“What tape?” I asked, cutting through the thick mood of the room. Mum just smiled, a scary horror movie mask of a thing, but the others were regally silent, except for Cress. She sniffed regularly, a strange counterpoint to whatever the hell this was, until my grandfather snatched up a rattan covered tissue box and held it out to her. She took it much more circumspectly.
“You’ve brought all of us here,” James said. “Perhaps you could—?”
“What. Tape.” I bit off every word, not fucking caring for the niceties. Dad’s face went from apoplectic to volcanic at this show of temper in front of Greta, but I didn’t care.
The Chadwick grand dame gave me that slightly pained social smile that meant I was fucking in for it. This was the ‘guess what, your parents were killed in a horror car crash and they lay there in agonising pain for hours before anyone found them’ smile. “There were five of you at Abaddon last night, yes?”
“Yes,” James replied, stepping forward now, putting a barrier between Tris and me and the rest of the room.
“James, darling, I have warned you about places like that. I know you have your…curiosities, but I thought we were behind that. You have found two lovely omegas to court—”
“Two?” Dad snapped, shooting her a vicious look before he schooled his face back into a polite mask. “I thought we agreed—”
“So you must think of their reputations, if not for your own.” She pursed her scarlet lips. “A file was sent to both families in the early hour of the morning with some…demands attached. Attempts to bring down the Chadwick name are so very lucrative and therefore incredibly tempting. You must know this. Your own father—”
“Don’t bring Dad into this,” James hissed. He turned his back on the room, moving to us and sweeping the both of us up in his arms, but Tristan bristled.
“So fucking what? This doesn’t change anything. Do I want some fucker flogging his log to a video of Kit and me together? No, I fucking don’t, but it’s not the end of the world.”
Mum, of course, took that as a challenge.
“My darling girl, in heels and naked as the day she was born, wearing… What was that thing called?”
“Cerise, do shut up,” Grandpa said in a severe voice.
“A strap-on! That’s it. Working your little hips so earnestly.”
Then Mum laughed with such perfect viciousness, it took my breath away. My mind was racing in time with my heart, my body alerting me to danger, danger, danger, but I couldn’t work out what the hell to do. I’d seen this, heard the stories, about omegas who had to go on extended overseas trips to try and wait out the gossip rags, only to be greeted by the paparazzi as soon as they got off the plane, but that wasn’t what was ripping me in two.
My mother did her best to imitate me, performing like some grotesque monkey in front of an impassive crowd, her jerky movements approximating what she’d seen—me. My fucking heart was breaking, and there was she…
“Kit, with me. Kit.” Tristan swept in, James sheltering us with his body, trying to turn me away from Mum, but it didn’t matter. I could see her Death’s head grin and her shitty mimicry all too easily in my mind. “Baby, none of this shit matters, right? Just you and me, love, always, you and me.”
I grabbed his hands and held them tight, because he was my Tris. He’d gotten me through countless moments like this before and would again. We had to stand strong, together, against—
“Tristan?”
We turned to see his mum standing in the doorway, dressed in her uniform, a clean apron over the top.
“Ah, Julia, can you take Mrs Greyson to her room, please?” Dad said, trying for his best lord of the manor schtick and failing.
“Of course, sir.” She stepped forward, but her eyes were on us, concern obvious as she went to try and wrangle Mum. She was strong for an omega, flailing now, then screeching like a howler monkey as Julia tried to get her under control.
“Go with Julia, now!”
Dad’s alpha bark resonated throughout the whole room and you’re probably wondering why he didn’t deploy it earlier. Well, to hurt me for one, but secondly, it was seen to be a sign of ill-breeding to need to use it at all. The bark was for menials, those that didn’t matter, not the lady of the house. He quivered with it, the expended energy, the awareness that, yet again, he was failing by the social standards he fought so hard to uphold.
“Thank you, Julia,” Grandpa said as she took a wooden Mum out of the room. “And as to your assertion that none of this…shit, I believe it was, matters? Everything we do has an impact on our family’s position. You might not have a family name worth protecting, but we do. Reputation is everything. It tells the other people of our ilk who to trust, who to invest in, who to work with. It determines our financial success and our romantic one. You may have caught young Chadwick’s eye, but you never would have been on his radar without your association with my granddaughter. You scorn the very reflected privilege that got you into the situation you are currently in, one we share with you.”
He sighed, seeming to collapse into himself as his hands linked together, then one stroked his neatly groomed moustache.
“We’ve received a request for quite a substantial amount of money to keep the matter quiet, but that won’t be the last of it.” He smiled, but it was completely mirthless. “Why on earth would they stop trying to bleed us? We have what they need. Money, of course, and they? They have all the cards. We have our people on the case, trying to recover the file by whatever means possible or at least bringing the bastards to justice.”
Weird how that point came so far down the list.
“But of course, nothing stays hidden, not something like that. We’ve already had a call from Kent’s family.”
“No…”