happen.We didn’t know when or how, but we knew it was going to happen at some point.”She lets out a tired chuckle.
“It’s a bit hard for Mathew to hide his belly when we wears slim fit suits all the time, and he couldn’t just hide from the world for months on end.People were going to figure it out either way.The timing is just bad.”
I close my hand, catching hers, holding her.“The only time you have some control over things like this is if you reveal it yourself, but even that’s not a given.Even that can be done when you don’t want to, if you’re forced into a corner if you want some control over the discourse.”I lean my head against hers.“Luckily, we’ve all got each other and a great team to work with.So I’m sure that things will work out.”
“And if it doesn’t, we’ll just have to make sure that it does.”She snuggles in closer.“But I think that things have been hard enough for one day.Sleep is important too.”
“That too.”I wrap my arm around her so she’s fully fitted against me, and then give her a soft kiss.“Let’s get some sleep first.”
I feel like the others are probably working until deep into the night, but they know where to find us.So, I’m not leaving this little nest with my sweet Omega unless I have to.Not now.
