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Anyone who thinks anything is freely given is a fool who believes in fairy tales. Everything has a price.
You just don’t always have the means to pay it.
“Let’s just say when I was hunting my own wife…” My mouth twitches at his choice of words. “I conducted my own research, including her best friend.” Anger washes over me, and awakens every violent nerve in my body. My hand clenches into a fist, despising any man thinking it’s his right to dig into a past that should be buried. Because her past is no one’s concern but my own.
Lampos must feel my agitation because he raises his head and growls, his whiskers moving while he flexes his paws, his nails digging into the leather, and a ripping sound echoes through the room.
Callum whistles. “Easy there, leopard. Totally obsessed with my wife, remember?” He shows off his wedding ring as if it means anything to me. I didn’t think he had a thing for Isla.
Still.
Why is he digging up her past?
“I’m not sure how this concerns me.”
He rolls his eyes. “Octavius, you cashed in on an old favor two days ago by asking me to take credit for furnishing her apartment and creating a safe environment around that fucking ditch of hers. Not a fan of lying to my wife, by the way, but I did it. So can you stop at least pretending you have no interest in Isla and use the helping hand I’m giving you?” He raises his splayed palm. “And before you get suspicious, let me put it this way. If my wife is happy, I’m happy. And her friend's happiness is vitally important to her, so if anything happens to Isla, it makes it my problem as well.”
“Isla was never and will never be your problem, Callum.” Steel laces my tone as I stand and run my fingers over my hair while Lampos jumps from the couch, pacing around the room, huffing through his nose while adrenaline rushes through my system, pumping my heart. “If that’s all…”
“Check the information I sent you in your email. The man you’re looking for made an appearance several months ago in one of the small towns. He changed his usual method so the murders weren’t linked, but it’s him.”
“It’s impossible. I handled it a long time ago.” Fate left me no choice but to deal with the repercussions of my decisions that started a chain of unstoppable events. “You must be mistaken.”
“I’m not. He was content in the shadows. She’s relentless, though, and he despises it. Sooner rather than later, he will attack if she continues to dig deep. And it wouldn’t be wise or beneficial to anyone involved.”
I understand that he knows about the secret I’ve kept hidden all these years.
A secret that has the power to destroy everything I’ve build over the years and endanger those I care about.
I dedicated my life to hunting down the piece of shit who issued deaths to people just because he felt like it and had no respect for human life. And I finally found him five years ago. His body was burned to the point of being unrecognizable. I had no idea how he looked anyway, but he had a distinctive scar on his left hand. And the burned body had the fucking scar.
“If he’s alive…”
“Then you are his biggest target and by default so is she.” Callum rubs his chin with the back of his hand. “He would have never done what he did to her family if it wasn’t for you.”
Memories like a kaleidoscope play in my mind, one more hideous than the other, and thunder echoes in the air in time, the chaos slowly erupting inside me with each passing second.
However, showing my weakness is not a privilege I can afford.
We and Chicago are invincible, and it should stay that way.
Schooling my features, I focus my stare on him as his eyes grow stone cold, studying me intently. “I don’t need your help, Callum. So I advise you to stay the hell away from this.” He opens his mouth to say something, but I stop him, not in the mood to listen to his bullshit anymore. “I’ll consider the information you gave me a debt I shall owe you.”
“Octavius, you’re messing with my family right now. You do realize that?”
My voice drops a few octaves so he doesn’t miss how serious I am about his threat spoken between the lines. “She stopped being your family the minute she stepped foot in Chicago.”
“Don’t provoke me.”
“I’m stating a fact. You know the rules. If you want her safe, then maybe your wife should have kept her ass in New York.” I click my tongue. “Giselle has a weird sense of friendship.” She knows what we all do, so her allowing Isla to come here with all her fucking plans paints her as rather foolish.
I don’t give a fuck how irrational that is either.
“Careful, Octavius. Be very careful how you speak about my wife.”
Ah, my friends and their possessive nature.
A hunter in love is no longer a predator because he has a weakness that’s so easy to break and snatch away.
