Somewhere past day forty, the door opens at the wrong time.
Then the door swings in and the light from the corridor beyond is brighter than the bulb and I squint against it.
The man who walks in is not one of the two I know.
He's young, early thirties perhaps with dark hair and a good suit, the kind of easy smile that makes you want to trust him.
He smells like expensive cologne and nothing else. No pheromone signature strong enough to place his designation at this distance. Alpha, probably. The suit says money. The two men behind him say power.
He looks at me. He looks at the mattress, the water bottles, the lines scratched on the wall. He looks at my stomach.
"Mr. Holland." His voice is warm. "I'm sorry it's taken me so long to come down here. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t followed. I wouldn’t want this entire situation to become more difficult."
"You’re Luca Castellano," I say.
His eyebrows lift. "You know me."
"I know who you are."
He smiles. It's a good smile. Warm, slightly rueful, the smile of a man who's been caught doing something charming. "I suppose you do. You've been busy in that casino. Or so I hear."
He pulls a folding chair from behind the door — brought with him, planned — and sets it up three feet from the mattress. He sits. He crosses one leg over the other. His pants have a knife crease. His shoes are polished.
"You look well," he says. "Considering."
"Considering I've been locked in a concrete room for six weeks."
"Closer to eight, actually." He says it lightly, as if correcting a small arithmetic error. "Time does funny things without a window. Are they feeding you properly? I told them to feed you properly."
"The pasta was good. The sandwiches need work."
Another smile. He's enjoying this. That's the first thing I file away. He's not here because he has to be. He's here because he wants to be.
"Let me be straightforward," he says. "I know who you are. I know you're Dominic Novikov's omega. I know he kept you in his building against your will. Ankle monitor, locked doors, the whole arrangement." He uncrosses his legs and leans forward. "I also know you were the one who dismantled my operation inside his casino. Which was impressive, by the way. Genuinely. I had people in that building for months and you unpicked the whole thing in weeks."
"Is that why I'm here? Payback?"
"God, no. If I wanted payback, Mr. Holland, you'd know about it." He says it pleasantly, the way you'd decline a second helping of dessert. The smile doesn't change. The eyes don't change. There's nothing behind them. It's not that they're cold. Cold is still a temperature. These are empty.
I file that away too. It's the most important thing I've learned since the door opened.
"You're here because you're useful," he says. "Not as a hostage. Hostages are blunt instruments. I prefer something more refined."
"Such as?"
"A partnership." He lets the word sit. "You're a smart man, Theo. Can I call you Theo?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "You've been living under Novikov's thumb for months. He tracked you down, locked you up, fitted you with a monitor like a convict, and when you tried to negotiate your freedom, he told you no. I'm sure the sex was adequate. It usually is with alphas who think they own you. But let's be honest about what it was."
He's watching my face. He's looking for something and I know what it is. He's looking for agreement.
For the flinch, the bitterness, the confirmation that Novikovs's omega hates his guts.
"I'm listening," I say.
"The Novikov operation is in free fall. Dominic fired half his floor staff in a single night. His quarterly numbers are a disaster. His father is pressuring him. Our Castellano proposal — a partnership that would have benefited both families — was rejected out of hand." He spreads his palms. "And his omega, the one he was so determined to keep, vanished from his building on his watch. That's not a man in control. That's a man in crisis."
"And you're the man with the solution."
"I'm the man with the opportunity. For both of us."
