I wake with a sense of dread filling my stomach. We needed to sort this shit out with Kingston, but after yesterday I wasn’t certain putting Hunter and my brother in the same room again would be wise.
I roll onto my back on the bed, the sheets silky soft against my skin to find Hunter still sleeping beside me. His face was softened, the harsh lines and hunger always present in his waking hours invisible while he dreams. His dark hair is mused, lips parted.
He was a beautiful man.
A beautiful, deadly man.
I make to climb from the bed, only to be promptly tugged back down and hauled to his chest. He presses his mouth against the top of my head.
“Good morning,” he rasps, voice heavy with sleep.
“Hi.”
He nuzzles into me, “Where do you think you’re running off to?”
“A shower,” I say, relaxing into him, “I thought you were sleeping.”
He nods slowly but makes no move to release me. The unease doesn’t settle and I don’t think it will until it’s over.
After spending so long getting to this point, now that it’s here, I can’t help but picture the whole thing going wrong.
Hunter circles his fingers on my stomach, a lazy tickle and nuzzles into me further. I let him hold me for a moment, closing my eyes. It was early, the sun had barely broke the horizon and the city around us still slept.
“What are you thinking about?” Hunter asks after a few quiet moments.
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“I’ve been planning this for three years, Snow, it will work.”
I wanted to believe him, I really did.
I steel my spine as I walk into the compound where I knew my brother was. I’d somehow managed to convince Hunter to remain in the car on the road so I could deal with him on my own. I find him in the kitchen, Eleanor standing between his legs while they talk. His eyes glide over to me, and he instantly stiffens.
“Morning,” I say.
His brow was cut and his lip, and a bruise had started to form beneath his right eye though it was only a little swollen. Hunter had let him beat the shit out of him, did bare minimum damage in return when I know damn well, he could have done a lot worse.
Kingston and Hunter were two sides of the same coin. Brutal. Merciless and violent. They’d both kill themselves before letting the other one win in a true fight.
“What do you want?”
“Am I not allowed in my own house anymore?” I pour a coffee for myself and take a seat at the table.
“Where is he?”
“Waiting outside,” I admit, “I thought it best we spoke about this between ourselves.”
“I’m going to get dressed,” Eleanor dismisses herself and I give her a grateful smile as she exits, disappearing up the stairs. I watch my brother follow her with his eyes, not once looking away until she’s safely tucked away upstairs.
“She’s good for you,” I say to him, “I like her.”
He crosses his arms.
“I’m sorry about Ace.” I continue.
“Oh, so you do remember who he is?” He sneers, “You missed his funeral? What were you doing? Fucking him?”
“Don’t you dare! You know damn well what I was doing.”
“I expected one less Syndicate dog running around by the time you got back, not one at the end of your leash.”
“What can I do, Kingston?” I snap, “what can I do to prove to you he’s on my side?” I say my because that’s the only side he’s on. I wasn’t delusional enough to believe he was doing anything for the greater good.
“What did he do to you that was so bad that you spent three years trying to track him down?”
I’d never told Kingston about the betrayal. He knew of a man that I’d fallen in love with but exactly what and why, I didn’t give details. He pieced enough of it together to realize who it was but never asked me about it.
For that first year of being free from the Syndicate I threw myself into training. I refused to ever be caught in a situation like that again. I’d be able to defend myself. Granted, at the time I was taken, I was still a teenager, still basically a kid living in a world of corruption and violence. I never stood a chance, but I wouldn’t be like that again. So, I trained with my brother, with Ace and then later, with Micha when Kingston employed him.
I removed all traces of the girl I used to be. I wasn’t her anymore and I never would be again.
I obsessed over the revenge I’d have on Hunter, on how I’d make him pay for hurting me the way he did. For betraying me, but I hadn’t banked on still being in love with him. And that’s what it all comes down to. I was still fucking in love with him. And because of it, those years where my brother had to watch me burn what I was to become what I am, seems pointless to him. He wanted his little sister back, but she was dead, and he couldn’t let that go.
I tell him. I tell him it all, how we met and what I thought of him when he was first shoved into that cell. I tell him how he cared for me and what he had done for me during that time. And I accept that he’d lied. He lied to me through it all, pretended to be something he wasn’t. Used rather than employed by the Syndicate to be their assassin. I guess he told me in his way, and I just refused to see the bigger picture because all the signs were there.
No one touched me again when he was there, not until I was used against him. I was naïve. But that wasn’t my fault, that was on him. And Hunter knew that too.
I explain the events that led up to me finding out, how the Syndicate threatened me to gain better control of Hunter and how he offered himself up to stop them, but it had been the start of a long plan for him.
“He was the one who brought you to me,” Kingston says, “That day you came back.”
“Mm,” I agree, “I’m not sure how he got me out, what he did, but one minute I was there and then I wasn’t.”
“But how have you forgiven him?” Kingston asks.
“I haven’t,” I admit, “I don’t think I ever will, but I can’t be without him. I tried.”
Kingston slouches in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose.