Page 70 of Curvy Dirty Omega

I stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down to see him staring at the portrait of his brother with his hands in his pockets.

“Melinda wanted to stand out and so she chose red evening wear as the dress code instead of black tie. She said it was a nod to our legacy, but all I could think was we looked like a sea of blood. Still, Gideon was happy so I didn’t say anything.”

Liam smiled up at me like nothing was wrong, but there was a flicker of grief in his eyes that made my chest hurt, like a boulder was crushing me into nothing but dust.

“When it’s my turn, I want to wear all red and make everyone else wear black.” Liam took the last few steps up until he was towering over me once more. “What about you?”

“Are you asking what I want to wear on my wedding day?” The concept was so ridiculous I actually scoffed. “You’re assuming I even want a wedding.”

“You don’t?”

I was going to have to edit the sound out of this video if he kept this up.

My phone took in the home theater as well as the massive game room with its own bar where Gideon and Melinda had probably hosted a few parties. Everything about this house was too big and too white. I hated it and the generic choices made for each room.

A personal gym with a sauna and a hot tub, the ridiculous game room that was bigger than some pubs I’d been to, and then the various guest rooms which implied people got drunk here and passed out in one of these beds that were the spitting image of a fancy hotel room.

Where was the master bedroom then? Didn’t people usually put this kind of recreational area on the ground floor, not the second floor?

Another set of stairs took us back down, but I hesitated when I saw a painting that took up almost the entire wall behind the bar. It caught my attention because it actually had some color that wasn’t white or cream.

“I have no plans to get married,” I told Liam as I went around the bar where there was anything and everything a bartender could ever want or need and stared at the painting of pomegranates in a white bowl, overflowing to cover the counter as well, seeds everywhere…

So much thick, red juice that it oozed out of the bowl and onto the counter, staining everything the same dark red as Liam’s eyes.

Without context, the painting looked like nothing more than a nod to the dual symbolism of pomegranates. It could even allude to the Hades myth as most people with even a basic education knew Hades gave Persephone pomegranate seeds to keep her in the underworld with him.

A pomegranate was a symbol of fertility, but it was also the fruit of the dead.

Most didn’t know this, but the first pomegranate tree grew from a pool of blood – the blood of Adonis who bled to death after he was gored by Ares who’d taken on the form of a boar.

The phone shook as I reached for the gilded, ornate frame. It looked so out of place here, but if Melinda and Gideon were serving drinks, it could have been a play on the Hades myth – like they were tempting anyone who dared drink here so they could trap them for all eternity.

“This is an original, isn’t it?” It definitely looked like one with all the texture of the oil paint drawing in the gaze to various different details. “My father had a copy of this. It was just a print done on canvas, but it was still very captivating.”

I pulled on the frame, testing a theory. At first it didn’t move, but a second tug and it swung forward, revealing a safe.

“It looks innocent, doesn’t it?” I didn’t bother trying to crack the safe. We didn’t have time for that and I was sure Liam could get what he needed to open it. “It’s nothing but fruit until you remember who the artist is.”

I pushed the frame and the painting swung back into place with a soft click.

“Artemis Genecia was a Renaissance painter famous for her violent scenes.” I considered the red seeping from the pomegranates and wondered what the scene would look like if we were given the full picture. “Every painting is full of rage for what was done to her.”

Sexually abused by her teacher if I remembered correctly.

“My father used to be a blood splatter analyst.” I don’t know why I was telling Liam all this, but seeing this painting here after all these years was really fucking with my head. “He told me he hung this painting in his office because without the bigger picture, all this blood would be overlooked and violence would go unpunished.”

Not for the first time, I wondered what had happened to my father to make him like that. As an omega, he would have experienced the worst the world had to offer as well as the best. He’d found my mother after all and then had me.

Why weren’t we enough? Why had he killed her after so many years of happiness? Had she found out what he was up to or had he just snapped, no longer able to pretend everything was fine?

“Did your father have the bigger picture?” Liam asked from right behind me. I hadn’t expected him to be so close and it made me jump, yanking me out of the weird trance this painting always put me in.

“No, he didn’t. Rumor has it that she painted the death of Adonis and this is only a small corner of that painting, but no one’s been able to find it.” I headed for the stairs that would lead us back to the first floor, hating how much I wanted to rip that painting off the wall and take it with me. “My mother traveled a lot for work and she bought him that painting in Rome. She used to work security for the Lopez pack.”

Why did I keep telling him shit about my life that I hadn’t told anyone since Frankie helped me get my name changed? I couldn’t understand it, but maybe it was all this exposure to his pheromones.

There were a few people who had always been able to get me to open up and talk, but I hadn’t expected Liam to be one of them.

---