Page 71 of Their Domme

“Yes, why don’t you come in, Nic. It’s not as if we’re discussing anything important and private,” Emmerich drawled as he leaned back in his seat. The tic in his jaw showed that he was truly annoyed at me for bursting in. The tic might be concerning for some, but I was familiar enough with Em to know that you needed to worry when hedidn’thave a reaction.Maybe he should have locked the door then.“What can I do for you?”

“You can’t,” I replied, looking at Blake. “I need to talk toyou. About Atlas.”

Blake stiffened, their narrowed eyes studying me. I wasn’t facing my friend; I was facing a killer and the lover of the man I needed help from. Whose lover had conspicuously gone MIA ever since my men had shown up. “What about Atlas?”

“He’s a hacker, and Oli needs help digging things up. It will make it go by faster if they work together.”

Emmerich sobered a bit, his gaze flicking between his sibling and me before stopping on Oli with a carefully blank expression. Blake broke my stare in favor of looking over the man beside me, and I prayed that Oli wouldn’t say anything stupid. Honestly, I should have known better.

Oli broke the tense silence, of course, with his usual lack of tact. “Look, I don’t need help from someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. So he can work with traffic cameras, that’s fucking nothing. I can do this on my own.”

“Traffic cameras?” I turned to him with a furrowed brow.

“Emmerich here called Atlas to help find you when Warren took you. He did that, then he harassed Blake until they woke up to ask them questions,” Oli informed me. “I appreciate you wanting to help, but I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure about that given what you’ll be pulling up?” I asked softly, unwilling to pull punches when it came to this.

“Tell me,Oli,” Blake cut in before he could respond, drawing our attention. “What’s your story?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re mighty invested in all of this.” Blake waved a hand to vaguely indicate what was going on. “More than just it being about Nic. Why?”

Oli’s upper lip curled in a snarl. “I don’t give a fuck who you are. I don’t owe you shit.”

“Watch your tone, Oliver,” Emmerich threatened quietly. Oli stepped toward Blake, ignoring the warning in their brother’s voice, drawn in by the blank expression Blake had fixed on their face. A predator dropping morsels to lure their prey exactly where they wanted them.

“You know something, Blake,” I said, calling them out. “What is it?”

Blake slowly blinked, shifting their attention to me, and I felt a finger of coldness run down my spine just as a knock sounded on the door. Without waiting for an answer, it opened. I pulled Oli to the side so we weren’t in the way, and in walked none other than Atlas with the rest of Blake’s men behind him.

“Blake, we found something…” Atlas trailed off when he realized other people were in the room. Oli’s hand tensed in mine, and I looked over at him. His face was pale as he stared at Atlas with wide eyes. “We can come back—” He cut himself off once he glanced sideways at us, but he completely froze when he spotted Oli.

It was as if time had slowed. Oli squeezed my hand so hard I could feel my bones starting to grind together. How did I not notice the similarities before? Similar dirty blond hair, builds, and there was just something I couldn’t put my finger on that reminded me of the other man when I looked at each of them. I had thought Atlas seemed familiar when I saw him at the F?rstner house, and now, with him and Oli in the same room, I realized why…

Atlas, his face equally pale, started to open his mouth, but Blake beat him to it. “Do you remember, Oli? Where you were taken from?”

“Who—” Oli roughly cleared his throat. “Who said I was taken?”

“We’re in the business, Oliver,” Emmerich chided him. “We know.”

Oliver’s hand spasmed in mine, and I repositioned myself, putting my body between him and the rest of the room. “Do you want to leave, Oli? This wasnotpart of my plan, I swear. You say it, and we’re out. Or I can call Bodhi?”

Oli looked at me, swallowing hard, and without looking away from me, he answered Blake’s question. “I don’t remember.”

Lie.

“But you were taken?” Blake asked, their voice uncharacteristically gentle. I stepped into Oli, gently wrapping my arms around him to comfort him. He wrapped an arm around me in return, and I snuggled into him while checking out the others. Atlas looked sick to his stomach, and when Robin reached out to place a hand on his shoulder, he flinched before directing an apologetic smile at the older man.

“Yes,” Oli replied, his voice cracking. “I got away when I was older. Why are you asking me this?”

“Because I have a younger brother,” Atlas said, his voice empty of any emotion. “He was taken, but I was never able to find him.”

Please don’t say the name.I knew Oli didn’t remember his birth name. His confession after Matthew Hughes had outed his past was still vivid in my mind. A small bit of his history pulled from him against his will, another violation to add to his litany of scars. If Atlas said a name and it wasn’t Oliver, I didn’t know how Oli would react. Would another illusion of security and sense of self be ripped away?

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Oli replied harshly. He shook his head as though the extra layer of denial would make Atlas’ words less true. “Kids are taken all the time. I’m not special.”

“Well…” Blake drawled, then an envelope hit the desk, its thud loud in the tense silence of the room. “I have the answers you want right here.”

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