14. Hunter

FOURTEEN

HUNTER

I can’t stop staring at the bruises.

Winter only slipped from consciousness for a few seconds, but it was enough to scare the shit out of me.

After placing her in our bed, soaking wet and against her protests, I ran across the compound in a towel, screaming at the top of my lungs for help.

Ten guards and two handfuls of medical staff, including Dr. Whitney, came running toward me. Most of them were in their sleep clothes.

“Winter. My room,” was all I could get out, pointing them in the direction with a trembling gesture. Water dripped from my arms, making my trek back to the space where Winter lay dangerous.

I wanted to slip and fall and crack my skull on the expensive tile.

After Dr. Whitney thoroughly assessed her and determined her and the baby were safe, I collapsed on the hallway floor, right outside my door but not daring to enter.

That’s where Leo found me. He took a look at me and walked into my room, returning with a shirt and gym shorts.

I don’t remember putting them on.

When he asked what happened, I couldn’t say the words.

I couldn’t say that I hurt Winter.

I hurt Winter.

Hurt.

Winter.

I ran down the hallway and away from the room, retching alcohol and bile in the bushes once I landed in the courtyard.

“Hunter, are you okay, man?” Leo’s voice comes from behind me, standing on the cobblestones while I pant with my hands on my knees.

I shake my head, sucking in air but never getting enough.

I hurt Winter.

I gag again. When nothing comes up, I try to stand and manage to hobble over to the gazebo where Ella and I smoked and Leo watched.

Was that when I began to spiral? When did I crack? When did I become the person who hurts the woman I love?

I’m a broken man, I said to her. And now, I think I’m beyond repair.

I fall onto one of the wooden benches and bend over, lacing my fingers behind my head and staring at the knots in the floorboards.

“Wait here,” Leo says, and I feel his movements as he leaves.

Every emotion forms into a sharp current up and down my spine, shooting to spin in my stomach.

I hurt Winter.

One.

Breathe. Breathe. How does Winter do the breathing?

One-two-one.

I hurt Winter. I bruised her. I-I-I?—

One-two-three-two-one.

I repeat the mantra over and over, trying to bring myself down but warring with the part of me that believes that I should feel every bit of this discomfort. I need to suffer.

Will she ever forgive me? Should she ever forgive me?

“Here.” Leo shoves a cool water bottle in front of my face, forcing me to take it as he releases it from his fingers. When I don’t do anything with it, he says, “Drink it, Hunter.”

I comply, my movements stilted.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Leo says.

I take my time before looking at him.

He sits, completely casual, with his ankles and arms crossed.

It doesn’t matter that it’s midnight and the mosquitos must be eating him alive as they’re doing to me.

He’s there. Waiting. Patient.

Being a good friend.

“Why are you always there for me, Leo?”

He quirks his eyebrow. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Yes, but…” I clear my throat and take another sip. “You’ve gone beyond what a friend would do. You’ve done so much for me so that I didn’t have to face most of the horrible shit alone. But what I don’t get is why?”

Leo tilts his head to the side, analyzing me. With a big breath, he says, “I’m there for you because you’re my family, Hunter. And I love you like a brother.”

The words are gruff, as if he’s uncomfortable saying them.

I don’t reply, I just take time to stew in my thoughts.

“You’re worth being there for, Hunter. I know you don’t think that you are, but you matter to a lot of people, including me.”

When I stare at him for a long moment, Leo sighs and claps his hands once.

“Well, if this isn’t turning into a goddamn Hallmark Christmas movie,” he grumbles.

I release a puff of air, a breath of humor.

His face turns serious.

“I’ll ask you this and I need you to answer me clearly. Is Winter safe with you?”

His gaze is unwavering, and I feel the weight of his judgment in it.

“I…” I open my mouth to say the words that I’d never hurt Winter. That I love Winter and she’s as vital to me as oxygen is.

But I can’t say that. Because it’s not true—at least, the part that I would never hurt Winter.

Because I just fucking did.

“There’s no excuse for what I did, Leo. We were in the shower, and I got…rough.”

His look hardens even more.

“I took it too far,” I say, my voice a whisper.

He’s silent for a beat, but when I look at him again, he says, “She’s pregnant with your child.”

“I know.”

“You put a collar of bruises around her neck.”

I jolt. “I know.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know!” I snap, standing, and I walk over to the entrance of the gazebo, plunging my hands through my hair, gripping at the roots.

“She trusted me to do what I needed to do, and she’s suffering for it like she always suffers for me,” I say, my back to Leo.

“You need to stay away from her, Hunter,” he says, empathy tinging the hardness of his voice. I look to the floor and nod.

“Probably not forever. But you need space to figure your shit out, H, and quickly.”

I nod again.

“Come over to my room if you want to stay close but need a place to crash.”

I nod, and he walks away, so I let myself sit in silence.

Leo’s right, I do need to figure out my shit.

You need to actually face what was done to you.

I close my eyes and sink to the short step.

I was raped. I actually uttered those words to Winter. Words that I never allowed myself to think or face.

I should be able to sack up about this.

I should be able to?—

Nausea hits me again. I try to push the thought away, but it echoes again and again.

I was raped.

I was raped.

I was ? —

I press the heels of my palms to my eye sockets, trying to breathe through the panic that threatens to take over.

I was ? —

Just like pressure in a volcano, I unlock my jaw and roar into the night sky. My screams bring heat to my face and ice to the rest of my being. I feel numb; I feel electrified.

I am a body of contradictions as I scream, scream, scream.

Somewhere in the midst of my breakdown, I realize my knuckles are bleeding again and awareness of pain comes slowly.

I punched something.

One.

One-two-one.

One-two-three-two-one.

I try to breathe in and out like Winter taught me once.

Winter. Winter who is too good for me.

I hurt Winter.

For the second time tonight, hot, angry wetness covers my face. Tears.

I hurt Winter.

“God,” I swear out loud.

I am just who Benjamin Brigham raised me to be.

Misha, Amelia, Luna, Max, and I sit around the table in the war room. Leo’s off doing whatever he’s doing, and I’m glad that he’s absent. We shared a room last night, but I’m grateful that Misha offered me my own space on the other side of the compound.

One, it prevents me from having to deal with Leo’s iciness toward me.

Two, it prevents me from acting on the urge to go back to the room where Winter sleeps and taking her in my arms, begging her forgiveness.

My heart races at the vision—me on my knees for her, pleading with her not to leave me.

She’d give me a sweet smile with her delectable mouth, only to say, “No.”

Just as she should.

The adrenaline causes a sharp headache to form between my eyes.

“Let’s reverse engineer this, Hunter. Tell me what you know about Isla Cara—what places feel important—or even unimportant. We’ll all put what we have together, and maybe something will make sense.” Luna’s voice is uncharacteristically soft. She’s taken the lead on this meeting, which has gone on for three hours.

First, Amelia recounted all the places she knew on Isla Cara and other places outside the island that Father deemed important.

The hidden spaces in Brigham Estate.

The multiple vaults he held riches in.

The list of twenty-seven properties he owned and the dozens of others he held with partnerships.

None of them rise above his connection to Isla Cara.

I take a deep breath, prepared to give them a listing of everything I saw on Isla Cara over the several years I spent there on and off, but I stop short because everyone is giving me strange looks.

Misha looks grim.

Luna looks empathetic.

Amelia looks…sad.

Max ignores us all, favoring work on his computer.

I clear my throat.

“There weren’t too many places I was allowed to go when I visited him there, and I only spent a few weeks at a time. I spent the summers there when I was older.”

Luna nods, scribbling on her notepad.

“Do any specific instances stand out to you?” Luna puts the end of her pen in her mouth, and I track it when the ballpoint side traces a faint blue line on her palm.

“Sure. Several things.” I close my eyes and try to push away the image that’s been haunting me on a flashback loop.

Me on the veranda. Hot. Naked. Bloody.

I clear my throat again.

“I saw Misha there once. I was about fourteen or so, and it was the first winter break that my father had me the entire time.”

Misha speaks up. “I remember seeing you a few times on that visit, but you would always run away.” He gives an amused chuckle, and I try not to bristle.

Run away, you little pussy. Father’s words ring between my ears.

“I guess,” I mumble. Luna sits up more in her chair, giving her husband a side eye.

“Was there anything in particular that made that visit and Misha stand out to you?”

I rub the side of my head. There was so much happening during the visit. This one was important—Father was brokering some type of deal with some of the most powerful people on the planet. At least, that’s how he described it.

I often saw Misha with the president of Russia. On the second evening, I saw the president on that damned veranda, and blood covered Misha from nearly head to toe.

The sight scared me so much, I hid in my room for much of the remaining visit, not even bothering to get food to sustain me—besides the potato chips I’d brought in earlier—for three days.

“It stuck out because that was the first time I shot up,” I say. My mother lets out a strange sound, and when I slide my eyes to her, she presses a fist to her mouth, screwing her eyes shut tight.

“Don’t worry,” I say with a bite. “I’m clean now.”

She takes a trembling inhale, opening her eyes.

“That’s not what I’m upset about,” she says. A punch of guilt hits me in my chest.

“To be fair, I didn’t shoot myself up. Someone else did, and I lost a lot of time when they did it too. It scared the shit out of me.”

I try to keep my eyes focused on Luna, not letting them twitch as I recall the hypervigilance I experienced. This was around the time that Father’s friend and partner-in-depravity, Alistair, was there.

And he loved to watch me. Always watching me.

Alistair died on Isla Cara, and it was the best day of my life up to that point.

I turn my head away to face the wall, clearing my mind of the memories.

“Do you know what you took?”

“Ketamine,” I say. Just saying it, my body remembers how I floated above myself as people moved around me. Laughter morphed and the walls moved.

It’s not a memory, though. Because when I try to recall the moments leading up to the injection, administered by one of Father’s women for the night, all I get are flashes.

Misha hums, and the room falls quiet.

“Do you remember the underground?” Luna asks. When she mentions it, a sharp recollection comes.

Dark and damp, I’m under the mansion at Isla Cara.

It’s cold down here, and I shiver even though the air is thick. It’s a contradiction.

At the end of the tunnel are lights. I follow them, and at the center of the raised dais is a young girl. She wears a thin, short dress as she kneels before my father. Around us are several other men, their faces hidden in the shadows as they sit in neat, theater-style rows.

I hide my body along the wall, trying to sink into the damp stone. The girl looks up at my father, fear plain on her face.

But when he says something, stroking her cheek, she smiles. And then Father slits her throat.

I bite back the scream, and right as I turn to run, there’s a voice in the darkness.

“Will she survive?” the dark, mechanical voice intones.

“Yes, just watch,” Father says with pride. “You’ll be very pleased.”

I sit up straight in my seat in the war room.

“I remember something. Maybe.”

“We need to explore every avenue, Hunter,” Luna says. I really take a moment to look at her.

“Did they bring you to the underground? My father. Did you…” kneel before him before he slit your throat? “There was a dark room well underground, beneath the mansion on Isla Cara. There was a raised platform. Were you on it?”

Luna’s skin turns pale and she nods before saying, “Yes, I remember that night. You were there?” Her voice takes a reedy cast, and Misha reaches over to grab her hand.

“After they….”

“Nearly killed me?” Luna offers.

“Yes. After that, you fell to the ground, and there was a distorted voice that spoke. I didn’t recognize the voice then, and thinking about it now, I don’t know who it was.”

I rub my thumb with my index finger.

“I get a feeling that maybe…maybe it was The Architect.”

I remember the strange sense of awe my father had when he addressed the person in the shadows.

“There wasn’t anyone who my father revered. He was friendly with people, but to say he was ever awestruck by someone? I can’t say that I’d seen that from him,” I say.

Amelia sits up straight. “You’re right, Hunter. There wasn’t anyone he cared about like that, but still, what makes you think it was The Architect?”

I don’t know. Not truly.

“It’s just a hunch,” I say.

“I still feel like we’re missing something,” Misha mutters, looking down at his papers. “We’ve gone through Isla Cara over and over. It feels…like an obvious oversight.”

Luna gives a small sigh. “Yes, but Misha,” she says.

But before she can complete her sentence, I interject. “The messages,” I say. All three look at me with confused expressions.

“What do you mean, Hunter?” This comes from Amelia.

Pulling out my cellphone, I scroll through my texts and find the one from all those months ago.

“I took Winter to an appointment and received this cryptic message.” I toss my phone on the table, pushing it toward Luna, who shares the screenshot with Misha and Amelia.

A Scar

A Liar

“Any ideas? We couldn’t trace it from anywhere. Unless it came from you all?” I ask.

Misha and Luna shake their heads, negative.

“It’s an anagram,” Max says, piping up from his spot in the corner where he’s been silently tapping away over the past several hours. I didn’t think he was paying attention at all, but evidently he’s been processing our conversation.

We all turn to him. “Didn’t you look into this before?” I ask him. I’d sent him the message almost immediately after I’d received it.

Max has the grace to look chagrined. With a grimace, he says, “Yeah, I did…but I figured it was Amelia up to her usual stuff.” He shrugs and my eyebrows crease.

“Her usual stuff?” I ask. Misha releases a long sigh that turns into a groan.

“Misha and I had a few…disagreements about how much contact we should have with you. We planned to quietly observe and not interject in your lives until we were sure, but….”

I roll through my memories, searching for all the stand-out instances.

“The bag from the doctor’s office?” I say.

“That was my doing,” Amelia says while Misha grumbles.

“Why?” I throw back at her. Amelia shoots a look to Misha, and Misha looks like he’s barely suppressing an eyeroll.

“Mother had the bright idea that if you knew about The Legion that you’d seek help. Maybe come to our side. She thought things were moving too slowly,” Misha says.

I shift my gaze back to Amelia.

“I knew you were in danger, and I couldn’t stand it,” she says. I ignore the warmth spreading across my chest.

Tilting my head, I say, “The shoot-out. The cars all dropped back as if they got an order to. Was that you?”

Amelia smiles, but Max is the one who speaks up. “Since that night Winter was taken, we added some more…surveillance to the fleet. So when you were being chased, Rio sent a signal to me and I was able to jam the cars that were chasing you, essentially causing them to shut down on the road.”

I would laugh if I could. Thinking back on the harrowing moments after the gunfire and how Winter held on to me as if I were her only lifeline, it was strange that one minute, they were chasing us and the next, they just stopped.

“I see. Well…thank you?” I say to Max. He shrugs in acknowledgment.

Turning back to Misha, I say, “The text messages?”

“There were more than one?” Amelia replies.

I nod. “I received one, as did Leo.”

Amelia hums. “Neither of those were me,” she adds, and Misha looks troubled.

“I’ll have to get the other one from Leo,” if I can get him to talk to me, “but Max, you think this one is an anagram?” I ask.

Max turns back to his computer, tapping along in a rapid cadence until he says, “Aha!”

“What?” Luna says in a slow drawl.

“Well, the anagram spells out ‘Isla Cara.’”

“No shit?” I reply.

Max gives me a look that telegraphs the thought, Of course I’m fucking sure.

“I’ll run the program again to see what other viable results come up, but the shit says Isla Cara, so I’m pretty damn sure that’s what the message is,” Max replies.

I lift my palms to show him that I’m not getting onto him about the results.

“Now to figure out who the fuck sent this,” he mutters. “And why.” He turns back to the computer and zones back into his screen.

“So Isla Cara does hold something important, and we’ve just not found it?” This comes from Luna. I close my eyes and bring up the island. Isla Cara isn’t a huge landmass, but it isn’t exactly small, either.

If someone wanted to hide things there, they most certainly could. And with the recollection of the underground crypts, how many other places are like it there?

“What do you think could be hiding?” I ask.

“The location of their labs. The identity of The Architect.” Misha shrugs as he lists off possibilities. “Knowledge is power. The more intel we can gather on what they’re up to and who they’re doing it with, the better.”

“And the ultimate goal is to get rid of The Architect because if the head falls, so does the rest of it,” Amelia adds.

I nod again. “We need to look deeper onto the island. We need to go back to Isla Cara,” I say, understanding dawning.

Isla Cara has always been the key. We just need to find the right combination to unlock its secrets.

“The eye,” I say. “Do you know the differences between them?”

Misha and Luna share a look. Luna speaks, “We haven’t really looked into their symbols very much.” She looks thoughtful.

“Some wear rings, like my father and Morris Winthrope. Others have tattoos.” I think about the commissioner and the black smudge behind his ear.

“Then there are the symbols that appear elsewhere, like the floor of the vault in Isla Cara.” When Leo and I went there the last time, we opened the vault and found what we expected to find and more—on the floor in the center of the room was the same eye, but with additional features than what’s on the ring my father wore.

“There’s something there,” I say.

Misha sits up in his chair, and Luna begins to sketch the symbols on her legal pad.

Amelia turns to me. “This is the closest we’ve been to any type of breakthrough in a very long time.”

She reaches across the table and puts her scarred hand upon mine.

“Thank you, Hunter,” she says.

I let her hand stay.