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“I’m glad you’re finally up.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re at Big Beta Bert’s.”

My blood runs cold. “What’s going on?”

She lets out a bitter laugh and waves the gun around in the air. “This whole thing is a fuck up. I’ve had you all these years, and I never knew what I really had. And now those three Alphas come into your life and start ruining everything.”

My head shakes as I try to figure out what she’s talking about, and she just laughs even harder. “You have no idea do you? Never once thought to wonder why Petrov would have taken you, of all people, to New York. Why I would actually let that happen.” The more she speaks, the wilder her face becomes. “Once he expressed interest in bringing you to that party, I began to dig. And that’s when I found out who you really are.”

I am even more confused now. This woman has gone completely insane. “What are you talking about? Who I really am?”

She huffs another laugh, her head shaking, but says no more about it. “You listen to me. If you do not do everything I tell you to do, say everything I tell you to say, I’m giving you to Bert. He won’t kill you, but he will make sure that you obey me, however he has to. If you even think about betraying me, I’ll send you to him. Any amount of disobedience is going to get you taken to Bert for correction. And he doesn’t have a knot to break that rule.”

All encompassing disgust roils in my stomach at the thought of that fat bastard even considering touching me. But that disgust is paired with absolute fear.

I think my bones are shaking inside my body.

Mama gestures around with the gun again. “Drink that water and use it to wash your face off. That fucker kept the rag on for too long to knock you out. He burned you.” Then, she turns and leaves the room.

My fingers reach up to touch my face, the tip of my nose, the aching, and burning spots around my mouth and on my chin. I take the water, crack it open and pour some into my hand, splash it on my face, shouting in pain at the touch. Then, with tears in my eyes, I begin to sip from the water bottle, trying to ease my parched throat.

I need to know how the others are. I don’t get the impression that they were taken along with me, but I can’t be completely certain.

Do my Alphas know where I am? How long I was unconscious for? No part of my body hurts except for around my face, so I don’t think that anything happened to me while I was unconscious. I’m pretty sure I would be able to tell, especially with the things that Bert is notorious for doing.

So, Mama is using him as a threat to keep me in line. But for how long will he only be a threat? And what is it that she intends to make me say or do that will constitute me wanting to go against her wishes and get me sent to that disgusting bastard?

I have no idea what’s going on inside Mama’s crazy head. But she did tell me some information. Like she didn’t even know whatever is so important to her right now before Petrov got involved. Before Petrov wanted to take me to New York with him. So that means that Petrov had ulterior motives for taking me to that party. Motives aside from wanting people to think he was engaged.

Something went wrong at that party. Or after it. Petrov getting beaten up, and my Alphas obviously having involvement in that, but never even bringing it up to me after the fact.

There is something here that I am missing. And as much as I want to know what it is, what I have to worry most about right now is my safety and getting the fuck out of here.

Somehow.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Cade

Ilya drives our rental SUV down the freeway, exiting where the GPS tells him to.

Mama’s car is parked in the driveway of a mansion in the Hills. One of Bert’s residences.

I begin to tell my brothers about who Bert is, waiting until we’re almost at the house, because I know that what I’m about to tell them will enrage them as much as it’s enraged me, but I’ve always been better at hiding extreme emotions.

“Albert Galesky, a.k.a. Big Beta Bert, was once a fixer for some prominent mob families. Made a lot of money doing his job, contracting himself out to several different families, some of them rivals. He would eventually turn against against each of them and rat them out to their enemy families or to the police. It became a full-time betrayal job for him. He would play both sides of the law. Made a lot of friends in law enforcement, but a lot of enemies across the world, too. However…” I trail off a second. “Bert has a side of him that he can’t keep under control.”

Ilya glances at me from the driver seat. “What does he do?”

I let out a sigh. “Bert is a serial torturer and rapist.” I stop there and wait for my words to sink into my brothers minds.

The entire car’s energy goes still, and I know that rage is building inside of them because I feel it through our bond. I had done my best to hide my disgust and rage from them when I found out what was really going on. Who this Bert person truly was. And now that I’ve told them, my own rage is building again.

But, there’s more. Of course, there is.

“What’s worse is that it appears Mama has been using him as a punishment tactic for the Omegas she keeps at the club. Anytime one of them did something she didn’t like, she sent them to Bert. According to a copious handwritten paper trail in her office, it started out that he would perform sadomasochistic things to them against their will, and then send them back to her. It wasn’t until much later that he began to lose control and really hurt and maim these women, even killing some of them. There was recently an Omega that she handed to him. He didn’t kill her, but she will not be speaking ever again.”