Page 13 of The Faceless Omega

It’s just nerves.She really, really hoped it was just nerves.

Neil Waters leaned forward, propped his elbows on the desk, and scrubbed a hand down his face before leveling a hard stare at her. “What happened, Brinley?”

She blinked at the calmer than expected tone. “Um, I beg your pardon?”

He continued to stare. “You took two extra hours this morning, and this”—he smacked his palm onto the paper in front of him—“is the crap you give me?”

She flinched at the sudden, threatening noise and it took her brain a moment to process his words. “What?” She shook her head. “It’s not—”

“It’s shit is what it is!” Waters shoved to his feet again, snatched the paper up, and began waving it in the air, uncaring of how it crinkled in his grasp. “I can’t publish this garbage, Brinley. This isun-fucking-publishable, do you hear me? It’s absolute brainless drivel. It’s crap. It’s less than crap. It’s the toilet paper you wipe the crap up with!”

Brinley sucked in a breath as tears pricked her eyes. She certainly couldn’t have argued it was any kind of masterpiece. She never would have presented it as her gold-standard, most exemplary work. But she would never have turned it in if she’d felt it was as bad as Waters was making it sound. Her head was shaking with the denial before she could even think better of it. “Mr. Waters, please reconsider. I know you looked at the pictures. I had to write something that I could—”

He crumpled the paper into a loose ball and pitched it at her from across the office.

She flinched again, on reflex, as the harmless paper bounced off her chest and tumbled down. Her gaze was riveted as it landed on her booted toe, wobbled, and finally rolled sideways onto the old carpet.

Waters ranted all the while. “I sprung for a fuckinggownfor you so you could go to a goddamn exclusive rich-kid party, Young. Where is my thank you?” He threw his hands into the air. “Where is my Pulitzer?”

Brinley jerked her head up, the ridiculous question snagging her attention. “You can’t be serious.” The words were out of her mouth before she even realized she was thinking them.

But she had his whole attention. He was red-faced from his ranting, nostrils flaring, a warning in his eyes.

She wanted little more than to go home and cry in her shower, but she fought her tears. “I did the best I was able, Mr. Waters. I went to the party, I participated, I engaged as many people as I could. As you can see in the photos. Their masks were elaborate. I have no idea who half of the guests were and a poor man’s guess on most of the rest—if we printed those guesses you’d be opening yourself up to so many lawsuits, the publication would never survive. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. I’m sorry, sir, but nothing wild and scandalous happened at the party. It was a ball with purposely poor lighting and lots of fully covered faces.”

Waters stepped closer. “And I suppose you didn’t make much effort to chase those conversations when people walked away from the new girl?”

Brinley heard herself scoff. “Nothing quite screams ‘I’m desperate to learn your identity so I can spin a tale of lies about you’ like pursuing people who’ve made it clear they don’t want to talk. Sir.”Shut up.She needed to stop running her mouth. Waters was already angrier with her than she’d ever seen. She didn’t understand it, didn’t feel it was justified, but she could plainly see it.

“You had ajobto do, Brinley,” he said in an almost jarringly low tone.

She wiped a bead of sweat off her face. “I still believe there should be integrity in reporting, Mr. Waters. I won’t write lies and I won’t compromise myself.” Had she? Did what she’d done with Lennox not thoroughly qualify as that?

No, it did not. She hadn’t done that for work, for starters. That had been self-serving through and through. And she couldn’t afford to be thinking about him—about that—in this office, in this conversation. It was only making her a different kind of uncomfortable.

Waters curled his lip. “I never thought I’d be so disappointed in you. You had so much potential.” He turned and stepped back toward his chair. “Get out.”

Brinley’s head spun.What? What’s … happening?“Sir?”

He swung his arm violently outward in her direction, shouting again. “Get the fuck out of my office! You’re benched until I can stand to look at you again.”

Benched?She’d never been benched before. Brinley bit back the argument that so badly wanted to fall from her lips and turned to do as she’d been told. The rank stench of the office smacked her in the face when she opened the door and her belly twisted painfully, bringing with it a flush of heat that rolled over her skin. Only when she raised an arm on reflex to ease the pain did she finally, much too late, process what was actually happening.

Yes, Jerrod smelled. But everything else was all her.

She’d slipped into an early heat.

Chapter 6

Heavy-Handed

Lennoxlookedupatthe nondescript, single-story building from the backseat of his Rolls Royce and scowled. Even on the outside, it was run-down. The paint was old, dirty, and patched in places where work had been done more recently. One of the front-facing windows was cracked. An outdated sign over the inset door proclaimed it to be the business he sought, but that did little to reassure him.

He could tell at a glance this was no place for his omega.

Brinley Young.Her name repeated in his mind for the thousandth time since he’d read it on his computer screen that morning. He felt his scowl soften.

Even his own search had yielded minimal results, which assured him she didn’t have much of a record to find. Brinley was a full ten years his junior at only twenty-six. According to the background check, she’d been working at the archaic publication now before him for three years. She had a small apartment in a cheaper neighborhood deeper into the city, the one car he’d seen in the security photos registered in her name, and no living relatives. She was well and truly alone.

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