His Big Secret: An MM Contemporary Mpreg Romance

by Bates, Austin

  I watched the color fade from Daniel’s face as the caller said, “We’ve got your boyfriend. This is a courtesy call to remind you time is running out.”

  I wanted to keep the caller on the line as long as possible. Blaze mouthed the word, “Trace,” and I shook my head no.

  “Is Timothy safe?”

  “For now he is, but if you don’t follow instructions…” The caller paused for dramatic effect. “Pow!”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “No, but you can see his pretty face.”

  Daniel looked at me. He was confused. A few seconds later a notification tone sounded on my phone. The caller delivered a text message with a photo of Timothy’s blindfolded face. I held it up for Daniel and Blaze to see.

  I wasn’t immune to anger, but I’d learned a lot of lessons about how to control it and channel it into something productive. I wanted to scream at the caller, but I counted to fifteen before I spoke. “Tell me exactly what you need again.”

  “A video clip of you disavowing your relationship with pretty boy Timothy, and your statement that you are shutting the clinic reconstruction project down. You will tell the camera that you’ve decided that it’s not worth operating OBU.”

  Without raising the tone of my voice, I said, “You’ll have it in three hours. It’s as good as done. Take care of Timothy. If he’s harmed, the entire agreement is off.”

  Blaze’s face was beet red. He found it difficult to remain silent. As he listened to my statement, he mouthed, “What?” and started to reach for the phone. I blocked him with my left arm.

  “Timothy will be fine. When we have the video in our possession in a form that can be spread far and wide if necessary, he’s free to go.”

  “That’s fair. You’ll hear from me soon.” I disconnected the call.

  Blaze rose from the couch and paced back and forth. “Boss, you know how loyal I am to you, but what the fucking hell? That man is a criminal. He belongs behind bars for the rest of his life. How can you follow his orders? I can’t believe this! This wrecks me.”

  Daniel watched with a thoughtful look on his face. After Blaze halted his pacing, Daniel said, “You’ve got a plan, don’t you?”

  “I know who it is. I’ve talked to the protesters enough that I know their voices. They aren’t smart. He’s walking into a trap.”

  Daniel nodded. “It’s Keith, isn’t it?”

  When I said, “Yes,” Blaze sat on the sofa again.

  Daniel rubbed his hands on his knees. “But where?”

  “He’s never been the sharpest knife in the drawer. He was one of our earliest clients, and an unfortunate tragedy struck. Instead of letting us help him through his crisis, he refused to answer calls. Then he reappeared about six months later, mother in tow, to shout at us and call for an end to OBU.”

  Daniel’s mouth dropped open. “I didn’t know all that about Keith. I guess I came later. I don’t remember him as a client.”

  “No, he came to OBU before you joined us.”

  Blaze edged forward on the sofa. “So when do we go? I’m ready to body slam the thug. That’s not permanent injury violence, Boss. It just gets the point across.”

  “Cool your jets. I’m going alone. I’ll leave the address with the two of you, and you’ll come as backup if I don’t check in with you on schedule.”

  “No, you can’t go alone, Boss. Just because you hate guns doesn’t mean they do.”

  I shook my head. “If Keith wanted us dead, we’d be gone already.”

  Daniel asked, “How?”

  “He’d bring a bigger bomb. I’ve got some insight into Keith. Something told me we weren’t done with him when the rotten cabbage intended for me thunked him instead.”

  19

  Timothy

  After I angered my captor by bringing up OBU again, he left the room. The muscle-bound thug followed in his wake. Left alone, I realized it was my opportunity to escape. If it were a movie, I’d figure out a way to escape from the binding. Unfortunately, it was real life. Gritting my teeth, I tugged hard at the ropes. There was almost no give at all.

  Using my long, thin fingers, I tried to maneuver them around to find the end of the rope binding my wrists. I found one small loop and tugged. It loosened slightly. The progress brought a modest smile to my face. If I managed to break free, I could turn my ordeal into a blockbuster viral story.

  Hooking my index finger into the loop, I pulled, and the rope moved again. Then, almost as quickly as I made progress, it stopped. There was no rope end held in my hand. It was only a loop. Everything else was still firmly attached, and I couldn’t move my body much more than I could when I started.

  Rolling my head back, I yelled to try and draw someone’s attention. I knew that I risked more abuse from the oversized beast, but escape wasn’t possible on my own. The shout was more like a wordless howl. I yelled three times in quick succession and then stopped. There was no response. Are they completely gone from the building?

  I did my best to flex my pecs, and the chair started to rock. Putting more pressure in one direction, I was able to move the chair even more. I thought about a TV detective scene I’d seen once where the hero knocked the chair over onto the floor, and the ropes all came loose from the impact.

  After throwing all of my efforts into moving the chair, I felt it rock to one side and teeter on the brink of falling over. The sensation frightened me. I hated the feeling of falling. I couldn’t get anywhere near the parachute drop rides at the amusement park. Letting the chair come to a rest again, I knew that I couldn’t knock it all the way over. My gut-based fears wouldn’t allow it.

  I slumped in the ropes exhausted. My legs and arms ached from the attempts to free myself. I wondered how long I’d been captive. Where’s the cavalry? Why haven’t the cops shown up?

  My mind started to make things up that terrified me. I didn’t know if my captors would ever let me go. I thought about seeing my face on TV twenty years older when they finally set me free, and I could hear the interviewers asking questions while my mind struggled to figure out a whole new world that evolved without me for two decades. After considering struggling again, I sat still. Escape was a futile dream.

  I didn’t know how much time passed when I heard voices again. I recognized both of them. The man named Josh sounded upset. “Okay, so you get your way, Keith. Then what do you do with him? You can’t let him go like you say. He knows way too much already. I say we give him cement shoes and dump him in the ocean.”

  So that was the name of the protester. I tucked “Keith” away in the back of my mind and waited.

  “Have you been watching too many TV shows? We’re not the mob. If he thinks we’ll kill that pretty boyfriend of his, he’ll keep his mouth shut. We’re crazy, remember? He can’t trust us. We’ve got that on him.”

  The pair returned to the room, and the muscle-bound thug wasn’t with them. Keith clapped me on the shoulder.

  Josh grinned. “How’s things?”

  “I’m worried about my baby. Stress is a bad thing. Keith should know that.” I turned my head to look at him. “He wanted a baby. Maybe he still does. Keith could be an uncle to my child if he wanted to be. If he helped me take good care of the little one.”

  Keith stepped in front of me. “Yeah? You’d do that? I would have been a perfect father. Uncle comes close.” My eyes opened wide. I couldn’t believe that I was winning Keith over so easily.

  Josh growled. “What the fuck? He’s trying to play you. I say we gag him. No good will come from listening to what rolls out of his mouth.”

  Somehow I’d gotten Keith’s attention again. I aimed to hold onto it. If he grew sympathetic enough, there was a good chance he’d set me free. I needed to keep him focused on the baby first and me second. OBU and Inteus were topics to avoid in the conversation.

  I said, “We can start new lives. I don’t live here. I’m from western Massachusetts. Nobody knows you there. I’ve got a nice place. It’s perfect for the ne
w baby, and you can start all over again.”

  I knew that it was a calculated risk stating that Keith didn’t know anybody in western Massachusetts. New England wasn’t that large, but I was confident the odds that I was correct were much better than fifty-fifty. Most of my friends from other places didn’t even know Springfield was a city in western Massachusetts.

  “Damn, it would be good to start over. I could get away from Mom, too. Do you have a place?”

  Josh was growing more impatient. “What the fuck, Keith. Don’t talk to him. He’s trying to get into your head. Hell, I think he’s already there. This is about killing that clinic.”

  I clenched my teeth. I didn’t want Josh to say the three letters OBU. They would set off another malfunction in Keith’s brain. I yelled out, “Fuck! I feel a pain there! Holy crap! You need to let me go. Otherwise, I’m going to lose this baby.”

  A look of panic spread across Keith’s face. I fought against my instinct to smile. Josh shut up, too. Keith started to tug at the ropes.

  Josh grabbed the shoulder of his coconspirator. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Keith shook him off and started working at the ropes again. “I can’t kill a baby. I already lost one. There’s no way I can do that. We’ve got to let him lie down.”

  Josh continued to complain, but he didn’t try to stop Keith. For some reason, when push came to shove, Josh let Keith take the leadership role. Omegas didn’t often find other men bowing to them. Maybe Josh thought Keith was the smarter man.

  I exhaled when the ropes started to relax their grip on my body. Once they released me, I knew that I would have many more options for escape.

  At the precise moment that I was able to pull one arm forward and rotate my shoulder to ease the cramping in my muscles, the three of us heard the sound of scuffling in the rear of the house.

  Josh hissed, “What the hell is that?”

  Keith stopped his work on the ropes. “It sounds like we’ve got company. Go check it out.”

  Josh’s eyes opened wide. “Me?”

  “Fuck yes, you. I’ve got to keep our prize here company.”

  “What if it’s the cops?”

  I inhaled sharply when Keith wrapped a hand around my neck. He pressed his thumb into my windpipe hard enough to make his point. “He’d better hope it’s not the cops. They don’t usually seem to care much whether somebody gets hurt.”

  Josh lowered his head while the scuffling sounds continued. “Okay, fuck, but don’t let him go while I’m gone.” He kicked at a couple of old fast-food boxes on the floor before leaving the room.

  With Josh gone, Keith moved his mouth close to my ear. His warm breath made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

  “You thought you had me going there, didn’t you, Timothy? You’d never raise a baby with me. You think I’m a crazy-ass bastard, and maybe I am. You think you can outsmart me, but you won’t. I don’t give a fuck about your baby. He can rot in hell along with you!”

  The low, rumbling voice of the big bruiser thug echoed throughout the house. “We’ve got both of them now. Maybe we can get some money, too, and not just promises.”

  I thought I heard the sound of something heavy being dragged across the hardwood floor. The phrase “both of them” terrified me. I struggled to turn my head and look to the side of Keith’s body. What I saw chilled me to the bone.

  Josh was back with Keith’s hired brute, and he had a new captive. The massive, muscular mountain of a man held a gun to the side of Inteus’s head.

  20

  Inteus

  I recognized it as a kind of rage I’d not experienced since before I traveled to Japan. Seeing Timothy bound and held captive by a trio of hoodlums with Keith as the ringleader made every muscle in my body flex and tense. I closed my eyes to fight against my instinct to strike.

  The gun held to my head was dangerous, but my gut told me that none of them had the stomach for blowing my brains across the room. The primary risk to me was the possibility of forcing them to stumble into a mistake. If they had to defend themselves against a physical attack by me, the gun might go off. I needed a different approach.

  Closing my eyes for a moment, I remembered one of my lessons with my Zen Master. I’d lived at the temple for a month when I saw a wayward tourist ambling through the grounds like a careless bull. He disturbed carefully manicured stone gardens and moved objects placed in perfect order according to spiritual principles.

  After watching the stranger for nearly twenty minutes, I’d had enough. I stepped in front of him and provoked a verbal confrontation. Seconds later, the conflict turned physical as he tried to shove me out of the way. I stood my ground, and, by the time the argument was over, a treasured ancient pottery jar lay smashed on the ground.

  The tourist bolted from the scene leaving me to stare at the pointless destruction. When I told my story, my Zen Master merely nodded and said, “This is the way of violence.”

  I was jolted back to the present by the angry voices. “Why don’t we blow his brains out and be done with it? Maybe if you’re quick, you can catch the slimy goo in your hands, Josh.” It was the voice of the man holding the gun. I glanced at Timothy. His eyes were wide with terror. Slowly nodding, I tried to communicate that his fear was unnecessary.

  Josh said, “Damn, what the fuck? I’m honestly not a murderer. I’m an asshole, but I don’t take lives. Keith, you said we wouldn’t have to kill them. That cement shoes thing is kind of a weird, hot fantasy, but blowing his brains out? Fuck, at least let me leave the room.”

  I was nearly helpless without my crutches. I had to lean against the hard body of the muscular man with the gun to remain upright. Keith stood by Timothy’s side, and I noted that he’d been silent since I entered the room.

  When I started to speak, the man with the gun shoved me hard onto a ratty old sofa. I winced when it felt like a knife stabbed into my injured leg as I fell. The intensity of the pain took my breath away.

  Timothy shouted, “Inteus!”

  My fists clenched while I tried to regain my concentration. As I tried to take a deep breath, it caught in my throat. Calm, Inteus. You need to stay calm.

  Calculating that I needed to say something that would throw Keith off balance and give me a toehold on the situation, I said, “I love Timothy and the baby. Let him go, and we’ll negotiate. He doesn’t deserve to be part of this. He’s innocent.”

  Timothy gasped. “You love…?”

  Keith was still silent. He stood with a hand clamped on Timothy’s shoulder and watched me.

  Josh grumbled. “He’s trying to fuck with your head, Keith. I say get the damned video camera out and do what we planned in the first place. Shut this down once and for all.”

  I said, “That’s not what this is about.”

  “The fuck it is. It’s all about that fuckin’ clinic of yours.”

  My voice stayed calm. “It’s about Keith losing a child. Omegas like Keith are the reason I built the clinic.”

  I heard a hint of desperation creep into Josh’s voice. “C’mon, Keith. He’s trying to play with your head, too. Don’t listen to either of them.”

  I continued to talk in quiet, measured tones. “Keith wanted a baby so badly that it made him throw a bomb in frustration. He didn’t want to kill, but he wanted to make a point.”

  Keith let go of Timothy’s shoulder and shouted, “Why the hell didn’t you help me?” The anguish in his strangled cry filled the room.

  “You didn’t return our calls.”

  Keith stepped toward me. “You didn’t call me!”

  “We did. I personally placed a call. I talked to your mother, and she assured me that she would pass the message along.”

  Timothy lowered his head. Keith fixed his gaze on me. “No, you didn’t talk to her. No!”

  “Keith, do you still want to have a baby?”

  The bruiser with the gun broke into the conversation. “What the hell is all this about babies? I didn’t sign up
for this kind of shit.”

  I heard strength in Keith’s voice for the first time as he turned on his hired help. “Shut the fuck up, Dobie! If you don’t keep that mouth zipped, you won’t get your paycheck. Put the damned gun away and butt out.”

  The chastened hooligan quietly shoved the gun into the back of his belt. He placed a hand on the thigh of my uninjured leg and clamped down to let me know he was still present.

  I said, “You need to get away from your mother, Keith. She doesn’t like men like you. I can help you have a baby. It’s not too late. You need to be an individual and be independent.”

  Timothy raised his head. I saw a small grin play at the corner of his mouth.

  Keith wailed, “I lost my baby! I was pregnant, and I lost it. You didn’t do the job right. You’ll lose this one, too.” He pointed at Timothy’s belly.

  “You get more than one chance. I’ll make sure you get at least three more chances. We can take care of you. Don’t hurt anyone, Keith. We need to all stop hurting people.”

  Josh reached up and wiped a hand across his eyes. “Fuckin’ hell. I’m not even an alpha or an omega, but this is all getting to me. How in the world did I let you get me into this?”

  Keith turned and growled. “Just shut up. All of you. Now. I’ve got to think.”

  I held my tongue. While I gave Keith space to think, I lowered myself to the floor with my hands pressed against the sofa. While Dobie watched, I slowly propelled myself across the floor toward Timothy.

  Keith didn’t respond. He was lost in his thoughts. When I was close enough to Timothy to touch his lower leg, I exhaled again. If I was able to touch him, I knew in my heart that we could get out of the house together. I only needed to stay calm and remain one step ahead of Keith as I reflected on the circumstances.

  It was so quiet in the room that I could hear each person’s breathing. Keith reached a hand up to his head and grabbed a fistful of hair. He was struggling with something deep inside. I knew that he was beginning to understand the betrayal of his mother.