Page 49 of The Kingpin's Omega Lover
“I’m sorry!” Malori’s shout surprised King, his voice mixed with equal parts anger and grief. “I thought I could do this alone, but I can’t. I can’t hurt you like that.”
“What does that even mean?”
Malori trembled, and their audience was not doing them any favors. King gently pulled Malori to his feet and led him straight to his office, where he installed Malori in his desk chair. Malori hunched over, perfectly miserable, but he seemed undamaged. Just upset. King took a few deep breaths and counted to ten, so he could talk without losing his temper. He didn’t want to scare Malori more than he already had.
King picked up the notepad. “What does this symbol mean?”
Malori raised his head then gasped. “How did you even think to do that?”
“Intuition. You know what this is, right?”
“I do. It’s a fraternity symbol for Theta Delta Iota. I’d seen it before as pin.” Malori’s eyes swam with anger. “A pin that Aleks always wore on his suit jacket. Right around the spot where a hidden camera could be, based on the angles of those DVDs. I remembered where Aleks would hang that jacket.”
King gaped at Malori, stunned silent by the admission. By the huge secret Malori had kept from King, about a major detail of their enemy.
“I honestly didn’t remember it until yesterday, and it felt like a clue,” Malori continued. “When I finally got the drawing right, I found the fraternity order. And I discovered there’s a chapter meeting in the city. Tonight.”
“What?” King smacked the top of the desk with an open palm. “Damn it, Mal. Were you going to sneak out and go confront Yovenko on your own?”
“Yes.”
He’d been honest, but that didn’t dispel any of King’s pent-up confusion and hurt. “Why? Do you have any idea how fucking dangerous that could have been?”
“Yes, I do, which is why I came back.”
“But why did you leave at all? You know I’d have helped you. I can have a team ready to ambush Yovenko at this chapter meeting in thirty minutes. I thought you trusted me.” King hated himself for allowing his voice to quaver, hated that show of weakness.
Malori flinched. “I do trust you. I just…wasn’t thinking clearly. When I realized Yovenko was probably in the city right now, taunting me with those DVDs, likely hoping I’d figure it out and show up at that meeting…I was furious. I can’t explain it, King, I wish I could. All I knew was that my son could be in a hotel room, maybe eight blocks away, so fucking close. This primal part of me needed to go, to buy a suit and show up at that conference room, and to do something. If nothing else, to put eyes on him.”
“It was reckless and dangerous.”
“I know. I got as far as a clothing store, and then I came back.”
“Why?”
“You.” Malori coughed and rubbed his eyes. “I knew I could risk my own life by going to look for Aleks. But then I thought about what would happen if my plan to observe him didn’t work, if Aleks overpowered me and took me. Or killed me. How you might never know, and that you might spend the rest of your life wondering. Searching. Never knowing.” The hard lines aroundMalori’s eyes softened. “I couldn’t bear to break your heart like that.”
King closed his eyes against an onslaught of unwanted emotions: relief, compassion, confusion, hurt, love. So much at once. He hated seeing Malori so upset, but it was upset of his own making, wasn’t it? Malori had acted irrationally, irresponsibly, and he could have gotten himself killed.
He’d also rethought his plan and come home.
Naturally, his reeling mind settled on the most obscure detail of Malori’s entire explanation. He opened his eyes. “How were you going to buy a suit?”
Malori’s face and neck flushed. He reached into his left pocket and withdrew a roll of cash. “I’m sorry. I’ll find a way to pay back the money I used for the taxi rides to the store and back.”
King couldn’t even be furious that Malori had stolen his cash stash. It had been clever and resourceful. His lover was certainly full of surprises today—some good, some bad. He took the cash roll from Malori and put it on the desk. “I want to be angry with you, Mal. I should be. Do you know why I’m not?”
Malori shook his head slowly side to side. “No.”
“Because you trusted me enough, cared about me enough, to come back. There is a humungous chance that yes, Yovenko is trying to draw you to this frat meeting. There’s a chance he’s counting on me showing up, too, and that there might even be an ambush waiting for us. There is also a chance that Yovenko is fucking with us, and there won’t be anyone at this meeting except actual fraternity members with nothing better to do on a Friday night.”
“I don’t think he’s fucking with us. I mean, yes, he is, but even if he isn’t an obvious attendee of this meeting, he’ll be there. Somewhere. Watching to see if I show up. See if I’m smartenough to understand the clues he was dropping in those DVDs. Or if I’m a broken coward hiding behind your protection.”
King squatted in front of Malori and rested his hands on the arms of the chair. “You are not broken or a coward, and you definitely don’t need protection. Your antics today showed me how brave and slightly insane you are.”
Malori’s lips twitched with humor. “I’ll do anything to find my kids.”
“I know. And I’ll do anything I can to get them back for you. But you have got to promise me, Malori, that you will never do something like this again. You won’t hide, you won’t sneak, and you won’t steal from me. We’re a team, period.”
