Please Divorce Me, Alpha! {BL}

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In the eleven months I’d been married to Lorenzo Castelli, I’d learned quite a few things about him.

For starters, he absolutely despised being interrupted while working. When he got irritated, whiskey was his go-to drink, and I sometimes wondered if his liver had shown any signs of quitting.

He had this eerie talent for making grown ass men suddenly forget how to speak just by looking their way.

And most importantly, he’d recently taken a surprising interest in keeping me around.

That last part was new. Very new. It was especially surprising since he’d just torn our divorce papers apart, pushed me against a wall, kissed me, and then had the nerve to ask why I still wanted out, as if I was the odd one in this scenario.

As if that wasn’t the whole freaking point, oh my god!

You’re probably wondering how exactly I got myself in this mess...

For starters, I’m Alex Sinclair, twenty-five years old, an omega, and the illegitimate son of Richard Sinclair, who used to own a very successful advertising firm.

According to my father, those facts made me one of life’s more unfortunate mistakes.

I wish I could say he was exaggerating. He wasn’t.

A year ago, I found myself sitting by the window in my bedroom at the Sinclair estate, watching rain trickle down the glass, all the while wondering if it was possible to die from sheer boredom before despair got to me.

I’d been locked in that room for nearly a week. The door was securely locked from the outside, and my meals were delivered twice a day.

Nobody talked to me unless it was absolutely necessary. By now, I could tell the time just by the sound of the maid’s footsteps approaching.

My imprisonment was oddly efficient...who needs bars when your captors own the property?

I stood there, forehead pressed against the chilly window, watching the rain darken the impeccably manicured lawns outside. The Sinclair estate was stunning, which was honestly the most infuriating thing about it.

Everything looked perfect, the gardens trimmed just right, hedges shaped into fancy designs, stone paths scrubbed clean every single morning.

The fountain in the courtyard cost more than what some people might pay for a house, and the mansion’s tall windows made it resemble a grand European palace. From the outside, it looked like a dream home.

Inside, it might as well have been a glorified prison yard.

My room was huge. I had a king-sized bed, an antique writing desk, a private bathroom, an expensive wardrobe, a fireplace that hardly ever saw use, and enough furniture to furnish a small apartment.

What I didn’t have was freedom. Apparently, that was deemed an unnecessary luxury.

Turning from the window, I looked around. The heavy curtains were drawn halfway, allowing a feeble wash of gray afternoon light to seep in. Everything was expensive, polished, yet completely lacking warmth.

The dark wooden furniture had belonged to someone in my father’s family, and the paintings on the walls showed faces I’d never met and had no interest in knowing. Even the rug under my feet seemed to have its own opinions about me.

I crouched down near the bed, where I discovered a small stack of travel books: Paris, Rome, Kyoto, Cairo, New York, Cape Town. Places I’d spent years daydreaming about visiting.

I pulled one out, running my thumb over its worn cover. Collecting these books had become a sort of habit, a way to escape to places I realistically had no chance of seeing. It was cheaper than actual travel. A cruel joke that life had pulled on me.

I had majored in History because I loved the idea of old places, cultures, and civilizations, and the thought that the world was much larger than the few streets I’d been allowed to walk. My father called my degree useless. My stepmother laughed when I told her I wanted to travel.

My half-sister sweetly asked who would ever marry an omega with a useless degree and no proper family name. That was two years ago, and I still remembered her smile. She’d always been good at smiling while hurting people.

I tucked the book back beneath the bed and noticed something else peeking out, a map I’d drawn myself, a world map that had been folded and unfolded so many times that it felt soft along the creases.

I stood and moved to the wardrobe, where I spotted a suitcase hidden behind a row of winter coats. It was half-packed, and it had been that way for almost three years.

Every time I thought I might finally leave, something would happen, a family argument, a financial issue, my father taking my bank card, yet another punishment, another reminder that I had nowhere to go.

I had never been allowed to earn my own money, which was by design. My father called it protection; I called it making sure I couldn’t escape.

Being an omega in my family came with a long list of expectations I never agreed to. Be obedient. Look presentable. Don’t embarrass the family. Don’t work unless your future husband gives the go-ahead. Don’t date. Don’t travel alone. Don’t question your father. And eventually, marry a wealthy alpha...preferably one who didn’t mind that I was male.

That last requirement was particularly humiliating.

My father didn’t view my omega status as neutral; to him, it was just another disappointment. I wasn’t the big bad alpha son he had wanted. I wasn’t the heir he had hoped for. I wasn’t even the omega he desired.

I was male, illegitimate, stubborn, and apparently had the awful habit of having opinions.

My stepmother never needed to say she hated me; her eyes did all the talking. Wealthy in her own right, she had married my father when his company was already doing well.

She came from a family that had money long before the Sinclairs did, so she never needed my father for financial security. She wanted the Sinclair name, and she certainly didn’t want the bastard child that came with it.

Then there was my half-sister, Blair. Born just three months after me, despite being my half-sister, which needed a surprisingly long explanation whenever someone asked.

She was the golden child...beautiful, delicate, and perfectly put together. She had my stepmother’s blue eyes and my father’s red hair, inheriting all the traits they deemed desirable while I ended up with the leftovers.

She was also an omega, an ideal omega, according to my father.

Sweet, graceful, elegant, obedient (when she wasn’t irritating me to death). She knew just how to lower her eyes when someone important entered a room and how to smile when she wanted something.

She could cry on cue. I couldn’t cry if my life depended on it, one of the many reasons she always came out on top.

I glanced at the locked door. Nearly a week of isolation. All because of one comment I made at dinner. Just one.

My father had been at the head of the table, grumbling about the advertising company’s struggles. Business had been in decline for months.

He had lost a lot of money, not all of it due to the company. My father had a fondness for gambling, and it seemed he enjoyed losing even more. Apparently, losing just made him more determined to win it back, a philosophy that was only good for losing even more.

That night, he announced that salaries would be slashed by twenty percent. Some employees had worked for him for over ten years. I’d known several of them since I was a kid. So, foolishly, I spoke up.

I remember setting my fork down. ”Wouldn’t it be easier to stop gambling? Rather than, you know... Making life more difficult for your employees?”

The table fell silent. I should have known better. My stepmother stared at me, while Blair looked down at her plate. My father slowly turned his head.

”Excuse me?”

I already regretted speaking up, but for some reason, my survival instincts had taken a vocation.

”I just meant that if the company is struggling, maybe cutting salaries shouldn’t be the first solution.”

His jaw tightened. I should have stopped right there. Instead, I added, ”Especially when you’re still spending money at the casino.”

My stepmother laughed, and not in a kind way. It was the kind of laugh someone does when they’re delighted to see another person walking into trouble.

My father stood up, and I remember the chair scraping loudly against the floor.

”How dare you speak to me like that?!”

I looked right at him. ”You asked.”

”I did not ask for your opinion.”

”That has never stopped me before.”

That’s when I realized I’d crossed a line. My father called me ungrateful, then useless, selfish, and a disgrace.

He reminded me that I lived under his roof. He reminded me that he was paid for my education. He reminded me of my status as an omega, as if those three points somehow made sense in the same argument.

Blair had stood silently next to my stepmother throughout this whole exchange. She hadn’t said a word, didn’t need to. She just smiled.

And that’s how I ended up here. Locked in my room. Again.

I’d been beaten before...more than once and as terrible as that sounds, I’d almost preferred it.

At least being hit came to an end eventually. Being locked in a room gave me way too much time to think about how fucked my life was...