Hunter

by Blaire Drake

  I rubbed my throat and took a seat.

  “How did you find us?”

  “I didn't.” I stretched my neck from side to side. Jesus. Being pinned by your neck was fucking uncomfortable. “Enzio sent me.”

  “He knows where I am?” Adriana sitted up. “Exactly where I am? And you didn't fucking mention this earlier?”

  “Earlier?” Darien bellowed. “How long has he been here?”

  “Not important.” Adriana waved him off. “Hunter?”

  “Someone knows exactly where you are. I doubt Enzio will have bothered to find out the finer details of your location. All he cares about is that you die.” Inwardly, I winced at my own words. I could have put that a little better.

  “Wow, rip that shit off like a Band-Aid why don't you?” She snorted. “Are you the only person who knows where I am?”

  “Apart from the informant, yes, I think so. I came alone. Flew into Nevada and drove here.”

  “Are you always alone when you do a job?”

  “No. I regularly bring an audience to watch me shoot someone between the eyes.”

  Darien rubbed his fingers across his forehead. “It's been ten damn years and you two haven't changed,” he muttered. I stared at him, and noticed Adriana doing the exact same thing. “Is she in immediate danger?”

  “Not immediate,” I hedged. “But she's not exactly immediately safe, either.”

  His lips pursed.

  Honesty was always the best policy, even if it wasn't what he wanted to hear. I wasn't going to lie about her safety.

  Darien pulled his phone from his pants pocket and looked at Adriana. “I'm calling Armo and getting him to sort his fucking shit out. He's got enough bitches he can order to keep an eye on you. And you,” he said, turning to me. “I want your ass the fuck outta my house by the time I'm done with this call. You got that, Carlo?”

  Of course he called me Carlo. I clenched my jaw, but I wasn't about to argue with the man. It wouldn't do any good. He'd probably give me a black eye for the effort and throw me out the window.

  The upstairs window.

  “Got it, Darien,” I answered.

  He nodded in acknowledgment and left the room. The atmosphere instantly warmed with his absence, although it was still tense between me and Adriana.

  “You heard him,” she said, standing up. She picked up the gun, the balaclava, and my gloves, and held them out to me. “You need to go.”

  I stood and grabbed my coat. I slid my arms into it and shrugged it over my shoulders, then took then gun from her hands. The silencer was still safely encased in the inside pocket of my coat. I could feel it as I secured the gun in the other one. Was I ever going to kill her?

  “Here.” She shoved the mask and gloves at my chest. She let them go too quickly, and they fell to the floor between us.

  I wrapped my hands around her wrist and tugged her against me. Her bright blue eyes glared up at me, raging with anger and contempt. The look filled me with a familiar feeling. Hatred. Disgust. Loathing. “Give me your phone.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I'm not fucking asking you, Adriana. Give me your goddamn phone.” I held my other hand out, palm up, and waited.

  Reluctantly, she slammed it onto my palm.

  “Unlock it.” I turned it so the screen faced her.

  She tapped in the pass code. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  I dialed my number and hit 'call.' My phone buzzed in my pocket, so I ended the call and handed her phone back to her. “Now you have my number. If you need me, or you think you're in danger, call me.”

  She glanced down at the screen before meeting my eyes. The glimmer in them was even more scathing than a moment ago. “Call you? Not likely, Hunter. I don't ever want to see your face again.”

  I dipped my head down to hers. “You've changed your tune. You weren't complaining when your tongue was down my throat, bella.”

  She wrenched her wrist from my grip and swung. Her hand connected with my cheek with a slap that rang out through the room. “A fanabla, testa di cazzo.” She spat the words at me, then turned, storming out of the room.

  Go to hell, dickhead.

  My lips twitched despite the sting that was radiating through my cheek.

  Fuck, it was wrong, but I liked it.

  I felt fucking alive.

  Chapter Five – Adriana

  I rolled over for the fiftieth time in what felt like five minutes, and my eyes found my phone on the night stand. I reached my arm out of the covers and picked it up, typed in the passcode, and brought up the call log.

  His number glared at me.

  It wasn't the first time, either. It didn't matter much that it was four in the morning. I'd practically memorized the order of the digits by now.

  Why did he have to leave me his number?

  I wasn't lying when I told him I never wanted to see him again. There wasn't a single cell in my body that regretted slapping his smug ass face after what he said to me, even if all of the anger I put into the smack wasn't directed at him. A huge part of it was at myself.

  Why did I let him kiss me? I should have pushed him away straight away. I shouldn't have grabbed his shirt like he was a rubber dingy and I was floating out to sea. I sure as hell shouldn't have drowned in the taste of rich whiskey on his tongue.

  That wasn't how our first real kiss was supposed to be. It was supposed to be sweet and gentle, maybe on a beach somewhere with the sun setting and the gentle sea breeze flitting through my hair. It was supposed to be playful and unexpected in the middle of a fight. At prom. On my birthday. At Christmas. On his birthday.

  Yet at the same time, it was everything it was supposed to be. It was real and raw and consuming. I felt it everywhere but nowhere and I got completely lost in the rhythmic moves of his lips and mine.

  Was that why I couldn't sleep? Because I couldn't scrape the kiss, of all things, out of my head?

  No.

  It was the gun, mostly, but the kiss was definitely up there. Either way, it was all Hunter. He was the sole cause of this insomnia.

  I couldn't believe he was here in Los Angeles. I couldn't believe he was in California or anywhere near me. A member of the Romano family in Pontarelli territory would never end well. The families worked together in the mafioso because it was beneficial to everyone, but that didn't mean Armo would take kindly to my father sending one of his men into his city, let alone his assassin.

  Darien assured me that he hadn't told them who was here or who he was in the family, but I didn't know if he was telling me the truth or not. He had no reason to lie to me, but I couldn't help but wonder if he was worried I still loved Hunter and didn't want me to worry about him getting hurt.

  If he thought that, he was wrong.

  Thirteen year old Adriana loved fifteen year old Hunter.

  Twenty-three year old Adriana had absolutely no idea who twenty-five year old Hunter was.

  He may as well have been a total stranger plucked from nowhere and sent to bring me to my demise.

  I wished he was, but that was ridiculous. If my pezza di merda father wanted me dead, he was going to send the person I cared about the most to do it. I'd bet anything he was sitting in his office in the Hamptons residence, his feet on his desk as he held a lit cigar between his teeth. The fact he'd sent Hunter proved to me that the heartless bastard hadn't changed a single bit.

  It made me angry.

  I was angry that he thought to prolong the silent war Mamma and I had waged for the last decade, the one I now stood all but alone in. My father was no fool—stupid on occasion—but no fool. He sent Hunter for a reason.

  It was a test. To see if he really was the assassin he'd been raised to be. I had no doubts that he was. He admitted it himself, the mistake was when I spoke. When I said his name. If I hadn't, I'd have a bullet lodged in the middle of my brain right now.

  The boy I'd once loved was now a monster. Nothing more than a cold-blooded killer.

  Or was he?


  I was alive. I was breathing and moving and speaking. I was wholly alive, the only reminder of his assassination attempt a fleeting memory of the cold barrel against my skin.

  No silencer.

  He either wanted my death to be heard or he deliberately didn't put it on. Someone as meticulous and careful a murderer as he was wouldn't forget a silencer. Even I knew it was a necessary item for a quick and easy kill.

  I still couldn't believe he'd almost done it. He'd almost pulled the trigger on me. I didn't know how I felt. Maybe I was numb? I was shocked. At least, I think I was shocked. I had no idea how to explain the heaviness that had settled in my heart. I knew he wasn't my Hunter, but I wanted him to be.

  Even if, at the very core, he did belong to me. But that was only because of blood, because the Romano blood wasn't my father's. It was Mamma's, which meant it was mine, and my father's only claim to being the Don was if we were dead.

  I couldn't begin to imagine how much that pissed him off, but I was enjoying the thought of it.

  My thumb hovered over Hunter's number on the log. I didn't want to see him again. It wasn't a lie, but that didn't stop my heart from stuttering every time I glanced at the digits on the screen. I wanted to tap the number, just once, to hear his voice. To hear the deep, guttural tones of his voice that had swept across my skin earlier.

  I put the phone face down and slid it beneath my pillow. I had to be delirious from a lack of sleep. There was no other explanation to the way I was feeling. When it came down to it, the past didn't matter. It rarely mattered when the present was so dangerous.

  Would Hunter protect me?

  I don't know. The thought bolted through my mind, and I stared into the darkness of my bedroom as I realized the truth in it. I didn't know if he would protect me if it came down to it.

  Me or him? My life, or his?

  What did he value more?

  I don't know that either.

  I sighed. That was the problem with being mafioso. You couldn't always trust the people you were supposed so. It was a part we'd largely left behind when we moved here. We had minimal contact with the Pontarelli family until it was decided that I needed to go to school with Gaige for my protection, but even beyond my close friendship with him, there wasn't much to go on.

  Gaige. I sighed yet again. He'd called me three times after Darien had spoken with his father, but I'd ignored every single one before texting him that I didn't want to talk. It wasn't a lie. I didn't want to talk, but mostly because I didn't know what to say. I'd never told Gaige about Hunter and the relationship we'd had before I left New York.

  Back then, it hurt too much. I guessed it still did.

  I knew I'd have to speak with Gaige when the sun came up, but I had no idea what to say then, either. I couldn't exactly blurt out “My first love held a gun to my head,” could I? While it stood to reason that it would be an excellent conversation starter, I doubted there would be an actual conversation. More like Gaige tearing out of me his name and going to find him to hold his gun to Hunter's head.

  I knew mafia boys all too well. An assassin versus a prince: there'd be more bullets flying than you could count, and if either came out alive, then, well. That was a serious win.

  I rolled onto my side, turning away from where my phone was tucked under my pillow, and curled into a ball. I snuggled deeper under the covers, and Rossi pounced onto the bed with two flashes of white fur and bright eyes.

  He circled the space above my knees three times before dropping down into a ball and leaning against me. His body was warm and comforting, and I nudged him with my knees to bring him closer to my body. He obliged, but not without his cold, wet nose touching my hand beneath the covers. I pulled it out and scratched beneath his little white chin, and he rewarded my obedience with a low purr.

  Little shit.

  I smiled anyway. It was sad when the only person a girl could fully trust was her pussy.

  Then again... Pussies didn't lie or cheat on you as long as you kept them happy.

  I laughed silently at my own double-entendre thoughts. If my life weren't in danger, I'd say I needed a female friend my own age, and I needed her quickly.

  I looked down at Rossi and scratched his head. He purred again, and it sounded deafening in the silence of my room. Still, I closed my eyes, because it had the calming effect of white noise. Maybe that was what I needed—a monotonous sound to drown out the clusterfuck of thoughts whirring aimlessly around in my head.

  In fact, that sounded like exactly what I needed.

  It didn't take long for Rossi's continuous purring to lull me into a state of half-sleep. I was in the weird place between asleep and awake, where I was totally conscious of my surroundings, but too far gone to do anything about them unless I was physically pulled from it.

  It was the oddest feeling. It didn't do a thing to shut off my subconscious, either.

  No, it kept going and going and going until I could barely breathe through the continuous loop of thought after thought after thought. The hint of panic rose in my chest, but I felt paralyzed in my half-asleep state, and there was nothing I could do to combat it. I couldn't stop the overwhelming feeling that everything had changed in the blink of an eye as it swept through me like a tidal wave, suffocating and intense.

  Rossi pawed at my face. His claws weren't out, but the gentle scratch from their edges on my jaw snapped my eyes open. His bright eyes blazed in the darkness, staring down at me.

  “I'm okay,” I whispered to him, scratching under his neck. “I'm okay, Rossi.”

  He watched me for a moment longer before turning his back to me and curling back up to sleep.

  Typical cat.

  ***

  “We can't trust him.” Armo was sitting at the dining room table, which had become a meeting room, of sorts. He'd been throwing me disdainful looks with his dark eyes for the last thirty minutes. He didn't want me here, but since the Los Angeles crime family was so far down the pecking order, technically, I outranked him.

  He fucking hated it.

  I didn't care, because he wasn't my favorite person. And I swore to God, if he looked at me like I was a piece of shit again, I was going to remind that silver-haired bastardo who I was.

  “Papa, he didn't kill her,” Angelo pointed out, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the table.

  Angelo, like Gaige, had dark hair and strong features, but he was always more put together. He was twenty-seven, three years older than his brother, and he'd taken to the life of crime far easier than he had. It was a burden to Gaige, and while I didn't think for a second Angelo particularly liked keeping the streets of Los Angeles in cocaine and meth, he sure as hell liked the payout he got at the end of it.

  He liked the Colombian girls the cartels sent with the drugs, too.

  “He tried,” Matias Rodriguez, Armo's consigliere, argued. The only Mexican in the made men of the Pontarelli family, he kept things running smoothly with the cartels. Mostly because Armo couldn't speak Spanish to save his life, and was too ignorant to learn it.

  “But he didn't.” Angelo stared at Matias. He wasn't going to let that point go, and I didn't know if I was glad for it or not.

  I was only here to make sure they didn't make any stupid decisions. In my experience, when left alone, men tended to fuck decisions up.

  “He had the perfect chance,” Angelo continued, sitting back and holding his palms up. “He was alone and had the gun to her head. We've all pulled triggers. We know how quickly they go and how easy it is to end someone's life. All of us in this room with the exception of the lady herself has killed someone.”

  Gaige's face darkened in the corner—if it were possible. He was already in the foulest mood, and he still had no idea who Hunter was to me. Him being reminded of the man his father forced him to kill for stealing money wasn't going to improve his mood.

  “And if it came down to it,” Armo spoke before Gaige could, “I doubt the lady would kill someone.” He slid his eyes
to me. “Isn't that right, princess?”

  I held his dark gaze without blinking or wavering. “Keep talking and you'll find out.”

  He sneered. “Your life or theirs. Would you shoot?”

  “Yes.” It was a half lie, I supposed. If I had to, I would. And it also depended on the person.

  This world wasn't as black and white as people thought.

  Angelo shook his head. “Papa, we don't know if we can trust Carlo Rosso, but that doesn't mean we can't.”

  “Guilty until proven innocent,” Armo snapped at his son. “This isn't a fuckin' democracy, figlio. It's a motherfuckin' dictatorship.”

  And I own your ass. Ner-ner.

  “Darien?” Matias asked, turning to him. “You've been quiet, amigo. What is your thought?”

  Darien clapped his hands together and leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “I trained the boy. I know he could walk in here right now and put a bullet between all of our eyes before the last man standing has a chance to pull a gun on him.”

  His words silenced the room for a moment.

  “But I also know that beneath his hardened exterior, he does have a heart.” He glanced at me, briefly, and I looked down at my hands clasped in my lap. “I think he's buried it to be the person he's expected to be. Enzio Romano is a ruthless man, and he expects his family to be the same. It doesn't matter if you're a damn capo or merely an associate. He takes nothing less than unforgiving cruelty in all manners of his life.”

  No shit. That's why I grew up in Calabasas, surrounded by rich, plastic, air-headed fucks.

  “Enzio Romano is an asshole,” Gaige bit out.

  “And he's a dangerous one,” Armo replied before Gaige could continue. “He is not a man for you to mess with, figlio. He would snap you in two before you could finish your sentence, but we are not discussing Enzio Romano. We are discussing Carlo Rosso, and I want to know how dangerous the assassino is before we make any choices. Darien?” He turned his attention back to Darien.

  He looked disinterested, probably because he'd already told him how dangerous he is. “When Carlo was ten, he was hunting better than associates twice his age. When he was twelve, I watched him beat a sixteen year old boy from a rival family into tomato puree because he tried to take Adriana. Carlo had barely touched puberty, and that boy should have ripped him to pieces, but he couldn't.” Darien reached forward and sipped his water.