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Andro glared at me, and I thought for sure I was a dead man. He wound up to hit me again, but Jeremiah pushed him out of the way.
“Stop it!”
God, the cracking in Jeremiah's voice did me in, and I couldn’t keep my feelings to myself anymore. “I love him. I would never hurt him."
Orsino pushed me to the ground, his knee landing on my back and my head facing the wall, so I couldn't see what was happening.
There were footsteps walking away and a door slammed. Even without visual confirmation, I knew Jeremiah had left the room.
"I'll go check on him," one of the omegas said.
"Both of you go. Take the children with you. And make sure Trev is standing guard outside his door. Louie, alert Nil and Tobias as well."
Once everybody cleared the room, they let go of me. It was three against one, plus their dad who I was sure could still hold his own despite his age.
"You come here, to our home, after using our brother the way you did, and what? You expect mercy? Hate to break it to you, but you won’t find it here." Andro rolled up the sleeves of his white button-down shirt as if he was going to work me over right there in the dining room.
"I want to hear what the boy has to say." Vern, the former leader of the Ferrini family, stepped forward as my head was turned.
"Dad, why don't you go with?—”
Vern tapped his cane on the ground, and Andro went silent. "I may not run the family business anymore, but I have a feeling business has crossed over to a more personal realm in this situation. And in that, I still have a say. Let us be civilized.”
“We can't trust him." Louie nudged my hip with the bottom of his shoe.
"If you think your brother is so naive that he would trust a man who would hurt him, you don’t know him at all. It would do you well to have a bit more faith in him.”
“That's not what I said." Andro’s eyes narrowed and his gun came back to align with my heart.
Louie and Orsino kept their gaze locked on me while their father and brother spoke.
I sat up and rolled my shoulders back, resisting the urge to touch my face. My jaw ached where Andro had landed a punch, but I was ready to have this conversation. I was ready to finally come clean about everything. Though I had hoped that Jeremiah would be there to listen. "I want to speak to Jeremiah.”
“That’s up to him," Vern said. "First, you’ll speak to us."
We all sat at the table, completely ignoring the man's birthday celebration. In spite of everything, I did feel bad about that.
It took a minute for me to find the right words, but once I did, I just let it all out. "Vince called me a few months ago and asked me to introduce myself to Jeremiah. He wanted me to see if I could get information about you all. And yes, his ultimate goal was to bring Jeremiah to his home and use him as leverage against you."
"And you were gonna do that? You were gonna seduce an innocent omega for your brother's game?" Orsino’s palms were tight fists as he pounded the table.
"I didn’t say no to the request, that's true.”
“You just happened to live in the same city as him?” Vern said with a raised brow.
Well, when he put it like that…
“Okay, technically, I did move to Stanford and staged an opportunity to introduce myself to him. And yes, initially, I did plan on going through with what my brother had asked. At least partially. But then I fell in love with Jeremiah. How could I not? I would never hurt him in any way. In fact, I was supposed to take him to my brother's cabin this weekend to meet up with Vince, but I came here instead, knowing you all would recognize me. Even if you didn’t know who I was, I planned to speak with you about what Vince was planning."
The four men stared at me.
Maybe approaching the situation with “Hey, at least I didn't kill your brother” wasn't the best idea. That wasn’t a very high bar to claim.
I sighed as I began to lose hope. "Listen, I don't agree with the things Vince is doing. I don't know why he's intent on gaining more territory when things have been just fine the way they are for the past however many years.”
“He's trying to prove himself since he's head of the family now. What about you? You don't care?”
“I'm a half-brother. I've never been involved in anything.” I cocked my head and looked at Andro. “I’m surprised your research didn’t tell you that."
