Hunter (6 page)

Yes, and yes. I did, and I would've.

No question.

“You're still here.”

I turned my head toward the doorway. Adriana was leaning against it, her fingers wrapped around the frame.

“Why are you still here? Darien will kill you if he comes back and you're here. The gun won't stop him. He'd probably use it.”

I shrugged a shoulder. “I'd deserve anything he did to me.”

“Yet there's no apology for almost trying to kill me.”

“Do you want an apology?”

“Not really. You were just trying to do your job. Shame you're pretty shit at it.” Now it was her turn to shrug.

I cracked a smirk. “Yeah. I'm awful. That's why my hands look like they went ten rounds with a wood-chipper.”

“You sound proud of that.”

“Not really, but I've got fuck all else to be proud of, Addy.”

“Adriana,” she repeated. “You don't get to call me Addy.” Her phone rang in her hand as she finished speaking, and she glanced at the screen. “I have to take this. If you've got any brain cells, you'll be gone when I get back.” She swiped her finger across the screen and lifted the phone to her ear. “Now what, Pontarelli?” she answered, leaving the room.

My jaw tightened.
Pontarelli.
Angelo or Gaige? That was what I wanted to know, although I had no damn right to. It was none of my business what kind of relationship she had with the Pontarelli family, although it did confirm what Enzio thought.

They'd been protecting her and Alexandria.

He could keep thinking it. I had no plans to confirm it and put her in further danger.

She was lucky he sent me to kill her.

Still, though... Angelo and Gaige. I hated fucking both of them. Angelo had a chip on his shoulder the size of North America, and Gaige barely gave a fuck about the family business because he had no responsibility.

Fuck, I sounded bitter even to myself.

Mostly because one of those
pezzo di merdas
had known her and had her for the last ten years, when I hadn't. When I couldn't even fucking
try.

A door opened and closed from somewhere in the house, and I dropped my head forward into my hands again. Adriana was right. I needed to leave and think about what to do. I needed to leave and stop feeling so fucking much for her when she clearly couldn't stand to be around me.

“What the fuck do you think you're doing in my house?”

My head snapped up at the sound of Darien's voice. I guessed it was too late to leave now.

He didn't give me a chance to respond. He grabbed the collar of my shirt and pulled me to my feet and spun me. My back slammed into the wall so harshly the collision almost winded me, and I took a big, deep breath to try and counteract the movement.

Darien's hand moved from my collar and closed around my throat. “What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doing. Here?”

I couldn't respond because he tightened his grasp on me.

“Oh for the love of God, Dar, put him down.” Adriana strolled back into the room and perched on the arm of the sofa.

Darien turned around to look at her, easing his grip on me slightly. “You let him in?”

“Not so much 'let' him. He found his way in. Kinda like Rossi does when he wants food.”

Rossi?

He slid his gaze back to me, his dark eyes narrowing into slits. “And there's a gun on my motherfucking sofa, why?”

“He was going to kill me, but decided not to.”

“Thanks,” I rasped through Darien's grip.

“You're welcome.” She grinned. “Darien, let him go. He can't breathe.”

He paused for a moment, still staring at me. “That isn't a convincing reason to let the little bastard go.”

“Darien... I'm alive. Let him go. Don't make me pull the princess card.”

Oh, I got it. She was a princess when she fucking wanted to be.

Darien released me and shoved me toward the chair he just dragged me from. “Sit the fuck down. Now.”

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.

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.