Page 71 of Stolen Omega

That must be what Warren has on them. There are only three people who know what happened to the real Zelena Ortega, and two of those people are inside the other’s pocket.

Of course, I had no clue about any of this until Zelena became an overnight sensation as a singer. Those first haunting bars of her debut ballad stopped me in my tracks.

I knew I’d found Zoey. After nine years of the torture of not knowing, I knew.

The true mate I’d lost was alive.

Not only that, but she was thriving in the career she’d always wanted.

It was hard to believe the girl we’d lost so long ago had somehow landed on her feet.

It made me so fucking happy that she’d survived, and that she was doing so well.

That was before I started looking into how she could have been implanted into a whole other life.

Then, I found out what Warren did to make her forget her old one. I quickly realized her new parents never connected with their replacement child. The father could barely stand to be around her. The mother encouraged her musical talent because she saw a way to make money from it.

The Ortegas are wealthy on paper, but the money that looks like it belongs to them is actually Warren Corvina’s less-than-legal fortune and all they’re really doing is cleaning it for him.

They wouldn’t dare touch one penny of it.

Yet, they’ve lived like a king and queen since their new daughter became an overnight sensation in the pop world. Zelena’s personal bank account has less than five hundred dollars in it. Everything goes to her mom, and that woman fully intends to let the woman the world sees as her only child work her way into an early grave making her richer.

Anger burns inside me as I carry Dale to the barn.

There are three people I intend to come back and deal with once everything else is as it should be.

Two of them are in the other’s pocket, but all of them are guilty of ruining lives.

I kick the right door open, and the rusted padlock falls to the ground.

I set Dale down on the hay bales I never removed from the right side of the old barn.

My Skyhawk takes up half the rest of the space inside the barn. It’s the reason I bought this old strip of farmland. The barn was an added bonus. I stripped out the backwall and put up a roller shutter door to turn it into a hangar.

I hit my private runway light switch, which turns the generator on that operates the lights.

Then, I hit the switch for the roller shutter. It takes a few seconds for the generator to sputter to life.

Once it does, the roller door starts coming up, and I can see the lights I installed in the dirt out there, shining brightly in the darkness.

Dale groans as I get to the plane, ready to open the door and lift him inside.

I sit down on the bale beside him, waiting to find out if the sedative wore off too quickly.

I’m sure I used the right dose for his height and weight.

More would be reckless. Less wouldn’t have been enough.

“It’s okay,” I murmur as he shivers a little in his sleep. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

He doesn’t wake up. I give it a few minutes before I lift him into the seat behind the pilot’s seat.

Strapping him in isn’t easy, but he remains unconscious.

He mumbles in his sleep a little.

That makes me smile. I didn’t know he still did that.

---