Page 23 of Omega’s Forward

“For a guy who thinks we’re animals.”

“He didn’t say animals.”

“Pretty obvious.”

Linus is going red. He does that. “He said he wouldn’t appeal,” he says. “If the league does one of us. He said he wouldn’t pay for the appeal. That’s—” Linus looks around the table. “That’s not allowed, is it? That can’t be a thing an owner just says.”

“It is now,” Ozzy says.

Lewis leans in. He has been here eleven years. “Gordie flew to the league office,” he says. “When they did me for the Kessel thing. I thought I was finished. He flew out and sat in the hearing all day and never told one reporter he did it.”

“That’s what I mean,” Ozzy says. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

“He paid for my mother’s flights,” Marchetti says. “Four years. He never mentioned it once.”

“So there you go.”

“At least Gordie had our backs,” Tuck says.

That goes around the table and everybody agrees with it and I drink my beer.

Yeah, the guy might be hot as fuck and smell better than any omega I have ever met, but he has the power to fuck any of us over completely.

And he has made it pretty clear that he doesn’t care if he does.

I don’t say it. Instead, I sit there and listen to them talk.

“Callahan’s quiet,” Ozzy says.

“Callahan’s always quiet.”

“No he’s not.” Ozzy points his glass at me. “You met with him. Didn’t you? Sacco said you did the captain thing.”

“No, didn’t get the chance.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“What’s your take?”

Everyone is looking at me. Linus has stopped fidgeting. This is the bit where the captain says something and the room feels better, and I have been doing this job for six years and I know exactly what the line is.

“He’s new,” I say. “Give it a bit.”

There is a silence of about two seconds.

“Give it a bit,” Ozzy says.

“Yeah.”

“That’s it? That’s the speech?”

“That’s the speech.”

JP is watching me over his glass and not saying one word, and I would rather he shouted.

The talk moves on to Dorn, and then to Ozzy’s contract, and then to something Tuck’s brother did at a wedding, and I get another round in and drink faster than I usually do.