Page 126 of Broken Dreams

“Of course. Can you pour me a whiskey neat, please?” Corbin asks.

“As if you drink anything else,” Shaw teases him, easily forgiving his boss. There’s respect between them, regardless of the fact that there’s an exchange of power.

It’s almost as if they’re friends who happen to work together instead. Hmm.

“A drink?” Corbin asks me as Shaw pours it.

“Same, please,” I say, knowing I probably will sip it slowly. I won’t make the mistake of simply holding a full glass of alcohol in front of Irishmen again.

I’ve learned my lesson, thank you. Sleeping it off in my car isn’t something I want to do tonight.

Shaw smirks, and I wonder if Ambrose told him about it. No one has really talked about whose pack Ambrose is in, though they talked about how insane they were. Are they together?

So many questions, and no answers to them.

“I’m not spilling any secrets I shouldn’t when I tell you that this room is swept often for any type of listening devices,” Corbin says ruefully. “Meaning, it is safe to speak here. Now who are your omegas fugitives from?”

“A club called Slick Dreams,” I say. “All the omegas there are bought for that purpose.”

“And you’re telling me you just happen to frequent this club?” Shaw asks, disgust leaking into his gaze.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t part of the problem,” I sigh. “If you’re going to be protective, then do it. Nitpicking every goddamned thing that I say isn’t the way that happens.”

“And there it is,” Shaw says, slamming down a bottle of whiskey that appears expensive. “So fucking closed off, it’s hard to want to help you. Regrets are one thing, secrets are quite the other.”

“I don’t know you from Adam,” I grumble. “I’m not showing all my cards.”

“Goes both ways, boyo,” Corbin says, shrugging as Shaw comes over to hand us our drinks. “I get it, but we don’t deal in skin. We’re doing our best to dismantle the auctions, protect our omegas in our city.”

“By the same token, we are a safe haven for them,” Shaw adds. “There’s resources here that don’t exist in other places. Who is the douchebag who runs this club?”

“Bret Harris does,” I explain. “The club travels so it’s never in the same place.”

Corbin has been absorbing this all, thinking hard. I wonder if he knows Makayla somehow, or anything about the club. I feel as if I’m entering one of the most important tests of my life.

“I need to tell you a story,” he says slowly. “Don’t interrupt, as it will all come together in time. The information is important for you to understand what you’re up against, and why you’re going to have to work harder for what you want.”

“Old Irish men enjoy their stories,” Shaw says with a smirk. He looks very comfortable in his armchair, as if he has all the time in the world.

Alright, I’ll play. I like my stories as well.

“I understand,” I reply, miming zipping my lips. Shaw snorts in response, and I wait for Corbin to begin.

“A girl named Quinn Hughes disappeared from the mall in Minneapolis when she was fourteen years old,” he says. “She had guards with her, and she snuck away from them due to peer pressure. I know this, because the two girls she was with were grilled by their parents. Apparently, they ditched to go to a diner across the street.”

“Girls will do stupid shite when they're fourteen, right?” Corbin continues. “The issue with this decision is that as they were walking through the parking lot, a paneled van drovethrough and grabbed Quinn before speeding away. No one had any idea where she was taken or any idea if she was alive or dead. It’s become a cautionary tale to tell children of how easy it is to be kidnapped.”

“Her mother was devastated, and became a shadow of herself, while her father amassed a fortune in an effort to move on. He always said it was something to do so he wouldn’t fall into the same depression as his wife, which I believed,” he says. “Until I heard from Quinn herself that her father sold her.”

Taking a sip of whiskey to keep my mouth shut, I wonder why he’s telling me this. This can’t be Makayla, can it?

“You’re a smart man, Christian, and I’m sure you can draw your own conclusions,” Corbin drawls. “I saw Quinn at a dinner the same night you saw Linus at Club Serenity, when he was dancing alone at work. I do my homework, keep tabs on the new people in my city. That girl has been burned more than anyone ever deserves.”

“We’re going to need you to pay your dues before you’re allowed to see Makayla, who is our Quinn,” Shaw says. “She’s in the middle of her very own Shakespearean bid for power, and planning to kill her father so she can be free of him. You see, we just heard from the Kelly brothers that her father has been in contact with Bret Harris.”

I feel as if I’m still missing things, and as if I’m drowning in ice water. Swallowing hard, I keep my face imprisoned in a state of nothingness, though I know it’s speaking volumes to them. I need them to keep talking, because I’m scrambling as I put together the puzzle of everything I don’t know about my scent match.

“The Kelly brothers were her childhood best friends,” Corbin says. “They’ve been looking for her for twenty years. They never stopped, there are tattoos of her claim on them on their bodies. It’s always been Quinn and the Kelly boys against the world.”

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