Hunter (7 page)

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.

Everyone held a stunned silence. Armo, Matias, Angelo, even Gaige... no one moved. I don't even think they breathed as they took in what Darien was telling them.

But me? I wasn't fazed. In fact, I looked up at met Darien's eyes as he set his glass back down on the table. I knew these stories. I remembered them clearly, because I played them over and over in my head as we drove across the country. Even after we were settled, I would think of the boy with the steel knuckles, as I teased him, who took every blow and kick and hit that was meant for me.

“Once, when he was fourteen, and Adriana was twelve, another rival boy tried to lure her to where associates were waiting to kidnap her for ransom.” Darien cracked his knuckles, then his lips tugged to one side as he dragged his gaze from me to Armo. “Carlo Rosso broke his arm in three moves and left him lying on the street, bleeding and crying, while he ran with Adriana. Then the week before we left New York, I took him on a hunt, and he shot a moving stag between the eyes. So is he dangerous?” He laughed now, and I wanted to, but all I felt was a dull ache. Darien killed his laugh as quickly as he'd started it, and the room went cold. “Yes. Carlo Rosso is one of the most dangerous young men I've ever met, but he's loyal to a fault. If he wants to protect Adriana, I have no doubt he would kill an army of twenty men with his bare hands.”

“But how do we know where his loyalty lies?” Gaige asked. His fists were clenched tightly at his sides, and I didn't dare look at him.

I was too scared he'd see the sadness I felt. Because hearing those things about Hunter? They'd scare anyone else. They'd disgust them. I knew different, though. Darien was right. He was protecting me, every single time.

I'd always been a target as a child. That was the plight of the
mafioso principessa.
I was destined to be hot property for as long as I lived, but Hunter was my own personal bodyguard. I can barely remember a time that he wasn't by my side when I left the stronghold of the Romano family.

Gaige walked forward and dropped into a chair. The slam of his fist on the table drew me out of my own head, and I sucked my lower lip into my mouth. “We don't know where his loyalty lies,” he snapped. “If it's with Adriana, then fucking perfect, she's got herself a bodyguard. If not, she's got herself a target on her goddamn back.”

“Out.” Armo said the word so sharply that he left no doubt as to its meaning... its demand. “Gaige. Out. You cannot participate in this conversation unless you are calm.”

Gaige clenched his jaw, but he didn't argue. He got up and slammed his chair away from him, making it fall to the floor, and stormed around the table. His hand brushed my shoulder as he passed me and went out of the dining room. The door closed with a finality that sung of his frustration.

“I apologize for his demeanor.” Armo looked directly at me with his words. “He struggles to see past his feelings for you sometimes.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. I honestly had no idea how to respond to that. When it became clear I wasn't going to speak, the men all but shut me out as they contemplated Hunter's loyalty.

I couldn't contribute an answer, because I didn't know myself. I wanted... God. I so badly wanted to believe that he was loyal to me, because he was one of the few people in the family who knew the truth about the Romano bloodline. I wanted to believe that deep inside the monster my father had created, a little piece of
my
Hunter hung on.

I wanted to believe that the reason he didn't shoot yesterday was because he truly cared about me, not because he was shocked I knew who he was just by his eyes.

That really was his first mistake, of course. Not many people had silver eyes. Especially not ones like his. His eyes were like diamonds, set in the flawless roughness of his face.

I hoped his heart was the same; a diamond in the rough of his existence. I wasn't much of a prayer, but I prayed then that it wasn't a misplaced hope.

I didn't know if
my
heart could take it if he truly was an assassin right down to the depths of his soul.

“Excuse me,” I said when there was a quiet moment in the conversation. “I'm gonna find Gaige.”

Darien nodded at me with a slight smile, and I got up and left the dining room. The constantly questions and contemplating was driving me crazy. I needed to get out of there, and finding Gaige seemed like the best thing to do.

I searched the house downstairs but couldn't find him. I noticed the back door was ajar, so I reasoned he'd probably headed out into the yard. I walked outside, barefoot, and stepped off the path onto the grass. The bright green blades tickled between my toes as I made my way through the yard toward the pool. I knew exactly where I'd find him, and I was right.

He was sitting on the side of the pool, his pants rolled up over his knees and his feet in the water. I grabbed the bottom of my dress and sat next to him, dipping my legs into the water. I kicked them slowly, whereas Gaige sat completely still, watching the ripples in the pool.

“Wanna talk?” I asked him, my eyes following the reflection of the sun on the moving water.

“What is there to talk about? Papa made it perfectly clear that my opinion isn't welcomed.”

“I care about your opinion.” I nudged him with my elbow and turned my face toward him. The sun glanced off of his strong features, casting shadows across his face. “And as much as I respect your father, the outcome of the discussion is ultimately my choice.”

“Must be nice to be queen,” Gaige muttered, getting up.

I stared at him, my mouth dropping open. “What the hell is your problem?”

“Gee, I don't know, Addy. Why don't I think about it and call you later just so you can ignore my calls?” He took several steps away from me.

I got up and followed him. “Why don't you tell me how you really feel, Gaige? Stop acting like a damn five year old who isn't getting his own way. This isn't a game!”