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“We won’t betray her trust. We’ll just need to secure both Miki and Mama at the same time. Keep the other Omegas in the club from getting involved.”

My head bobs absently at Ilya’s statement before I pull up the club’s blueprints. “The building is secured in a way to keep people in as much as it is to keep people out. Which means dual layer bars and lots of anti-shatter meshing.” I use my fingertips to spin the 3D plan and tap on one room on the second floor, turning the layout from cyan to yellow. “That’s Sin’s bedroom. There’s surveillance in there, but it’s just about the only place she gets to be alone. We’ll know when she’s in there,, away from Miki and out of harm’s way.” I tap on another room to highlight it, this one much smaller. “This is where Miki is sleeping. No surveillance in there, surprisingly. I had to deduce he was sleeping there by tracking his movements and schedule.” Navigating to the main floor, I tap one room, then another. “This is Mama’s office, and this is her bedroom at the back. There’s surveillance in her office, but not the bedroom. Still, tracking her isn’t much of a chore.”

“And the others?”

At Ilya’s question, I rotate the screen back to the top floor. “This is the room they all sleep in together. Video and audio surveillance. But I’ll be honest, it’s difficult for me to get an exact count on how many of them there are.”

“And we lost access to Sin.” Garen states the obvious.

“No asking her for confirmation, no. But we’ve always been good at rolling with the punches. We can do this.”

My tone is much more assured than I feel, but Sin’s safety is most important to us all, no matter what.

And we need to move, fast.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sin

“Everything has gotten so bad,” Matty whispers close to my ear. We’re seated in the main venue at one side of the big stage, flipping through a binder Mama created with some new show instructions. This is something we do every month. Read her instructions, do our best to perfect the scenes as they’re described, then perform them for her to critique before unveiling them to the public.

“Quiet. She’ll hear you,” Vicki hisses. Her blond hair is a mess about her head, her face looking far too skinny these days, blue eyes sunken into her eye sockets.

“The mics are everywhere,” Bets breathes, her dark eyes wildly darting back and forth. “I found them in our bedroom.”

Guilt balls in the center of my chest.

This is all my fault.

Fate decided to gift me my mates at the expense of everyone around me.

Vicki had lost Tasha, who, by all accounts, had been her best friend. She’d been there the day I threatened her on Matty’s behalf, but she doesn’t seem to blame me for what happened to her. Though I’m too scared to bring it up and find out the truth of how she feels.

Guilt on top of guilt.

She’d apparently clung to one of the newest additions, Bets, a failed domme recruit.

I’d left for just under three days, returned on the first day of January, and now, it’s almost February already. My time in New York feels like a distant memory, a dream, but not reality.

I haven’t seen Petrov in all this time. I never asked my Alphas about it, but I have a pretty good idea that they had something to do with him leaving me alone, as much as they were probably responsible for his battered body before we left.

I just can’t believe they’d do that just to get him to leave me alone, especially when they followed me back to L.A. anyway. Why beat the man up to warn him off if they had planned to hover and watch over me?

It doesn’t make sense. And with the way things are now, I don’t know I’ll ever get the chance to question them about it all.

My gaze shoots to Mr. Miki, skulking in the far corner on the other side of the room, just watching. His gaze occasionally sweeps across the interior, then his eyes settle on his phone screen, lighting up his face from below like someone telling a scary story in the dark on TV.

Matty’s hand slides over mine on top of the table, giving it a little squeeze. My gaze snaps to his, and he offers me a weak smile. “I know you’ve got it the worst right now, but maybe things will die down soon.”

“I wish we knew why it got this bad in the first place.” Vicki’s gaunt face is contemplative.

My mouth falls open silently. I want to tell them. Take responsibility for all of this. But will that make things worse? I don’t care about me, but the rumor mill will spin, possibly out of control.

If they hate me, so be it. But could this knowledge hurt them?

What if what happened to me happens to one of them someday?

That’s it. I have to say something. At least they’ll know what will happen if they ever find their scent matches.