Page 37 of Toxic Revenge, Part Two (Mafia Omegas #2)

Chapter

Thirty-Three

CONRAD

I leaned against the pool table in the rec room our two friends had taken over. It was outside the main Alfieri mansion, on the ground floor of a secondary house. Blankets made up the pullout couch, and another door led off into a bedroom with a queen-size bed.

I wasn’t quite sure why they were out here and not in the main house, considering the place was massive and had bedrooms to spare, but I didn’t question it.

“Mercer can toss you the money,” I promised.

Gears tugged her curly hair back into a bulky ponytail with an irritated sigh. “Actually, in terms of replacement costs it’s probably more like $500. Have you seen the fucking shipping charges lately?”

“$500, done. I’ll tell him.”

He was going to be thrilled I’d put him in charge of motorcycle part reimbursement. She’d already upped the price by $200—by the time Mercer went to hand her the money, she’d be claiming they cost a grand.

And I’d be laughing on the sidelines.

“You went back and got most of them anyway,” Hawk pointed out.

She glared at him. “Most. Not all. If I’d lost all of them, they would never be able to reimburse me. Some of them are impossible to get.”

He threw up his hands before grabbing a pool cue and tossing another to me. “If you say so. I don’t know shit about motorcycles.”

“Which is why yours is in my shop almost as often as Conrad’s is,” Gears retorted. “No respect for the machine.”

“It gets me where I need to go, and I look badass in the process. I respect the vibes. Isn’t that enough?”

She rubbed her temples, then snatched the cue from him and made the break shot. Two striped balls fell into pockets, and she lined up her next shot. Gears sank that ball too, but missed the fourth.

“Respecting the vibes isn’t the same as respecting the machine,” she muttered, nodding to signal it was my turn.

I got one solid into a pocket, but missed the next. There was no chance I won this. I was average at best when it came to pool, and Gears was pretty good until she had a few drinks.

“I think she means you should have maintenance done more often,” I offered Hawk. “Like me.”

Gears glared at him, then sank three more balls before her next miss. Only one of her balls remained.

“Your bike is a fucking disaster, Four.”

I put a hand on my heart. “All of my oil changes are on time. And I buff her up real nice once a month.”

Although, I didn’t want to think too hard about the state of my motorcycle at this very moment. We’d all been parked in our garage, but with the Alpha Chariots members hunting us down, they’d probably broken into our house. Quite possibly trashed our bikes. The assholes.

I didn’t sink a single ball on my turn.

“Yet,” Gears said as she lined up her shot, “whenever I check over that damn machine, it’s one bad day away from falling to pieces while you’re riding it.”

She sank her final ball, then the 8 ball.

Hawk came over and snagged my cue as Gears started to rack up the balls again.

“It never actually fell apart, though,” I insisted.

“Should I be concerned about the fact that I rode on your motorcycle with you?”

I spun to face the sliding glass doors, open to let the cold midmorning breeze flow through the space. Talia stood there, wrapped in a fluffy sweater.

“Hey, princess.” I rushed over to her, slinging an arm across her shoulders to lead her inside. “No, you shouldn’t be.”

“I would be concerned, personally,” Gears said. “Any bike maintained by Conrad is a hazard to him and everyone around him.”

“I’m following the damn manual,” I complained. “What else do you want me to do?”

“Be better at it.”

Talia laughed at Gears’ tough response. I held her closer, pouting.

“This is how she treats me all the time, you know. I don’t know why we’re friends,” I said.

“Because she has your best interests at heart?” Talia offered.

Gears snorted. “I don’t.”

“Because she’s fun to be around?”

“She’s not.” Hawk and I said it at the same time.

Talia burst out laughing. “Agree to disagree. I think she’s great.”

“Wait until you see her drunk and belligerent. You’ll change your tune,” Hawk said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s after the fifth beer. That’s when her true colours come out. She broke my nose once.”

“You got in the way,” Gears retorted.

“If I hadn’t gotten in the way, you would have knocked out the second-in-command of another motorcycle club. I saved all our asses that night. You could have started a fucking war!”

“A noble sacrifice.” Hawk took the first shot on the new round of pool. “You were ugly as fuck while that break healed. I worried for your future prospects.”

Snorting, Talia leaned into my side. “Even if the broken nose had set wrong, I still would’ve gone for him.”

“I can’t imagine why, but I guess he must be more appealing to omegas.” Gears gave me a dismissive once over.

Being around Gears could kill a guy’s confidence. I was lucky I had my omega to compliment me. “I know I’m incredibly attractive, thank you very much,” I muttered.

Talia went up onto her toes and kissed my cheek. “You are.”

“She’s wearing rose-coloured glasses, I think,” Hawk teased. He’d managed to sink two balls on his turn, but then passed it over to Gears.

“All of you are so cruel to me,” I complained. “Not like you two get a lot of omega attention.”

Gears smirked, exchanging a glance with Talia. Hawk went red. I was definitely missing something, but I wasn’t going to ask.

I wanted to take my omega and enjoy some time alone with her. Now that the others were acknowledging their feelings for her, they kept stealing my cuddles.

“Are you done catching up with them?” I asked Talia, kissing the side of her head. “Because we could leave at any point.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I came for you. The staff told me you headed out here. I have to go talk to Jurah and Penn, and I didn’t want to do it alone.”

Oh, god. The fathers.

Upside—she hadn’t mentioned Nico, and he seemed to be the one who wanted us dead the most.

I managed a flimsy smile for her. “Of course, princess. I’ll come with you.”

Maybe another show of my unwavering support for their daughter would make them like me. I still wasn’t quite sure how my first impression had gone, overall. Time for a second, I guess.

“Thank you.” She slipped out from under my arm, going over to the pool table as Gears sank the final ball, completely wiping Hawk out in one turn. “If you guys need anything else out here, let one of the staff members know.”

“Any chance you can convince your dads to give us our bikes back?” Hawk asked. He didn’t seem fazed by his sudden loss of the round. “They had them confiscated at the gate. Said they needed to be checked for bombs or something.”

That checked out.

I was surprised Gears wasn’t freaking out more, though. That bike might as well be her omega, for how much she cared about it.

“If my bike comes back with a single scratch, Mercy’s going to owe me a whole lot more than $700 for bike parts,” Gears muttered.

The price had already gone up from $500. I held back a snicker. If Mercer didn’t come pay her soon, he was going to have a monumental bill on his hands.

“Yeah, I can get my fathers to send them back to you. They should have been checked over by their guys by now. And I’m sure they didn’t scratch it. All my fathers’ guys are careful about stuff like that.”

“Thanks, Talia,” Hawk said.

She smiled at him and I stalked back over to her, draping my arms over her shoulders and resting my chin on her head. I wasn’t jealous, exactly. I just wanted to be a part of anything she smiled at.

Which might be a little bit of jealousy, but whatever.

“Come on,” I said, trying to steer her in the direction of the door. “Give me a quick garden tour so I can amp myself up for seeing your fathers again.”

“You need to amp yourself up?” Gears snorted. “They weren’t that scary.”

“You try dating one of their daughters,” I shot back. “Bet they’d be scary then.”

“Doubt it.”

“We’re officially not friends anymore,” I declared. “You’re too mean to me.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you say so.”

Talia let herself be steered to the door and out into the chilly morning. “He’s not serious,” she tossed back over her shoulder at Gears.

“Yeah, I know.”

I almost kept complaining, but they were both right. Gears being a bitch was basically her love language, and she was one of the best friends I had outside of my pack.

I waved back at them instead, Gears already re-racking the balls to kick Hawk’s ass at pool again.

Talia clasped her hand in mine, leading me down a path away from the giant mansion.

It was cold, but not debilitatingly so, and the fog had cleared up since the early morning hours.

The Alfieris basically lived in a giant park, complete with both manicured gardens and lightly landscaped forest areas.

There were so many ways for me to get lost here. Asking her for a tour was mostly to give myself time to mentally prepare for Pack Alfieri, but partially so I’d be able to navigate around this damn place if push came to shove.

We saw guard patrols as we wandered hand in hand, all of them giving quick nods to Talia before continuing on their way. She told me what could be found in each direction whenever we reached a crossroad, and I tried to create a mental map of the place.

Mercer was way better at that shit, though. Wasn’t my strong suit.

“Think you’re ready to head back yet?” Talia asked, leaning against the short brick fence that lined this part of the trail.

I grabbed her hips and lifted her to sit on its flat top, bringing us almost to the same height. Her breath caught as I stepped in between her legs, her perfume getting stronger.

“Can I have a kiss first?”

“Just a kiss?” she asked, wrapping her legs around my waist.

“I mean, I couldn’t possibly ask for more than that with all those roaming guards.” I grinned.

She leaned in, her lips brushing mine. “You couldn’t, huh?”

“No way.”

I claimed her with a kiss, one arm wrapped around her to keep her close. She tasted like coffee, delicious and sweet, her cheeks and nose chilled from the biting air.

We could heat each other up easily, if we ignored the risk of being caught.

Unfortunately for both of us, I wasn’t about to test my luck after it had been so iffy lately. All I could have was a kiss while we were out in the open like this.

She whined when I broke the kiss, both hands clutching my shirt and trying to pull me back. I resisted, but she kept trying.

I was close to giving in when a loud buzzing sound broke the calm atmosphere.

“What is that?” I asked.

Talia reached down to pat at a side pocket of her leggings. “My phone. Shit. Someone is calling me.”

She fished it out from the pocket. Her eyebrows wrinkled in confusion when she looked at the display, but she answered it before I could see what the problem was.

“Hello?”

“Heard you made it back home safe and sound, mate .”

I heard the words on the phone loud and clear, and they made a feral growl rumble up in my chest.

That had to be Benjamin.