Chapter 14

The car was barely parked before Matthew threw himself out, much as he had a few days earlier. That time had been about keeping himself away from Gabriella, but this time, he was running straight toward her.

Gabriella, his Omega, the woman of his dreams, was inside and waiting for him, and he was going to destroy anyone who got between him and his future.

Fuck, it was a good thing none of the guys were with him on his search for her because he had been ready to blow his load at her whining. It was the most beautiful sound, perfect and needy, and she was close to letting go.

He was a fool to think he had stopped it soon enough, when he jerked away from her a few nights earlier. Once the thought was there, once the idea was in an Omega’s head, there was no changing it. She wanted to be his Omega, wanted to be knotted and bred by him, without even realizing she was an Omega. Her body knew what her mind did not and now she was going into heat and was losing her mind waiting for him.

She wouldn’t have to wait much longer. Her Alpha was there, ready to take her, provide for her, care for her, and breed her.

Fuck, he was so ready to be inside of her after the weeks of insanity, of losing his shit, losing his mind, over and over and over, because it would all finally settle. The world would make sense once he was inside her. He would no longer have to fight for control or struggle against his very nature.

Soon. Very soon.

He approached the club’s front door, ignoring the line of people waiting to get in, and nodded to the bouncer up front. The bouncer recognized him—not by name because nightclubs were not his jurisdiction—but his was a face every employee would recognize. He was the boss’s favorite enforcer, after all, and occasionally had to make an appearance if something serious was going down. The man at the entrance wasn’t thick in the family, not like Matthew was, but he still knew enough.

“Sir, how can I help you?” the bouncer asked, knowing Matthew wouldn’t be there on a social call.

“Yeah, have you seen a woman come out this door recently, about five foot one, dark hair probably straight and down, by herself, not with anyone else. I know, I know, you got a lot of people in and out of here but—”

“Night is early, Sir. Lot of people heading in but no one heading out much yet. Not a woman alone. Say, this is going to sound crazy but would she have been wearing sky high heels and looking like she’s ready to kill somebody?”

“Shit,” Matthew muttered, nodding. “I mean, maybe. Probably. Why—”

“Sir, craziest fucking thing because I know it’s not my place but would you be looking for the boss’s—Oh, fuck, it was her. I thought it was but I mean, I just know of her distantly, not like... I mean, we all know what she looks like but I’ve never actually seen her so—”

“Yeah, her,” Matthew agreed. “She still in here?”

Of course, everyone would and should know what Gabriella looked like. As the boss’s daughter and the heir, it was the responsibility of every member of the family to keep an eye out for her. Her picture had been passed around when she returned from school as a precaution, but Matthew hadn’t really expected a low-level bouncer to get a glance at it.

“She was heading on up with Tocalli’s daughter and a few of her friends to their private booth while I was inside taking my break. Maybe thirty minutes ago. Thought it strange how they seemed to know each other, since no one normally joins them.”

If Gabriella was with other women, women from within the family, then she would and should be safe.

“Good, good. Listen, I know I’m asking a lot here but a little discretion, given who she is, would be—”

“No, no sir, I got it. Hey, if she chooses to come to this place, means we’re running a good ship around here, keeping it clean, keeping it good. I won’t tell nobody and you let her know, if she ever needs anything, we’re right here.”

Matthew knew exactly what the bouncer was saying—being on Gabriella’s good side was good for business, and if she wanted their silence, she had it. Clean, respectable. Yeah, Matthew couldn’t promise much, but he figured Gabriella would probably gladly pay off anyone who kept her location quiet, given her sneakiness.

“I’ll let her know.”

“You head on in, Sir. Stairwell on the far left should take you right on up.”

Matthew headed in, leaving behind the bouncer and a long line of people waiting for their own chance to enter. A barrage of scents hit his nose, and he shuddered as an odd stench hit him. He forced himself to ignore it as he searched for Gabriella’s fresh scent, heading toward the left. He continued around, behind the bar until he reached the doorway heading toward the bathroom.

That would make sense. When he spoke to her on the phone, her voice had echoed slightly in the background, but it was otherwise quiet. She had called him from the bathroom. Smart girl.

Pulling out his phone, he dialed her number, not wanting to barge into the restroom. It rang a few times, and the call chimed from down the hall. He followed it until it went quiet, to voicemail. He dialed again, listening for her heartbeat and voice. He could only hear the ringing and the sound from the club behind him. Nothing else.

He took a deep breath, allowing scents to flood his senses, and shuddered. The stench was still there, something raw and rotten, but underneath it...

It wasn’t just Gabriella’s sweet essence. He could smell something headier, heavy and thick. Something that made his heart drop and stomach clench. Something he had convinced himself he had imagined a few nights earlier.

Her heat. He could smell her slick and pheromones. It was more than just her lust, which he had been allowed to taste in the air more than once. This was... ovulation.

She was going into heat, but she wasn’t there. Only her purse on the ground, left behind, with her phone ringing inside of it.

The stench was thick, and Matthew forced himself to take a deep breath, to allow his senses to process everything. The pheromones of another Alpha slammed into him, this one an Alpha going into rut. If he didn’t know any better, didn’t know this was Gabriella’s heat, he would think he had stumbled across an Alpha in rut and an Omega choosing to go into heat with them. The stench was a warning to other Alphas to stay back, the pheromones basically flashing a red light at anyone who would intrude.

Reality slammed into him, and he stumbled toward a cracked open side door. The scents continued beyond it, and he looked down the alleyway. Likely, an Alpha had pulled Gabriella out through this door and into a waiting car, given the scent of gasoline and burning rubber.

She was gone. Taken. And he had no way to track her.

His phone was to his ear as he headed towards his car, not even sure why this was the first one he was going to make, but as he sat behind the driver’s seat, it went to voicemail. Shit, Gabriella was missing, and the boss wasn’t answering? Was something going down?

Fuck, his Omega was out there, and he was going to fucking lose it. The pheromones of the other Alpha were making it so. He had to keep himself calm and sane to find her, and make more calls.

“Talk to me, Boss,” Tommy said as he answered his phone. “You find her?”

“Found her phone but someone grabbed her. Took her out the back alley. Tell me you got the camera feed back there.”

“Got it. Tracking it down now.”

“Pulling up maps,” Ricky said in the background, the phone clearly on speaker. “Smell anything?”

“Alpha. It was familiar but not familiar enough. He was going into rut and Gabriella... she was—”

“It wasn’t ’cause of him and we know that so don’t think otherwise,” Tommy said, his voice far too serious for Matthew’s liking.

“No, I know who she chose, without question,” Matthew insisted, truly believing his own words. “Boss didn’t answer when I called. I’m heading back. Alessandro already head over there?”

“Yup. He’s sitting outside of her house now, keeping watch for the boss leaving.”

“Gather up any guys in the house, tell them to sit tight. As soon as the boss knows, he’ll burn the city down to get her back.”

“On it,” Tommy agreed. “Ricky, let me know when the feed pops up.”

“Yup. I’m looking for buildings we own in the area now.”

Matthew hung up as he spun the wheel, turning out of the parking lot fast and leaving the club. The city was dark, and people were filling the streets, but he knew all the back roads to reach the compound fast. He hated abandoning Gabriella, but he hadn’t exactly headed out with the right amount of gear, and he didn’t have his team.

If someone had grabbed Gabriella, he would need every weapon at his disposal to take them down.

“Find your girl?” Alessandro asked as he answered the phone.

He was fighting the urge to break something, to destroy everything. Someone had Gabriella, and his Alpha side was rearing up, furious anyone would dare touch his Omega.

“She’s gone,” Matthew snapped. “Someone took her. Her bag was left behind, and he took her out a side door. Tommy and Ricky are looking into the camera feeds but—”

“Shit, does the boss know?” Alessandro asked.

A car door opened, then slammed shut.

“He didn’t answer my call,” Matthew confessed. “He hasn’t gone in or out?”

“No, he’s still in there,” Alessandro confirmed. “Fuck, should I tell him?”

“I think you have to. I mean, shit. It’s one thing for them to be fighting or whatever but his daughter is gone, and she’s a fucking Omega. Don’t tell him we know about the last part but an Omega in heat, held hostage somewhere in this city? Forget the fact of who she is, this is a damn disaster.”

“Yeah, yeah, hang on.”

Matthew zoomed through the city, forgetting things like speed limits as he raced to reach the Alpha Compound. He was nearly there when the muffled noises ended with the sound of something loud and banging.

“Matthew, back to the compound,” Alessandro hissed, followed a door slamming shut. “Fuck, man, this is bad.”

“How bad?” Matthew asked, reluctant to learn the truth. “What did the boss say?”

“Said she wasn’t missing,” Alessandro answered with a huff of laughter. “Said her whereabouts and safety were no longer our concern.”

Matthew slammed on the brakes as he reached the front gate of the compound and stared at it as it slowly opened, processing what his second was saying.

Gabriella, who was taken against her will, was not missing, and her safety and whereabouts were no longer their concern?

“Shit, Matty, I know we all thought that the boss was keeping shit from her, but this... I mean, I don’t want to assume the worst but—”

“The boss had her grabbed by an Alpha, and he probably expects Gabriella to mate with him. Which means—”

“Which means we better figure out where the fuck she is and save her or else you’re going to be damned to destruction.”

“It means, I’m going to kill the boss if anything happens to her.”

“Fuck...”

The weight on Matthew’s shoulders was crushing him, but he forced himself to carry forward anyway and walk into the Alpha Compound. He knew what he had to do, what he had to ask for, but there was no going back from this, no retracting the words. He was already damned or doomed or something of the sort. There was no way he was going to leave Gabriella with whatever fucker had her.

But in doing so, he would be going against the boss. If he went rogue, acted on his own, then no one else would be in danger. By asking his team to help him and, in turn, requesting the rest of the Alphas to back him up...

There was no going back from this. If the boss decided he was done with the program, they were all fucked.

But he had to ask. There was no other choice. Gabriella was his Omega.

He had expected them to be all assembled, waiting for him to arrive with information and a request, but what he hadn’t expected was their preparedness. Half of them were standing around, anticipating more details, while others, all involved in security and tech, were pointing out random cameras, gesturing to maps, and looking for more details.

“Well, fuck,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Guess you boys already know what’s going on.”

“They don’t know everything,” Tommy answered from his screen. “Just told them we needed to figure out who was in this car and where it’s going.”

Matthew looked at the main screen. A man who must have knocked Gabriella out was carrying her limp body.

“Do we have a visual on the guy’s face?” Matthew asked, hoping against hope to put a face to the scent and, in turn, a name.

“Negative. He kept his face down.”

“Shit. You got a path for him?”

“Checking cameras along the way. We are tracking where he went but it’s taking a bit. He drove through some areas where we don’t have any cameras, so we’re looking for him on the other side. Going to take us a few.”

“Alright. I’m going to get changed,” Matthew announced, then glanced at the other Alphas.

They were all staring at him, waiting.

Fuck...

“Come on, Matty. Don’t make us ask. We’re not fucking stupid. We know you and Alessandro have been running around with secrets. And we know about her. Just fucking say it.”

“Fuck,” Matthew muttered, shaking his head at Ben, the Alpha who had spoken up. “Once I say it, I’ve got to ask you boys for something I don’t want to ask for.”

“You don’t even have to ask, given what we suspect but we do need you to confirm it.”

Matthew nodded before running his fingers into his hair, pushing the strands from his face. Others looked at him with respect, and they would follow him anywhere, but this was something he wished he could do alone all the same. There was no coming back once they knew.

“Gabriella’s an Omega,” he confessed and nodded as he looked at the other Alphas. They all nodded. Obviously, they knew. “She’s an Omega, and she doesn’t fucking know. I think she’s on the same shit we are. I mean, fuck, I’ve got my suspicions about it all now, but she has no fucking clue.”

Someone whistled in the background, and Matthew knew he had to continue.

“And she fucking chose me, boys. All these Alphas her father paraded around her? She fucking chose me. And I... I fucked up bad. She was... Fuck, all you need to know is, she made her choice and someone grabbed her and it was a fucking Alpha and—”

“And the boss doesn’t want us to look for her,” Alessandro said, thankfully speaking when Matthew was struggling for words. He clapped Matthew on the back, and Matthew returned the gesture, glad his friend had arrived. “She’s been fighting with her father. This all but confirms what we suspected. He’s trying to force his daughter to be with an Alpha of his choosing. Against her will. And we aim to get her back.”

“The fuck,” Ben muttered, shaking his head.

“You can’t force an Omega to do shit,” Smitty called out. “Only a stupid fucking Beta would think they could control one of them.”

Others agreed, and Matthew nodded in agreement. They were right. It was painfully obvious the boss had no real understanding of what he was doing or, at least, what he was trying to do.

“You know what? I’m fucking done with this,” Ezra, one of the oldest Alphas next to Matthew’s team, called out. “Serving a fucking Beta? He thinks we’re idiots. I don’t hate the family, you guys know that, and I like the money and the liquor and all of this but I’ve spent too many hours cleaning up shit that no Beta would be able to fucking handle. And now, he’s fucking turned on his daughter? On an Omega? No. Fuck that. I’m done with this.”

“Yeah,” Smitty looked toward Matthew. “Who has the fucking power in this family? It’s sure as shit not the rest of them. We’re the enforcers. We’re the guns. They can’t take us down. All they can do to control us is those fucking injections. What happens if we rise up?”

“Then the money stops being paid to the doctors and scientists and researchers who make our meds, dumbass,” Alessandro reminded them. “Which is why we still need the family but we don’t need the boss. What we need is Gabriella, and she’s on our side.”

Matthew shook his head as he stepped forward, raising his hand. “Hold on, that’s not what this is about. We’re not turning on the boss. I agree, a change needs to be made but we can’t promise anything without Gabriella here, and she’s fucking gone.”

“You don’t think she’s going to forgive her father for this, do you?” Alessandro asked, clapping Matthew on the back again. “She’s going to destroy everything after this and I’m inclined to let her.”

“And then what happens to the city? It functions because of the Santorini family. Politicians, building projects, industry, the economy. It all rotates around what the boss wants. She may want to destroy her father after this but we’re not staging a mutiny today. All we’re doing is getting Gabriella back. And once she’s back... yeah. Then we go from there, yeah. But just because I’m damning myself, going against the boss, that doesn’t mean everyone else has to.”

How the fuck was Matthew the reasonable one right now?

He didn’t want to ask them, but he also had to think about everyone else’s survival. They could lay in wait until Gabriella was ready to make her move. Otherwise, if they all turned on the boss... there was no telling when their next injections would come.

How many of them would lose their shit and destroy everything, including themselves, without those injections?

“It’s up to all of you. There’s no guarantee what will happen next. No guarantee what she will want or how the boss will respond. But my Omega has been taken and I’m going to get her back. And... And I’m asking if any of you will join me, knowing you might be damning yourselves in the process.”

Alessandro looked at his screen as his phone rang, then furrowed his brow and answered.

When the other voice came through, Matthew stepped over and grabbed the phone. “Why are you calling.” He turned his back on his Alphas, not wanting them to perceive his desperation.

“I can’t reach Gabriella,” Toronto Bertino answered, the concern thick in his voice. “I know your man Alessandro is her driver and had my guard give me his number. Tell me you know where she is.”

“Why are you trying to reach her?” Matthew demanded, unable to control his growl.

“Fuck,” Toronto muttered. “She called me earlier tonight; said she was going to go out and make a mistake. She wanted answers I couldn’t give her, answers to lies that have filled her entire life. I called her father, begging him to tell Gabriella the truth, but he told me that Gabriella’s future was already set. I tried calling her, but she won’t pick up. Please, tell me you know where she is.”

Matthew was silent, trying to make a decision. It seemed as though Gabriella’s beloved Uncle Toto knew the secrets being kept from Gabriella. The ones being used against her. The ones that could destroy her life.

“Please. Do you have her?”

“Gabriella was grabbed by an Alpha in rut from one of the clubs. We’re tracking her down now.”

“Fuck. Renaldo, does he know?”

“He knows, and he doesn’t care. We believe the grab was done on his orders.”

“No,” Toronto gasped, anguish clear in his tone. “Just like her mother... You have to save her. Track her down.”

“Matty, think we got something,” Ricky announced.

“Talk to Alessandro. Tell him what you know,” Matthew said as he handed the phone to his second and moved to the large screens. “Show me what you got.”

“We keep losing them in the middle and finally realized they were backtracking, knowing they would be followed. We started going backward, looking at when they showed up in the alley and then tracking him to his start point.”

“Smart as fuck.” Matthew watched the screen. “Hold on, who’s that climbing out the back seat and into the front.”

“That’s the first thing we’ve got to show you. He look familiar?” Ricky asked, pointing at the man’s face. “Because I’m pretty sure this is the fucker that put a bullet in my shoulder a few weeks back.”

“Holy shit,” Matthew muttered, shaking his head. “The ones that shot us up after we took care of Delgado.”

“That’s him,” Tommy agreed. “So, we tracked him back and you won’t fucking believe this, but he came from deep in our territory. So much so, we got cameras the whole fucking way.”

“Tell me you got a fucking address.”

“We got an address but I can guarantee, that vehicle hasn’t been back at the building since it left. We’ve got live feed on it right now.” Ricky pointed at a screen in the top left corner, showing the front of a building and another below it showing the side street. “You’re not going to fucking believe who’s place it is.”

“Holy shit,” Matthew breathed out again, recognizing the building. “The place, from last week, two weeks ago, the one—”

“We already checked and no vehicles have been by there today,” Tommy rushed to say. “We’re checking the feeds of every other building run by the pair of them.”

“Another call? Fuck, what is more important than this?” Alessandro said. “Alright, yeah, I’ll hang on.”

“What is it?” Matthew asked as Alessandro approached and grabbed a pen from the desk.

“Toronto Bertino has a safe house for her, once we get her back, that we can take her to until she’s feeling better. Shit, man. This all goes deep, but he says he has another call and it’s important. Can’t imagine what’s more important than this but...”

Alessandro finished writing down the address and handed it to Matthew, then shifted the phone back under his ear. “Who the fuck?” His voice raised in pitch. “No. He fucking called? Did he say—”

As Toronto provided a new address, Matthew locked eyes with Tommy and Ricky. In seconds, they had that building’s feed up on the screen and played it back.

It happened in a flash, the same vehicle from outside the club driving by and then pulling into a garage.

“Hang on, Gabriella,” Matthew whispered as he stared at the screen. “I’m on my way.”