Chapter 11

We enter my place. “Serena we’re home.” The we just escapes my lips, and I see Hunter glance at me before moving his attention around my open home. His face is blank, like the first time I met him. He’s wary around me again.

It’s cute how he thinks that will work, and also fucking infuriating.

“Loretta and D-I,” I ponder out loud, referring to the letters Malcom wrote on the floor. “Loretta died? Divulged? Divided? Disappointed… Could be the beginning of a name? A surname? A place? Serena, please look into it.” She replies with a “yes.” I take off my coat and leave it on the back of the sofa. “An acronym perhaps?”

“I don’t think Malcom was that smart.” He sounds so fucking cold.

His phone vibrates, and he sighs when he sees the screen.

“Opal?” His voice turns gentle. She’s his cousin, so affection is expected when he talks to her. But at this moment, it rubs me the wrong way, a very irrational way.

“I’m fine,” Hunter says. “Why wouldn’t I be? No. There’s no need. About what? Okay. Alright. See you soon.”

“Gotta meet her?” I ask him, checking on my girls to distract myself. Khloe is in the house by herself, while Kim and Kourtney are out in the garden.

“Yeah. You didn’t lie about those.” He points at Khloe’s yellowish-cream face.

“I’ve never lied to you.” I hope my eyes are truthful enough for him. “I’m going to come with you to see your cousin.”

His silent reply feels like something is slowly slicing me from the inside. But if he thinks I’ll let him walk away from me, he’s damn wrong. He has no idea what I’m really capable of.

Determination and coldness suddenly fall over me. I check the thermostat, but it seems to be working just fine.

“What’s in there?” he asks, pointing at the only room, except the toilet, in my house.

“Serena. Her…brain.”

“It needs a room?”

“It needs a cooling system. So, yeah.” I sound snappy, but fuck, I’m so damn annoyed at him, me, this whole uncontrollable situation. But I mainly want to kick his balls.

“Who’s the Vulture?” Another question.

“A hitman. One of the best.”

“How do you know him?”

“There’re contract killing websites on the dark web. People can hire a specific assassin, or like in your case, put out a hit, and whoever executes it gets the money. And no, I’ve never hired a hitman. I like to do the dirty work myself,” I taunt him. I know I’m working against myself, but that damn void expression and rigid pose are provoking me into poking him until he fights back. “Seven hundred K is kind of a high payment for this kind of contract killing. Someone really wants you dead.”

“I have the information you asked for,” Serena suddenly says. I asked her to check into Loretta’s father’s death on the way back here. I tap my bracelet to turn the speaker on.

“Norman Jefferson died at Saint Lucas Hospital. He was hospitalized March fourth with acute chest pains and died of a veinous embolism the same day.”

“Which can be easily caused by injecting air in the veinous system,” I add, hearing Hunter’s cussing. “Why now? After all these years? We are missing something. Serena, run a wider analysis on anybody who might be connected to the murder of Cal Penn or Loretta Jefferson’s death.”

“On it, Daddy.” I grimace.

Hunter leans back against the kitchen counter and just stares at me with his hands tucked in his jeans pockets. Waiting, like a panther ready to strike.

“Something to drink?” I know I’m stalling, but his false tranquility is irritating me to no end.

He shakes his head.

“Malcom said something about a letter.” Every muscle in his body stiffens. “Do you know what he was talking about?”

“I received an anonymous letter a week ago or so. Whoever wrote it—now I know it was Malcom—said he had new information about Cal’s murder.”

“And you tell me about this only now?” I ask incredulously. He still doesn’t trust me. This is the irrefutable proof. I already knew he didn’t, not completely. But after he opened up to me about his cousin’s murder, I’d hoped…

He grunts. Fucking grunts. If my glare could kill, Hunter would be a pile of ashes at my feet now.

“You’ve already created the worst scenario in your head about me, haven’t you?” I accuse him. “Why are you still here, then?”

He strokes his head, and then his arm drops aggressively at his side. “I don’t know what the hell to think. You act all carefree and breezy, but fight and kill like a pro, have no problem with kidnapping assassins, know your way around the dark web, and can hack into anything. That’s all I know about you.”

“All you know? You know more than most people. Do you think I go and advertise I can do those things? And look who’s talking, Mr. Closed-off. Two hours ago, you fucked me like you owned me and called me your boyfriend. And now you’re wearing that blank mask like I’m a damn stranger,” I yell.

“I do own you,” he growls, reaching me in two strides. He’s looming over me, his eyes like two blazing coals. “Doesn’t fucking matter what comes out of those red lips. That. Ass. Is. Mine.” I feel the rumble of his gravelly voice vibrating against my chest.

My heart feels too big for my chest, and a sense of belonging like I’ve never felt before washes over me, soaking my very soul until it’s absorbed deep inside of it. Until it’s become part of it. Of me.

“Then why do you look so wary?” I whisper.

“Fuck.” He cups my face and brushes his thumb over my lips. “It’s an automatic response for me. I need to work on it, but I don’t trust easy.”

“I don’t either,” I confess, all the anger leaving my body in one quick sweep.

“Why? Tell me.” His voice and eyes are pleading with me to tell him. Would I gain his total trust if I bare myself to him? Only one way to find out.

“When I was a kid, I was kidnapped by a group of scientists.” His hands slide off my face as I keep going. “I was chosen because they wanted underprivileged kids with a higher IQ and psychotic traits. And before you ask, no I’m not a psychopath. Those traits disappeared as I grew up.” Not for all of us, though.

“I was Subject Three.” I raise my hand to show him the brand on my wrist.

“They did this to you?” His voice is glacial, but the lips that lower on the brand are gentle and searing hot. I’ve spent most of my life without this incredible feeling, and I’d be ready to double the years of miserable numbness if it meant having Hunter continue to touch me.

“Why were you taken?” He moves his mouth back but doesn’t let go of my hand.

I release a long breath. “The project’s goal was to create assassins with no remorse, nor fear, and who could easily be controlled. The experimentation was unsanctioned. Only a few bastards knew about it, and it went on for…years. They kept torturing me, over and over in different ways. I’m not going to bore you with the details.”

His face has blurred. And I know it’s me. I can’t stop the tears. But I need to get all the words out, so I can be with him. No barriers. Nothing between us. I want that. I need that.

“The-the agonizing pain was too much, and my brain just shut down. The flop trauma response happens. It’s a coping mechanism for dealing with distress, sort of similar to how an animal will play dead when they feel threatened. When Meg and Linda found me, I was completely numb, physically and mentally unresponsive. I was a hollow husk, slowly dying.”

Bile rises in my throat. I swallow it down, but it”s so fucking hard to relive all of that horror again. Gravity overcomes me for a moment, and then I’m wrapped in the sweet, warm, strong cocoon of my bear’s arms. He doesn’t seem grossed out by the dirt and blood on my clothes. I tuck my face into his neck, inhaling deeply his masculine, rich, comforting scent. My icy fingers are warming against his pecs, and I remain silent for a while, letting the tears run out.

Fuck, I love being hugged.

“I’m sorry,” I softly say against his skin.

“We can stop if you want.” His gentle tone, more than his words, acts like a soothing balm on my soul.

“No. You need to know. I want you to know.” I force my voice out. “It took a long time for me to realize I was safe. My ability to feel emotions came back little by little, as did my sight and my hearing, but the other senses didn’t. Self-preservation through dissociation. One day when I was twelve, I tried to trigger a neuro response and pressed the back of my hand to a sizzling skillet.” I fist my scarred hand on his pec.

Hunter curses, and his arms tighten around me.

“I didn’t scream because I didn’t feel a thing. No pain, no smell of burning skin. Absolutely nothing. The butler intervened and rushed me to the hospital. I was grounded for a month, but in that period, I discovered that masturbating—and later sex—made those senses turn on for a while. So, it did work in a way.”

I pull back to look into his bottomless, understanding eyes. My attempt at easing the mood is futile. The quivering smile on my face turns into a sob. “Those painful years fucked me up, changed me.”

“How? What do you do, Ramiel?”

“I kill evil,” I blurt out. His eye gives a little twitch, but his firm gaze stays on me, his heart continues its slow beating. “I punish the unpunished. The ones who slide between the cracks of the justice system or are too good at hiding their rotten parts.”

“Justice, vigilante style. August Baker?” He remembers the hitman from the alley.

“He was an assassin, but he also liked to kill his victims’ loved ones in front of them before taking their lives. He was a heartless motherfucker, and he deserved every single thing I inflicted on him.”

“You tortured him?” He sounds surprised, but not repulsed. I knew he wouldn’t be after what he went through. But that doesn’t mean he’ll accept this. Me. His heart is racing now.

I need to explain more. “I look for people like him, shitheads. I gather the evidence since I have a code to follow, and being sure the donors are guilty is essential.”

“Donors?”

“My foster brothers, Sari and Michael, they take samples from the shitheads and use them for medical research, or if they’re a match for transplants or transfusions. It’s kind of fulfilling to think that after all the suffering they instigated, they can do one good thing before leaving this earth.”

I’m playing with his shirt collar when he asks, “You do this with your foster brothers?”

I nod. “I didn’t know there were others. All those years, the scientists kept us separated, each one in his own cage, enduring pain alone. Our foster mothers brought us together. We are all broken in one way or another. Our reasons for starting this family side business are different. For me, sex, fighting, and torturing are the only ways to feel.”

“Not anymore, Red,” Hunter reminds me, his big hands squeezing my hips under my shirt. I can feel each finger sinking into my skin, the pressure, the warmth, the hardness. “And you aren’t broken. Everybody has baggage. People make bad choices, but the good ones try to make it right later on. It’s astonishing how, in your case, the wrong was done to you, and you still found a wayto make it right.”

“I have to. It’s my purpose. To help Madam Justice balance her scale,” I tell him. I want him to understand that I won’t stop. “What you did to your cousin? We’ve been doing it for years.”

“I did things in prison as well.” His jaw ticks, he turned tense under me, and his hold on me is bruising tight now.

“You had to do what you had to do,” I try to reassure him, caressing his pecs with circular movements.

“A Black ex-cop, a priest killer, and one of the biggest motherfuckers in the joint. First rule of being new in prison: find the biggest guy in there and make him your bitch. I was the most hated. The first years were a daily fight.”

I believe him. I’ve seen the scars covering his body—I have some as well. And hearing the reason for their existence from his lips compels my already obsessive protectiveness to wrap around him even tighter.

“I know.” I look him straight in the eyes.

He grunts. “Of course, you and Serena do. Do you also know that I have no regrets over killing them?”

“Why would you? What did they do to you?” A feeling of dread climbs up my spine.

“Don’t you know already?” He sighs.

“Prison guard reports are not very detailed.” And the cameras’ hard drive in his prison keeps footage only for one year, then everything gets deleted—which is preposterous if you ask me.

“They don’t care much what inmates do to each other, especially if they get bribed.” Motherfuckers!

“I know you must have had a good reason. You have a strong moral code, Hunter Penn. It might be more gray than what society expects, but mine is bordering black compared to yours.” I give his lips a light peck.

“One tried to kill me. The other two to rape me.” Every word of that sentence turns my stomach upside down. A sense of nausea fills my chest, but he keeps talking, and I can breathe again. “I didn’t like ending their lives, I was simply in survival mode.”

It’s kill or be killed. Just like with the mercenary and guard at the gun warehouse.

“I’d have thoroughly enjoyed their deaths. Nobody tries to hurt what’s mine and continues living,” I whisper. Mine. He is mine.

His eyebrow shoots up.

“Your cousin would’ve been high on my donor list if he were still alive. Fuck. I would’ve killed him myself if…”

“I know.” A shadow of a smile appears on his lips. “Do your mothers know about your…family business?”

“Side business, we all have day jobs. Yes, they know. They help us out sometimes. They know we need to do this. They understand. Well, Linda actually enjoys it. She’s an ex-secret agent; what we do isn’t so different from what she’s used to.”

“Wow.”

“So you’re okay with me? With what I do?” I stop him before he can utter a word. “I don’t know why I asked, since it doesn’t really matter.”

He frowns. “It doesn’t?”

I tsk. “Hunter Bear, something else you should know about me is that when I decide something belongs to me, it simply does.”

“Am I that something?” he growls. His hands slide to my ass and squeeze with force.

“Your black mamba certainly is.” I smirk and grind against it. My lips are an inch from his when his hands slide up my sides to hold me still.

“Opal,” he lets out. My nails sink into his pecs through his shirt.

“What the fuck, Red!” Hunter hisses.

“That’s what you get for saying someone else’s name when your boyfriend is stroking your dick!” I bark.

He fists my hair and yanks my head roughly to the side, offering the curve of my neck to his teeth. His other hand slides inside my jeans and painfully squeezes one butt cheek, fingertips sliding dangerously near the crease. “My boyfriend’s feistiness makes me so damn hard.” His voice drops to an even lower register against my sensitive skin as he rubs the hard bulge in his jeans against me. My brain turns all fizzy with static. “I’m going to enjoy punishing this juicy ass with my teeth and tongue…but later. Now we need to go meet my cousin.”

I huff but feel a small tug at the corner of my lips. We. He said we. That means he trusts me more fully. Meeting the cousin he loves must mean that.

His fist loosens around my hair and falls on my now even more bruised neck, his thumb caressing behind my ear.

“What’s this?” he asks, touching the bump there.

“A tracker. Me and my bros have one. It’s a precaution, what we do can turn dangerous at times.”

His jaw ticks, and he slides his fingers out of my jeans. Does that mean he won’t let me insert one under his skin as well? I want to know where he is at all times to protect him and be sure he’s safe while I’m busy doing other things. But now doesn’t seem the right moment to ask.

I stand up and move to my wardrobe to change my dirty clothes while he goes to the sink to wash a little.

When I’m ready, we walk into the garage. “Choose one,” I tell him, pointing at the cars. My Hyundai Kona and Fiat 500 are charging since they are electric cars. Then there’s the black Jeep Gladiator and the red Hyundai Linda bought me for as a birthday present a few years back.

Hunter just keeps staring ahead with an unreadable expression. “Problem?”

“How rich are you, Red?”

“Less than Scrooge McDuck, more than Bill Gates,” I joke.

He cusses and looks very unhappy. Uh, that’s a first. “What’s wrong?”

“I can barely pay taxes on my house. I…”

It can’t be. “Let me get this straight. You’re okay with me killing bad people, but you don’t like the fact that I have more money than you?”

“Don’t joke about this. It’s serious.” He looks down, like he’s…embarrassed? Fuck. A wave of deep affection swamps my body. He so fucking mine, I feel lightheaded and have to force the insane, joyful laugh down. Because he needs me to put some sense in that stupid and handsome head of his.

“Hunter Bear, can you please look at me?” I wait until he does. “I thought I was quite clear when I said you belong to me. It’s done. No way out. My senses and my dick chose you at first, but the rest of me caught up fairly quick.”

“Ramiel.” My name sounds like a prayer on his lips…or a curse. Is there really a difference between the two?

“Besides, you are the rich one here. You own my juicy ass, don’t you?”

He grabs my nape and kisses my forehead, breathing warmly on my skin. “That I do.”

“So choose a car, we are in a hurry, if you remember. They are all bulletproof, no motorcycle for you until there’s no more hit on your head.”

A few minutes later, Hunter is driving my Jeep Gladiator with me next to him.