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I glanced at Avery Davenport and didn’t see the gentle omega he was, but the by-the-book police detective wearing the same scowl as his mate. Detective Wade Massey, his partner, didn’t look angry, more bored, simply waiting for me to start talking.

“I should have stayed asleep,” I muttered.

“Stop that,” Gigi scolded, “and have some water.”

I waited while she poured some from a crystal decanter—she’d obviously brought that from home for me—then held one of Lauren’s fancy curly sparkle straws for me to take giant swigs of water from. It was, I had to admit, the best water I’d ever had in my life. It was probably the straw.

“Thank you,” I said as she poured more so I could take more sips later.

“Now, tell us all what happened.”

“Can I have more water first?”

“No,” Graeme snapped.

“Of course.” Gigi shot him a look. She was protective of me, always had been. It was the two-year age gap. She used to push me around in everything from strollers to wheelbarrows, and I was forever in the wagon she pulled with her bike. I was fairly certain she thought I belonged to her until she was at least ten.

Once I’d drunk more than I thought I could, Gigi gave me a gentle nod, told me the food was nearly there, and turned to Avery. He immediately informed me that he was going to record everything and take notes. Wade was also taking notes, but on a tablet, not with pen and paper.

I took a deep breath, then said, “Theo Rossellini caught me in his mansion in Highland Park, and no amount of fast talking was getting me out of there alive.”

My intel had been crap, probably because my buddy Royce Kimball had given me up. It made sense; he had gambling debts that I’d promised to clear, yet again, but Rossellini would not merely clear them but pay him extra for handing me over. It was exactly as Gigi had said to me months before—Royce and I weren’t friends, never had been, and I’d almost paid for that misplaced trust with my life. Too late I understood that his loyalty was for sale. He was everyone’s friend, and lackey, if the price was right.

“Did you guys get Theo?” I asked Avery.

He nodded. “We did. He’s going to prison for the rest of his life no matter what legal team his father gets him. We got the surveillance you sent, as well as a money trail from him to foreign buyers. There are the six omegas you saved who will all testify at his trial, but there are others that the FBI is now looking for as well. It’s a huge case, and though we appreciate all you did, you went around us, and more importantly, the FBI, and they take that very seriously.”

I nodded.

“We picked up Kimball as well,” Wade told me. “He’s going to jail too, but we’re missing someone.”

“What do you mean? I gave you all the names my team and I acquired.”

“Oh, we know, and it’s appreciated,” Avery assured me, “but you’re forgetting that someone found the omegas for Theo Rossellini.”

“No, he⁠—”

“Yes,” Avery stated firmly. “Theo ran the auction at his house, he sold them, collected the funds, and was in charge of all transport, no question about any of that. He’s guilty as hell. But being human, he doesn’t have the connections to all the lupine families.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did it escape your notice that all the omegas Theo Rossellini has moved are from families of the jarl here in Chicago?”

It took me a moment because I just woke up. “What? No, they’re not.”

Wade was nodding, and more importantly, so was Graeme.

I refocused on Avery. “That can’t be.”

“It is. Of the names we’ve already checked, each family was sent a text or an email that said that the taken omega was fine and happy in their new life. The ones who were fighting with their families or estranged received notes in the mail that they were well and there would be no further communication.”

“Wait—”

“They’re not from families like yours,” Avery went on, “or mine. More mid-level; those not paying dowries, those who can’t afford to continually keep thirty-year-old omegas in their homes. But they are all from the jarl.”

“We’ve all heard stories about omegas who were turned out by their families, people we knew, who were discarded. You’re saying that’s not what happened?”

“Certainly it happened to some, but not all. And not nearly as many as any of us thought. At the moment, we have no idea how far this goes back. We can’t track all the omegas when their own parents didn’t keep tabs on them.”