Hearts of Deceit (ManxMan)

Epilogue: Joe

2 Months Later 

What exactly led up to this lovely evening where my mother was screaming at me in that high-pitched nasally voice of hers, where my stone-faced father sat and stared daggers and where my dear old brother Benjamin was sharing a smirk with his wife? Two words, I suppose. Conrad Fitzroy. That delta had become the bain of my existence since our oh so fateful meeting at some dingey gas station. Contrary to what I'd told Conrad, I didn't run off to weird and quiet places to pick up omegas who knew nothing about me. Really, it was to avoid nosey journalists, stalkers, and the makeup of snakes and weasels that I called my family. 

"You-you can't do this to us! What will people think? What will people say?" My mother sobbed like a great opera actress when she needed to. The water works were on full blast tonight for my father.

"He's a liability to the firm," Benjamin piped up and his wife tried not to look too enthusiastic when she nodded in agreement. "A PR nightmare. Think of it pa. Lots of our shareholders have old-fashioned sensibilities. What of Gladstone and Comp? Of Sain-Heinz-"

"What do our shareholders have to do with Joe's dating life? Hell, what does geopolitical forecasting have to do with him dating a delta?" That was Gavin. My brother a year younger than I and a million times smarter. He was born to be a lawyer and he was the only family I could stand. I had told him of the fateful news months earlier to which he took his sweet time to "ruminate" as he called it. He told me, in that matter-of-fact voice, what exactly would happen if I were to date a delta and tell others about. Namely, that the family would not be happy, some old business partners and family friends would have their feathers ruffled and mother's friends would make snide comments till they died or until the proletariat revolution took hold and guillotined them. I would also be killed. Really, the idea was a mercy. 

"This isn't about the shareholders!" Mother went on, crying like a great ingenue of the theater. Her puffy omega eyes glared holes into father, willing the old alpha to look at her and do something about this madness!

I sighed and drank my wine. Benjamin would not shut about a potential hit to the business with a smirk that would have one thinking this was good for the business and Gavin tried and failed to use his rational lawyer ways to show that all this worry was preposterous. 

"We live in a new age. This will make us look progressive, liberal! We'll appeal to the millennials," Gavin continued. 

"As if some bratty kids could give a shit about geopolitics. Our market base is the older-fashioned alpha looking for good sensibilities in the people that provide him information. Isn't that right father?" Benjamin went on. To his credit, my father stayed as stone-faced as ever. It was known legend that the great patriarch only ever spoke when the moons of Jupiter were aligned in a very precise and obtuse manner, reminiscent of mystic, non-euclidean geometry. 

"Robert! Do something! Knock some sense into your son!" My dear mother sobbed. 

That's how it went on for the rest of the evening. In the end, Gavin gave me a tight smile and shrugged. I could hear mother calling a friend to see if a trip to Hawaii was feasible in the next day or so from where I stood in the foyer, preparing to depart. Benjamin only gave me a wink and drove off in a limo where I could hear his son Quinton bawling. 

The only change tonight was my father catching me before I left.

"I would have kicked you out if you hadn't brought the Edwards in as business partners. Don't fuck it up. It's the only useful thing you've done."

I gave a tight nod and left. 

The original plan was to bring Conrad along to meet the family. Then I was reminded what a bad idea that was by the ever prescient Gavin. Then it was decided that Gavin would record me breaking the news to the family. The only hole in that plan was that I felt like daggers were being raked over my body at the thought of Conrad watching a recording where my family acted as if deltas were essentially the plague. He'd suffered enough.