Page 8 of The Kingpin's Omega Lover
King could empathize with Malori’s desire to be outdoors as much as possible, after having spent three years a prisoner, only able to feel the sun from his barred window during a small portion of daylight hours. King had spent chunks of his fuzzy childhood locked away, as well, denied the freedom to enjoy the outdoors.
He knew what it was like to live inside of a box.
A seating area existed beneath an arbor of twisted vines and green shady leaves. Malori was curled up on one of the chairs, thin arms wrapped around his drawn-up knees, head resting onthe back of the chair. He was angled toward King’s approach, but King still purposely scraped his shoes on the cement walkway, in case Malori didn’t see him.
“Malori?”
“Is it dinnertime?” Malori asked in that aching, hollow tone that plagued him when the past clung hard. On the rare occasion Malori had laughed in King’s presence, King had wanted to weep for its beauty. These soft, mournful moments made King want to weep for other reasons.
“Not for at least an hour.” King sat on the edge of the wooden chair opposite Malori. He instantly hated the way his body longed to touch the damaged younger man, who avoided direct contact with everyone, even Kensley. King’s attraction was inappropriate and rude. “Do I need to fire your therapist?”
Malori raised his head, his wide, round eyes narrowing. “Why would you do that?”
“Kens said you were upset after your session.”
“Oh.” He ran one hand through his blond hair. It had grown out since he’d lived here, and had bleached in the sun, so the pale strands curled in loose waves around his ears and chin. It gave Malori an elf-like quality, a delicateness that hid the fierceness lurking beneath. King had seen shades of Malori’s temper when Malori thought King wasn’t looking.
But King was always watching.
“It isn’t Dr. Welby’s fault I was upset,” Malori said. “I hate August. But this week…I hate it.”
“What happened to you in August?”
Grief and fury flashed through Malori’s expressive hazel eyes. Sometimes those eyes held more amber, sometimes more gray. Tonight, they were the color of steel. “My daughter was born in August. She’ll be three years old this week. I think. I’m not sure of the exact date. Dr. Luther never told me.”
King’s heart squeezed tight, and his eyes burned with unexpected emotion. “I’m so sorry.” Intellectually, King had known since the day they liberated the Farm that Malori had given birth to two children while in captivity. Two children who were both subsequently stolen from him by his captors. King knew their genders and roughly when they’d been born, but after a long, painful debrief of any information Malori could give them for their search, Malori refused to speak about his kids. Refused to acknowledge them in any meaningful way—at least, in front of King.
But Malori was talking about his kids to his therapist. That was something.
“I tried not to imagine being able to actually raise her,” Malori said, his voice soft, gaze distant, as if speaking to someone far away. Perhaps to his own past self. “I knew deep-down that I wasn’t at the Farm to be a parent, that I was there to provide a service, but…a little piece of me still hoped. I hoped during the pregnancy, I hoped during the birth, and I hoped for every precious day I was able to nurse her.”
“And then they took her?”
“Yes. I think they drugged my dinner, because I fell asleep early and when I woke up she was gone.” Malori turned his head, looking at King with so much malice in his eyes that King leaned back in his own chair. “They gave me six whole hours to grieve before I was summoned downstairs. Ten days after giving birth. Thankfully, it was just for oral.”
King growled, unable to help himself, furious at learning this small tidbit of information. Body still healing, heart freshly broken, Malori had been taken for the sadistic entertainment of those who had money to waste and no actual soul to speak of. Norris Landau hadn’t died slowly enough today.
“I wish I could put your daughter in your arms,” King said, working to keep his voice calm while his insides quaked withrage. “Your son, too. I wish today had yielded more information than personal satisfaction.”
Malori sat up straighter, feet dropping to the ground, hands resting loosely on his lap. “What did you do today?”
Instead of annoyed, like he usually got when Kensley tried to ask King about his daily activities—despite King warning him not to ask—King considered his reply. Malori existed like a phantom most days, moving through the penthouse silently, eating when food was put in front of him, showing no real interest in actually living. He never questioned King’s work, how he afforded anything, or how he’d been able to find the Farm in the first place. King imagined Kensley had filled in a lot of the gaps, but Malori didn’t askKing.
This was the first, truly direct question Malori had asked him since that first day in the mountain lodge, after Dr. Melish fixed up Malori’s gunshot wound. Despite having been shot in the shoulder during his liberation from the Farm, Malori had refused to sleep on the drive to their overnight accommodations. He’d refused to be knocked out while Dr. Melish removed the bullet and stitched up the wound, accepting only a shot of local anesthetic. He hadn’t trusted anyone, hadn’t trusted he wouldn’t wake up back in hell, preparing to die.
King had knocked on Malori’s bedroom door at close to midnight, hoping the young omega, whose persistent stubbornness in the face of pain and suffering had hooked King’s attention from the instant he’d seen him bleeding on that apartment floor, would be asleep. Dr. Melish, a long-time family friend and trusted ally, was concerned that Malori refused to rest, refused to take any oral medication for fear of being drugged.
“Who is it?” Malori had asked, shattering King’s meager hope that he was getting much-needed rest.
King opened the door and stuck his head inside. Malori was propped up against several pillows, his left shoulder bandaged, both eyes dull and baggy, and he couldn’t stifle a jaw-cracking yawn that nearly prompted King to yawn. “You need to sleep,” King said gently. “Exhausting yourself won’t help anything.”
“I can’t wake up there again. I’d rather die than go back.” Other than a few soft protests and grunts of pain, it was the most Malori had yet to say in King’s presence.
“You aren’t going back to that life, Malori, I promise you.” King slid half his body into the room, but did not further invade Malori’s privacy. “No one will touch you ever again without your express permission.”
“You’ll want something in return. You always do.”
King tried not to bristle at being lumped into the same group as the people who’d abused Malori, but it wasn’t personal. Malori had every reason to trust no one, not even Kensley. “You don’t know me, so you don’t have to believe me, but you owe me nothing for helping you, Malori. The people who tortured you? They also tortured my brother, and that was a mistake they will die regretting. Everyone I can find who was affiliated with Decker, the Farm, and this Marta woman’s trafficking circle? They will die regretting their choice to participate in your abuse, and in the abuse of every other man and woman they held against their will.”
