The rage that moves through me is all too familiar. I've been swallowing it in this office since I was fourteen, and I swallow it now, letting nothing reach my face. "Understood."
"Good." Father waves a hand toward the door. "That's all."
I make it to the elevator before I let my scent slip. The leather and smoke turns sour, fury bleeding through the control I maintain in his presence. The executive floor secretary glances up as I pass and quickly looks away. By the time I reach my office, the cold rage has settled into something more useful.
Father must have seen Amos’ with Mattaniah, the same way I did. Father thinks he can claim Mattaniah. He believes his sons will step aside and let him take what he wants because that's what we've always done, watched him take, watched him break, and watched him collect people like chess pieces and discard them when they stopped being useful.
Not this time.
The moment I get to my office, I text Amos three words:Come find me,before heading back to my space so I can deal with this privately.
He shows up twelve minutes later with a stack of reports that give him a reason to be on my floor. I'm standing at the window with my back to the door, Father's words still circling in my head, and I wait until he closes the door and the blinds are drawn before I turn around.
"Father just summoned me to his office."
Amos goes still in the middle of the room, the reports lowering to his side. His scent shifts from curious to wary. "What did he want?"
"To inform me that Mattaniah is off limits." I watch his face as I deliver that bit of information. "That he belongs to the household. That he answers to Father. That whatever games we're playing need to stop immediately because Father hasn't given us permission to touch him."
The change in Amos is immediate. His scent spikes from wary to furious, the muscles in his jaw tightening "Permission? He thinks we need hispermission?"
"He thinks Mattaniah is his to allocate. Another asset. Another piece on his board."
"Mattaniah isn't apiece. He's not Father's anything. He's—" He stops himself, but not fast enough.
"He's what?"
Amos pulls his glasses off and presses his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. The tell is familiar. It's what he does when he's trying to manage information he doesn't want to release. But his scent is still broadcasting fury, and underneath the fury is something more dangerous: fear. Not fear of Father. Fear of losing something.
"Amos." I cross the room toward him. "Finish the sentence."
"It doesn't matter what I was going to say."
"It matters because you just heard Father claim ownership of an Omega and your first instinct was to bare your teeth." I stop a foot in front of him. "That's not strategy. That's not the scheme. That's a man defending something that belongs to him."
His throat works as he swallows.
"You're in love with him."
Amos' hand drops from his face as his eyes meet mine, and I see the moment he stops trying to hide it.
"Don't." I hold up a hand before he can speak. "Don't manage me. Don't strategize your answer. I'm not asking a question. I'm telling you what I see."
He sets the reports on the nearest surface without looking at where they land. "I didn't mean for it to happen."
"I know you didn't."
"It was supposed to be the scheme, I know that. It was supposed to stay tactical." He pulls his glasses off and presses his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. "But he looks at me like I'm the first person who's ever seen him as smart instead of pretty, and his scent changes when I walk into a room,and when he laughs, Dom, when he actually laughs without catching himself..." He trails off. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize to me." I stop move a little closer, leaving inches between us. His scent is all sharp pine, the anxious edge that means he thinks he's disappointed me. Part of me wants to soothe it. The rest of me wants to reclaim him. "You fell for an Omega we brought into our bed. That's not a betrayal. That's biology doing what biology does."
"It's more than biology." He meets my eyes with the same honesty that made me fall for him when we were seventeen. Amos doesn't hide from me. He hides from Father, from the board, from the world, but never from me. "I'm in love with him. I've been in love with him since he caught the financial fabrication in thirty seconds and apologized for being too smart."
I should have known that the Omega’s charms would tear down Amos’ walls but I had no idea it would be this soon.
"Come here." I close the remaining distance between us, Amos' breathing stuttering as I crowd him backward until his hips hit the edge of my desk. My hands find the surface on either side of him, caging him in as I lean close enough that my mouth is an inch from his. "You love him. Fine. But you need to remember something, and I need you to hear it clearly because I'm only going to say it once."
"Dominic..."
