AllFreeNovel
Share Us
TWO
Decima
He knew my name.
In the first instant after the Hunter had spoken, that thought blotted out everything else in my mind. No one knew the name I currently went by, the name the household had given me, except the members of the household, who were all dead, and the Chaos Crew. And this man.
My questions were multiplying by the second.
I knew this was his one and only offer to talk. The Hunter wouldn’t reconsider, and if I turned it down, I had a feeling he’d simply kick us out of the club and call it a day.
But the thought of going off with him alone on his own turf made my skin itch with apprehension.
“You’re not taking her alone,” Julius said, who’d flanked me. “What makes you think we’ll trust you not to kill her the moment you two are alone?”
The Hunter gave him a blandly bored look. “What makes you think I couldn’t have had her killed a dozen times over before now if that’s what I really wanted?” He shifted his attention back to me. “Unless you don’t actually want answers as badly as it appeared. Make your decision. I’d rather not waste more of my time waiting on you.”
I felt Talon tense beside me, but I spoke up before either of my men could argue further. In the end, it was my call. “I’ll do it. Where do you want to talk?”
Julius adjusted his weight restlessly but kept his opinions to himself. I knew he and the rest of the crew would be watching over me as well as they could from a distance. I didn’t think I had to worry about my life in this situation, though. The Hunter had invested a lot of time and energy in developing a connection with me. I might have hated how much he’d manipulated me, but I didn’t think he’d have bothered with all that just to off me on a whim.
A small smile crossed the Hunter’s lips, chilly rather than warm. “I knew you’d make the right choice. Step into my office.”
He made a casual motion with his hand and led me around the bar to a discreet door. Two of his bodyguards followed us into the room on the other side, which did appear to be a pretty typical office. A big wooden desk took up a substantial portion of the space, with a heavy leather chair behind it, a bookcase on one wall and a liquor cabinet with a small private bar area on the other.
The bodyguards stopped by the door as it closed behind us. I couldn’t tell whether they were watching to make sure that I didn’t escape through it or that no one barged in after us. Maybe both.
The Hunter moved to the bar with the assured air that seemed to come naturally to him. He flicked his hand over his slicked-back hair and started pouring himself a glass of scotch.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” he asked smoothly, as if we were about to broker some high-class business deal rather than discuss his dirty underworld dealings. “You look like you need a shot or two.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “I don’t drink when I’m working.” I sure as hell wasn’t going to give him even more of an opportunity to mess with my head.
“Is that what we’re doing?” He carried his glass over to his desk and sat behind it. “I thought we were simply going to have a quick chat. The ability to unwind can be just as useful as any other skill.”
“The only thing I want to unwind is your role in my life,” I said, fighting to keep an impatient edge out of my voice as I stood across from him. “Why were you pushing me to look into the Maliks’ history? What’s your connection to the group that called themselves ‘the household’? How do you know my name?”
The Hunter tsked at me. “Patience, patience. Another important skill.” He took a slow sip and smiled with evident satisfaction. Then he set the glass on the desk by his left hand and retrieved a pistol from a drawer at his right. He laid that on the desk too, pointed off to the side but in easy reach. “Just so we’re clear that I’m quite capable of defending myself even without my guards, if you had any aspirations.”
“I just want answers,” I snapped. “Did you plan on giving me any or not? It seems like you’re the one wastingmytime, yet again.”
“Oh, I don’t think any of the time I’ve spent on you has been a waste,” the Hunter said with an amused glint in his eyes that made me want to poke them right through his skull.
“Then you shouldn’t have any trouble explaining it to me.”
He leaned back in his chair with a subtle sigh, folding his hands in his lap. I noticed he didn’t have any other seating in the room—I guessed that for whatever meetings he normally conducted in here, he purposefully kept the other parties standing to stop them from feeling fully comfortable in his presence. An interesting tactic for a man teasing me about not being able to relax.
Taking another sip, he studied me over the glass of scotch. “You want to know how I’m involved in your life. And whether I’ve lied to you.”
“That’d be a good start.”
“Well, as I’ve already told you, my daughterwaskilled by the Maliks, almost thirty years ago. That’s what started us down the path we’re essentially at the end of.Theyset those events in motion. I merely paid back what they deserved.”
The Hunter had kept up his disinterested cool through the entire conversation so far, but with those words, I caught a ripple of grief and rage in his voice. I didn’t think he was lying. He had one sore spot in the death of his child, one small point of weakness, as awful as it’d be to make use of that kind of loss for my own ends.
“She was the blond girl in the picture,” I said, and paused. “Did you leave those photos for me to find? You set up that box in my grandmother’s name figuring I’d find it?”
He lifted his shoulder in the slightest of shrugs. “Everything I showed you about your family was true. I didn’t need to invent any horrors when they’d already committed plenty of perfectly real ones. Yes, I put some of the pieces together for you and pointed you in the right direction to get you to the truth sooner, but I won’t apologize for that.”
