by M. S. Parker
His Obsession
The Hunter Brothers Book 1
M. S. Parker
Belmonte Publishing, LLC
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 Belmonte Publishing LLC
Published by Belmonte Publishing LLC
Contents
Reading Order
Prologue
1. Jax
2. Syll
3. Jax
4. Syll
5. Jax
6. Syll
7. Jax
8. Syll
9. Jax
10. Syll
11. Jax
12. Syll
13. Jax
14. Syll
15. Jax
16. Syll
17. Jax
18. Syll
19. Jax
20. Syll
21. Jax
22. Syll
23. Jax
24. Syll
25. Jax
26. Syll
27. Jax
28. Syll
29. Jax
30. Syll
31. Jax
32. Syll
33. Jax
34. Jax
35. Syll
His Control – Preview
Also by M. S. Parker
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Reading Order
Thank you so much for reading His Obsession, the first book in the Hunter Brothers series. All books in the series can be read stand-alone, but if you’d like to read the complete series, I recommend reading them in this order:
1. His Obsession
2. His Control (March 28)
3. His Hunger (April 25)
4. His Secret (May 23)
Prologue
Manfred
Nothing could compare to a glass of Highland Park scotch after a long day at work. In fact, the only thing that could’ve made it better would have been if Olive hadn’t been visiting her sister in Greece. I knew she missed Diana, but dammit, I missed my wife.
I clipped the end of my cigar and stuck it in my mouth. At least I didn’t have to hear her lecturing me about smoking in the house, I thought as I lit it. I rarely indulged, but now seemed like as good a time as any. I’d closed my deal with McOmber Shipping at half the original asking price. If my crew did as good a job with this company as they had with the last, they’d be getting an even bigger beginning-of-the-year bonus than usual.
I was just getting settled in front of the fireplace, ready to crack open the latest Grisham novel, when the doorbell sounded. I hated the damn thing, but the house was too big to hear anyone knock unless we were right there. Olive insisted the chimes made her smile, but I didn’t want to smile when I opened my front door. I wanted to know who the hell was showing up without calling first. Not that I would’ve ever told Olive that. I’d do whatever was necessary to keep her happy, so if the damn chimes made her happy, then I wouldn’t complain about them.
The doorbell went off again, and I pushed myself out of my chair. If it was some Girl Scout selling cookies, then I’d buy a box of thin mints and send her on her way, but anyone else was going to get an earful.
Except when I opened the door, it wasn’t a person standing on the other side. It was two people. Two police officers. Uniformed ones. With matching grim expressions on their faces. But these weren’t the sort of grim expressions that came with men who’d been sent to ask for money for a policemen’s fund. These made my entire body go cold.
“Mr. Hunter,” one of them spoke, shifting from one foot to the other like whatever it was he had to say made it impossible for him to stand still. “Mr. Hunter, there’s been an accident.”
“Olive?” I could barely breathe. “My wife? Is she…?”
“Not your wife, Mr. Hunter.” The other officer took over. He met my eyes for a moment before looking away. “I’m afraid it’s your son.”
Chester.
Blood rushed in my ears.
“Your son, your daughter-in-law, and their children were in a car accident tonight. We’re here to take you to the hospital.” I took a step forward, but the cop who had been speaking held up his hand. “Sir, you’ll want a coat. It’s cold out.”
I nodded and turned back inside. I barely registered anything I was doing. All I could think about was my boy and his family. It had to be bad for cops to come here to get me, but if they were all dead, it wouldn’t have been two uniforms. I was friends with the commissioner and the mayor. I knew the governor. If my family was dead, surely one of them would’ve come instead.
“When did…how long…” I couldn’t quite form a full question even though I had a thousand of them running through my head.
“We were sent out almost immediately after the first responders arrived at the scene.” The officer who’d been doing most of the talking opened the back door of their car, so I could get in. “One of them recognized your son’s name and called into the station. We were the closest to your place.”
“Does that mean you don’t know much about what happened?” I wasn’t sure if I was hoping that they didn’t know any details, so I could imagine things weren’t actually bad enough for me to need a police escort to the hospital, or if it’d be better to know so I couldn’t imagine worse things.
“It was bad,” the first man said. “That’s all we know right now. They’ll know more at the hospital.”
Something about the way he said it told me he was lying, and I decided that knowing wasn’t as bad as imagining. “Tell me.”
A moment of silence passed as the two men looked at each other, and my insides knotted.
“Your daughter-in-law and granddaughter were DOA.”
While I appreciated him not sugarcoating things, it didn’t make the blow hurt any less. Abigail, gone. She and Chester had been in love from the moment they first met. And now she was gone. And Aimee.
I couldn’t bear it. My only granddaughter. Four years old.
All that life, all that potential. Gone.
My chest was so tight I could barely breathe.
“Your son is on his way to the hospital,” the officer continued. “And so’s your grandson, but I don’t know details about them.”
Relief rushed through me, followed by guilt, and then both nearly choked me. I was struggling to process it when what he said registered.
“Grandson?” I leaned forward, clenching my hands. “What about the other boys?”
“What other boys, Mr. Hunter?” the quieter cop asked.
“I have four grandsons.” Even as I said the words, I prayed they were still true.
“There were only two kids in the car,” the other guy picked it up again.
“Where are the other kids?” My lips felt numb. Everything felt numb.
“We’ll find them,” he promised. “I’ll radio it in right now.”
I nodded. Chester would need to know that his kids…his boys were safe. When I got to the hospital, that’s what I would tell him first. That the boys were safe. I wouldn’t tell him about his daughter until I knew he’d make it.
He had to make it.
I closed my eyes. How was I going to tell Olive that Abigail and Aimee were dead? I couldn’t even think about it.
“What happened?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.
“Black ice.”
If I still had my eyes closed, I wouldn’t have seen the way the
officer in the passenger’s seat looked over at the driver. Like there was something about that answer he wasn’t comfortable with. Right now, I would’ve jumped at anything that meant I didn’t have to think about the overseas call I needed to make tonight.
“You don’t agree?”
He looked back at me, then to his partner, then back to me. “I don’t know, Mr. Hunter. It’s possible that the car hit a patch of ice.” He paused before adding, “But something about it doesn’t sit right with me. I think there’s something else going on.”
Something else? What did he mean by that?
I didn’t get a chance to ask since we were pulling into the hospital’s parking lot, but somehow, I knew this conversation would come back to me many times in the weeks and months that followed.
One
Jax
Twenty-Four Years Later…
Mid-January in New York City was fucking cold. I was from Boston, so it wasn’t like I wasn’t used to real winters, but there was something about New York City that always made me feel twice as cold.
“Damn!” The man following me out of the building apparently agreed with me.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Justin McManus blowing on his hands like he’d been walking outside for a while rather than having just left the comfortably warm offices that Hunter Enterprises held here in the Big Apple. That wasn’t surprising since McManus was a Jacksonville native, and living up north for a decade hadn’t made a difference.
“I’m going for a drink,” he said as he stepped up to the curb and held up a hand to hail a cab. “Would you like to join me?”
I had a plane to catch in the morning, but my flight wasn’t insanely early, and I didn’t have a reason to head back to my hotel room right away. Normally, I wouldn’t have even gotten a room since the company plane was generally available whenever I needed it. Unfortunately, there’d been some sort of mechanical issue with the plane, which meant I was subject to the whims of airport scheduling for this trip.
I agreed amiably and followed Justin into a taxi, letting him fill the silence as he usually did. We weren’t close, and I wasn’t even sure I could classify him as a friend, but of all the board members, he was the closest one to my age – thirty-seven to my thirty-two – and the only other non-native New Yorker, which pretty much made the two of us outsiders. And we didn’t even attempt to discuss sports.
I was a Celtics and Red Sox fan, so I knew better than to even ask where others’ loyalties lay.
“How’s your grandfather?”
Justin’s question caught my attention, drawing my attention back to him. “He’s good,” I said. “I’ll let him know you asked about him.”
Justin gave me one of his typical charming smiles. “I’ve only met him once. I doubt he’ll remember me, but he sure made an impression on me.”
“He remembers you,” I assured him. “He knows the name of every executive at Hunter Enterprises and most of the other employees too. I may handle most of the day-to-day business anymore, but he’s still as sharp as ever.”
“I’ll bet it was hell getting him to retire.”
I laughed and shook my head. “I’ll catch hell if I ever use that word in his presence. Eighty-one years old, and if he runs out of paperwork to look over, he comes into the office and starts re-arranging the lobby.”
“Your brothers aren’t helping?”
The smile dropped from my face, and he must’ve realized that he stepped in something because he immediately started back-peddling.
“I mean, I heard that you had three brothers, but I’ve never seen them at any of the business functions.”
“It’s all right.” I managed to give him a tight smile. It wasn’t his fault that my brothers had all cut and run as soon as they were able. “They aren’t involved in the family business.”
I could see Justin trying to figure out the best way to respond, mentally debating if he should change the subject or acknowledge what I said. Fortunately, we pulled up to the bar just then, and it was easy to wait until we were inside to turn the conversation to alcohol.
Fortunately, alcohol was exactly what I needed right now.
While I wasn’t unaccustomed to a drink of good scotch after a hard day of work, I rarely drank enough to have anything more than a relaxing effect. Tonight, I’d indulged a bit more than usual, and I felt better than relaxed. I was…buzzed.
Even though it was closing in on ten o’clock, and logic told me that the temperature had dropped, the air felt almost warm as I stepped outside. Well, not warm, but invigorating rather than bracing. So much so that I decided to take a walk before heading to my hotel. There wasn’t anything to do there but sleep anyway.
I gave Justin a farewell nod and then started down the sidewalk without any real idea of where I was going. I had a private gym back home, so I was in great shape, but I didn’t really do much regular walking. In Boston, I had a car service I regularly used, and a car of my own for the rare occasions I felt like driving. Sometimes, when I was at work and wanted to go out for lunch, I’d walk, but I never did it for the sheer enjoyment of walking.
It seemed like I never did much of anything for sheer enjoyment anymore.
I frowned, not liking the maudlin directions my thoughts were taking me, but unable to stop them. Justin had planted the seed with his innocuous questions about my grandfather and my brothers, and now that I was out of the noise of the bar, I couldn’t quite keep the thoughts back.
I’d moved into the dorms when I was at Harvard, then gotten a small apartment of my own, but when I started thinking about upgrading, I decided to give in to the inevitable and had officially bought the family home from Grandfather a few years ago when it became clear that he’d never agree to downsize. He had an entire floor to himself, and it was almost like living on my own.
Except I wasn’t on my own. I was back under my grandfather’s roof, and by my own choice this time. Sometimes, I could still feel it, that sense of anger and grief so sharp that it was like my eight-year-old self had never truly left me. I hadn’t shown it back then, and I didn’t show it now, but on nights when I couldn’t sleep, I’d feel that little kid inside me wanting to scream and rage at the unfairness of it all.
The worst part had been the people who acted like, because my brothers and I had a rich grandfather to take us in, the pain of losing both of our parents and our sister had somehow been less.
I shoved my hands into my coat pockets and hunched against a sudden gust of wind.
Even though Grandfather and I lived in the same house, I rarely saw him. The times he came into the office didn’t even change that much. We communicated largely via email, with the occasional phone call, and that wasn’t much different than how he did things while I was growing up.
I definitely got my work ethic from him.
And I wasn’t the only one.
As many issues as I had with my brothers, they all worked hard. Cai was a doctor slash scientist working for the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. Slade lived in El Paso and worked as a DEA agent. Even Blake, who’d taken a less traditional route, made a good enough living selling his handcrafted products that he didn’t even need to touch his dividends from his share in the company.
At least that’s what I assumed they were all still doing. I hadn’t seen them in more than three years, and our contact since then had come in brief texts and emails. Even on Christmas, I’d sent each of them the same short message, and received back the sort of reply my texts deserved.
“Great way to kill a buzz,” I muttered to myself. It was time to get a taxi and go back to the hotel. If I stayed out here any longer, I was going to start thinking about why my brothers and I barely spoke anymore, and that was never a good path to take.
I started to raise my hand to flag down a cab when I saw her.
Long golden curls peeking out from under a hat. Average height and build, but something about the set of her jaw and the way she carried herself got my attention. I had
n’t come to New York with the intention of getting laid, but sex would definitely get my mind off things.
I dropped my hand and started after the blonde.
Two
Syll
“If you don’t put that cigarette out this instant, I’m going to make you eat it.”
As the asshole with the Marlboro light gave me a slow once-over, I could read on his face what he was thinking. Barely over five feet, with curves but no discernable muscle, I wasn’t exactly the most intimidating person in the room, but he was new here, so I could excuse him for underestimating me.
What I couldn’t excuse was him smoking in my bar.
“Why don’t you head over to the bar and bring me a drink?” He winked at me – actually fucking winked at me – and then added, “And I wouldn’t say no to your number.”
“Listen here, you little fucker!”
Gilly Snowe shouldn’t have been any more intimidating than me, but something about her tended to scare the shit out of people. The smoker was no exception.
His eyes went wide, and he immediately stubbed out his cigarette and threw up his hands in front of him. “It’s out! Chill!”
I could’ve told him that was one of the absolute worst things he could have said to Gilly, but then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of watching her grab the guy’s ear, yank him up out of his seat, and drag him over to the door.
