Page 5 of Omega Untamed
I might work for a man who had cornered the market on illegal narcotics in this sector, but I had no patience for addicts.
When we pulled into the parking garage of Diamond Edge, Myre’s hotel and casino, Myre’s driver came around and opened his door, escorting him ahead of us into his private entrance.
The shadows of the lower levels were shit-brown, the sodium lights piss-colored. I always felt like I stepped into a sewer here, though the garage was clean, and newly painted in all hues of gray. Down here, the air smelled of exhaust and car wash detergent and gasoline.
Stone came around to assist me with getting Kee from the backseat, but I didn’t need his help. I pulled on Kee’s calves until he slumped on his back, only his legs sticking out of the car. Then I reached inside and over his body, grabbing his arms and pulling him up against me. Lifting with my arms and straightening my back, I hefted him over my shoulder so his head hung at my spine and his legs flopped against my chest. Fireman’s carry. He weighed more than he looked—all that muscle.
I spun easily, his weight distributed so I could maneuver with little effort, and followed the rest of them into Myre’s personal elevator that would take us to the top floor where the private suites were.
The penthouse was Myre’s, of course. The rest of the suites were usually empty. I stayed in one, gratis, on days when my hours went long, or when Myre had special assignments for me. Like today.
Myre once told me he liked me because I did as I was told without ever grumbling. While I didn’t like Myre, or agree with many of his decisions about his business, I needed this job. I had my reasons.
In the small mirrored car, as we went up and up, no one spoke. Kee breathed heavily with a soft rasping sound, his head bumping me as the elevator slowed when it reached the top floor.
My arm around Kee’s thighs, I stepped forward as the doors opened. The men let me exit with my burden first.
Myre said, in a clipped, rough tone, “Put him in the cage room.”
I’d already guessed that was where I was headed. I’d spent some time there, watching the interrogators, slipping out when things turned serious. Of course I could kill when the need arose, for protection mostly. But I was a bodyguard, not an assassin. Myre had pros on the side for that sort of thing.
All the prisoners I’d babysat had been Alphas, threats to Myre’s life or company. Ruthless. Murderers and rogues themselves. Or rats. Rarely did Myre take an Omega prisoner. They had no power. They were no threat.
Already I knew this was going to be different from the routine. I wasn’t sure if Myre was planning on killing Kee. Alphas fighting among Alphas was one thing, even expected. But an Alpha taking on an Omega reeked of a special madness we’d been conditioned to fear since we were all kids. Our chemistry when mixed with an Omega’s brought out protective instincts, or mating drives, more than anything else. Sure, Omegas might get hurt or even abused during Alpha Burns, but unless an Alpha was completely out of his mind, we treated Omegas as rather untouchable in that way.
Myre was running a business. He was more apt to see Omegas as commodities than enemies.
“Lock him up,” Myre ordered me. “Keep watch. When he wakes, don’t give him any food or water yet. Not until I send in Cyrus. And keep the lights low. I want him on edge for a while.”
My eyebrows rose. It was going to be a long night. I’d already planned on getting no sleep.
I moved quickly down the hall toward the proper suite, pulling my keycard from my pocket with my free hand. I was one of the few Myre trusted enough to be given my own master key card. It opened any door at any hour.
I entered and set Kee down on the nearest couch, clean red leather polished to a shine. The cushions squeaked a bit under his weight.
I turned on the room’s lights to see it was spotless, ready and waiting for Myre’s next victim.
The room had been specially designed for Myre’s brand of interrogations. The wall between the front room and bedroom had been removed. In its place was a line of metal bars and a barred door with a big lock.
It was all sparkling, the bars themselves like mirrors reflecting the overhead chandelier.
In the cage was a single bed against the wall, a toilet, a sink, and a tile floor with a drain in the center. The drain was put there as a psychological play. The hope was the prisoners would think it was there to catch the blood after they were killed. But Myre never soiled his own digs that way, including the cage room. He took his prisoners to other places for that final step.
An interrogation chair complete with straps, sat just outside the bars within easy sight of the room. Prisoners had to see it every time they woke or moved about the room. It teased and threatened the prisoners with what was to come.
An impeccable touch.
The couch was for me, mainly, or whoever was assigned babysitting duties. It faced away from the cell toward a flat screen TV on the wall. The TV was hooked into cable with every paid channel in existence, along with two different gaming devices.
Babysitters spent a lot of boring time here when prisoners were sleeping.
I glanced once at Kee, still unconscious, wasting his life by being both gorgeous and reckless at the same time, and turned to unlock the cage door.
Pushing it wide open, I went back to the couch, lifted Kee, this time in a cradle hold, and took him to the single bed, laying him carefully on it, making sure his legs were straight and his arms at his sides. I might have thought of him as a waste of a life, but it wasn’t as if I wanted him to be uncomfortable.
His hair had become messed from me carrying him head down over my shoulder, and lay in tangles across his eyes and nose. I reached down to brush it back, but stopped, my hand an inch from his face.
What was I doing?
