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He nodded and took a few steps back, keeping his eyes on me as he made a phone call. A few moments later, he slipped his phone back into his pocket and nodded toward a hallway. “I’ll take you to your father.”
“Thank you so much. I’ve been here for over an hour, and I know they wanted me here sooner, but I just couldn’t figure out where to go. I hope my dad’s all right. They only gave me two hours to come get him, but I had to gather up the money to bail him out.”
“It’s fine.” He placed his hand on my lower back and directed me around a crowd of people at a blackjack table. “The signage can be confusing.” He leaned down beside me and whispered, “We do it on purpose so people can’t escape, and they just keep playing.”
His warm breath on my ear made my spine tingle, but his words pissed me the fuck off. It was businesses like his that took advantage of people like my father. They preyed on drunks and addicts who couldn’t make decisions on their own and allowed themselves to be manipulated by capitalists and—I glanced at the handsome alpha one more time and smirked—mobsters, apparently.
He was definitely a mobster of some kind.
Great. I could cross that item off my bucket list. I was officially attracted to a mobster.
Perhaps it was in my genetics. My father attracted danger wherever he went. Mostly because the places he went were wrought with it. Meanwhile, I’d been avoiding anything remotely risky my entire life.
Now, I was walking into the lion’s den. Again.
The chances of me walking out unscathed were about as good as the chances of my father hanging up the dice for good.
Slim to none.
Chapter 2
Orsino
This poor kid had no business being there. He was about as green as a fucking Christmas tree, and the fact that I had to be the one taking him into the classroom really fucking sucked.
We called that particular room “the classroom” because that’s where lessons got taught. If this kid’s dad was in there, it was not a lesson he would soon forget. But the boy came to bail out his father, so who was I to judge him for that? God knew I’d bailed out my own father from sticky situations in the past. Not quite as dramatic as this, but certainly awkward, and sometimes in scenes I wish I’d never walked in on.
“Where are you taking me?” The kid, Ethan Madrone, seemed to finally realize I was ushering him down an isolated hallway that could’ve led anywhere. It was a little late for his survival instincts to kick in.
“Your father is back here.” I blew out a deep breath and stopped walking. “Look, kid. I don’t know the full story of what he’s gotten himself into, but if he’s in here, he’s in some deep shit. You probably aren’t the best person to be dealing with this, but if you’re sure you want to go in there, you need to brace yourself for what you’re about to witness.”
“Is he—” His eyes went wide and his breathing increased like he was having a panic attack.
“Hey, now. Don’t pass out on me.” I reached for his cheek to give him a light touch to refocus his attention. “I just want you to be prepared for the worst.”
His face lost all color, and his eyes rolled up as his body slumped forward.
“Fuck.” I grabbed the boy and lowered him to the ground, then I propped him up beside the door to the classroom and checked his pulse.
Solid. Fast, but strong.
Why the hell would some dude bring his omega son to a place like this when he clearly didn’t have the constitution for it? I called Roland from just outside the room to give him an update. “Hey, I’m with the son right outside the door, but this kid has already passed out once. I don’t think he can handle going inside.”
“I don’t give a shit what he can handle,” Roland said, his breath heavy from exertion. “Drag his ass in here and put him in the corner. His dad has been insistent that the kid would cover his debt, so that kid ain’t going nowhere.”
Roland seemed to forget that he wasn’t the boss. Andro was. Sure, this was his job, but as Andro’s enforcer and brother, I outranked him by a lot. Then again, I wasn’t the type to micromanage, so I just disconnected the call.
“All right then.” I twisted the door open and wedged my foot in the crack to keep it from latching, and then I scooped up the omega into my arms and carried him inside. “Here we go, kid.”
He was just coming to, but I knew that wouldn’t last long once he got a whiff of the coppery smell of blood mixed with piss and vomit that we were walking into.
“You might want to look away. Your dad has seen better days.”
Of course, instead of listening to me, he pushed out of my arms and searched the room with his eyes until they landed on his dad. The man was slumped in the corner, bloodied and almost unrecognizable unless he always had eyes that were swollen shut, a purple jaw, and fingers going in unnatural directions. “Oh my god, Dad!” He drooped again, so I grabbed his arm and shoved him toward a chair before we had two bloody Madrones to clean up after.
Tears formed in the kid’s eyes, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. No man should see his father in that condition. Then again, no father should put himself in situations where his omega son had to bail him out while he was in that condition.
I scowled at the lump in the corner. “What’s his story?”
