Hunter Read online

  Table of Contents

  HUNTER

  Copyright Notice

  BOOKS BY BLAIRE DRAKE:

  HUNTER

  Prologue– Adriana

  Chapter One – Adriana

  Chapter Two – Hunter

  Chapter Three – Adriana

  Chapter Four – Hunter

  Chapter Five – Adriana

  Chapter Six – Hunter

  Chapter Seven – Adriana

  Chapter Eight – Hunter

  Chapter Nine – Adriana

  Chapter Ten – Hunter

  Chapter Eleven – Adriana

  Chapter Twelve - Hunter

  Chapter Thirteen – Adriana

  Chapter Fourteen – Hunter

  Chapter Fifteen – Adriana

  Chapter Sixteen – Hunter

  Chapter Seventeen – Adriana

  Chapter Eighteen – Hunter

  Chapter Nineteen – Adriana

  Chapter Twenty – Hunter

  Chapter Twenty-One – Adriana

  Chapter Twenty-Two – Hunter

  Chapter Twenty-Three – Adriana

  Chapter Twenty-Four – Hunter

  Chapter Twenty-Five – Adriana

  Chapter Twenty-Six – Hunter

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – Adriana

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – Hunter

  Chapter Twenty-Nine – Adriana

  Chapter Thirty – Adriana

  Epilogue – Hunter

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

  blaire drake

  Copyright 2016 Blaire Drake.

  All Rights Reserved.

  BOOKS BY BLAIRE DRAKE:

  Dear Professor

  Hunter

  Prologue– Adriana

  Ten years earlier.

  “Addy, I need you to come with me, now.”

  I rubbed my left eye and batted at her with my other hand. “Mamma, go away.”

  She grabbed my covers and whipped them off me. “Adriana, I’m not joking.” Her voice was a whisper, but the urgency in it made me roll over and find her gaze in the darkness.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered back scratchily.

  Mamma took a deep breath and pushed a loose bit of hair from her forehead behind her ear. “I don’t have the time to explain right now. I need to do what I say, exactly how I say, exactly when I say it, without asking me anything. Can you do that for me, scuro?”

  Our eyes met through the pitch black room. “Always.”

  “Get up.” She stood from where she was crouched at the side of my bed and reached behind her. Black clothes hit me in the face.

  I swung my legs out of the bed. My feet hit my cold wooden floor with barely a sound, and I changed without a word.

  I knew her. Mamma would never ask me to do something like this without a good reason. I’d obey her—there was no question. My respect for her had always been unquestionable. Everyone’s respect was.

  Mamma spoke, you listened. Mamma ordered, you followed.

  Mamma held a gun to her head, you did, too.

  It was the way we lived.

  She was power. She was respect. She was Queen.

  I dressed quickly. My pajamas lay discarded on my floor as Mamma grabbed my hand and held one manicured fingertip to her lips. Her movement was the request, the hard glint in her eyes the demand. I didn’t dare make a single sound. I was afraid to breathe as she gripped my fingers so tightly I thought they’d fall off.

  A floorboard creaked beneath my feet.

  Mamma turned, her lips drawn together in the moonlight streaming through the bathroom window. The door was open, illuminating the hallway and the stairs. Once again, she pressed her finger to her mouth.

  It seemed as though hours had passed before she moved again.

  We went down the stairs, our backs pressed to the wall, without any more creaks. The way we moved from side to side to middle made me wonder how many times she’d practiced this.

  Because I knew she had.

  The black bag I’d found myself familiar with was waiting by the front door. It was the escape bag. Always necessary. Always ready.

  When you were at both the heart and the top of the mafia, the escape bag was a part of your life. It was the thing that held everything you’d need for a life on the road as another person, from wigs to hair dye to passports and birth certificates. All fake, all forged, all necessary if you needed to… disappear.

  I had the most terrifying feeling that was what was going to happen tonight.

  We were going to disappear. And I didn’t blame Mamma one bit.

  Wordlessly, she handed me a black backpack. I swung it onto my shoulders and wrapped my arms around my waist. She was shaking as she heaved the gym sack onto her shoulder and walked through the mansion to the kitchen. The light over the cooker was on, and from where I was standing, I could see the back door wasn’t fully shut.

  I tiptoed my way to her and grabbed her hand. She stilled, turning to me slightly, then I wrapped my arms around her waist and hugged her tightly. Her chest heaved as she took a deep, steadying breath before she released me.

  She released me without a word. Before I could speak, she pulled the door open and pushed me through it. After she’d followed me outside, she closed it with the quietest click, locked it, and hurried past me, down the stone path that cut through the backyard.

  A flashlight flickered through the scary darkness, and I froze, backing up. I knew we were running. I knew why. I knew this wasn’t good.

  “Addy,” the familiar voice hissed. “Quickly.”

  Darien’s soothing tone calmed me instantly, and he shone the light right at me, his hand outstretched. But…

  “Mamma?” I whispered into the night.

  “It’s okay,” she replied from somewhere. “Come on, scuro. Darien is safe.”

  Safe.

  I needed it more than she knew.

  I wrapped my fingers around Darien’s. The warmth of his hand spread up my arm, filling me with comfort.

  He illuminated the path with the flashlight, flicking it up so I could see the waiting car, lights off, engine not running. “Quickly, Adriana. We can’t waste time tonight.”

  I ran. It was the only choice I had.

  Darien bundled me into the back seat with Mamma and carefully shut the door behind me. I shook, not out of fear, out of relief. I was glad she knew. I was glad she was my mother. I was glad for her unwavering protection.

  She was taking me to safety.

  Twelve hours before, when I was supposed to be doing schoolwork, I’d heard the argument.

  Where Mamma went crazy because he—the man who dared to call himself my father—had sold my body. As if I were nothing but a ragdoll in a toy store, free to be used and tossed around. As if a spin in the washing machine would wash away the dirt from what he had planned for me.

  As if I were… nothing.

  He was stupid. He knew nothing. Mamma would never let that fly. She’d never let her daughter be used as a pawn in his desperate power game.

  I closed my eyes tightly as Darien started the car and pulled away from the car. There were no lights, nothing to illuminate our way. I had no idea where we were headed. I didn’t know what lay ahead.

  I just knew I had what I needed. Mamma.

  And that she’d saved me from a fate possibly worth from death: rape. She’d saved me from a lifetime of horrifying flashbacks and struggles.

  But… Hunter, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. Carlo ‘Hunter’ Rosso. My best friend as long as I’d been alive and the guy I was sure I would marry. The guy I loved without question or deliberation, although I was sure I didn’t exactly know what love was. What I did know of it, I adored him with.

  He would be hurt. So hurt.

  Memories flashed before my
eyes. Theme parks. Gun ranges. Sleepovers. His arms around me as someone we loved died. Cotton candy in the lights of a local fair. Hugging him as his older brother was pronounced dead on sight. My uncle arrested. His mother disappearing. My mother protecting us. His father contesting her choices.

  My mother holding a knife to his father’s throat, as though he could argue her choices. As though he could blame her, the queen, for something she had no hand in. For something someone else had orchestrated.

  The kidnapping I’d survived because of Darien. Because Hunter was so obsessed with my safety his teenaged old self followed me to the ends of the earth and into the devil’s lair.

  I took a deep breath, and although I was barely thirteen, I promised myself something as the chill from the leather seats spread through my shirt and across my back.

  My name, Adriana, was dark.

  My nickname, scuro, was dark.

  My life, a mafia princess, was dark.

  My father had no idea what he’d done.

  One day, he would pay.

  He would atone for his sins.

  I would make sure of it.

  Chapter One – Adriana

  “I don’t care, Rossi, you’re not having the tuna.”

  Rossi mewed at me, winding his black and white body around my ankles. I could hear his cat-speak, that relentless meowing that pleaded, “Please, Mommy.”

  “Oh, fine.” I grabbed a fork, bent over, and pulled the tuna flakes out into his bowl. He made a happy sound and abandoned his ankle circling to devour the fishy snack.

  There went my lunch.

  I'd long determined that if I ever fell in love and had children, they'd be the world's most spoiled brats. If I couldn't say no to my loving, two year old cat, I stood no chance against tiny humans that would be ten times louder and more annoying.

  As it was, Rossi was my baby, and damn. He knew it. I hated it.

  It was my own fault. I knew better than to open tuna without checking the house to see if he was around. Or the yard, come to think of it. The damn animal had the nose of a rottweiler and could smell fish a mile away.

  I'm not kidding when I say that three weeks ago, he jumped out of the window and headed into next door's house because he smelled fish.

  It took me at least three minutes to walk there. Rossi was wasted as a pet—I should have given him to the LAPD. He would have out-sniffed their dogs any day.

  My phone buzzed on the side with a message from Darien, and I picked up the shiny new Samsung I could barely work.

  Darien: working late. The publicist messed up the schedule.

  I rolled my eyes as I texted back a quick, 'k,' mostly because I knew it would annoy him, and that had been my guilty pleasure for the last ten years, no matter how much I owed the man.

  The day after we arrived in California, escaping our old life in New York to protect me, Darien threw himself into work. As the bloodline for the Romano mafia family, Mamma had enough money hidden in secret, which enabled us to buy this house and live secretly. Darien quickly became one of the most sought-after security guards in Los Angeles, his appearance hidden by shaving his hair short and never leaving the house without sunglasses. Even Mamma insisted that she and I had to change. She dyed her hair, she cut mine, and she kept cutting it until I was sixteen and decided I didn't want to hide anymore.

  She wasn't stupid, and neither was I. We both knew my father would find us. It was just a matter of when.

  And whether or not anyone within the Los Angeles family would rat us out. Apparently the money my mother supplied them with on a monthly basis was enough to publicly ignore our entire existence.

  I was amazed we'd lived ten years. Well... I had.

  I shook off the thoughts of my mother as Rossi meowed loudly. Apparently, I'd been ignoring him while stuck in my own head. Nothing new there. I looked down at my feet, but he wasn't there, which only meant one thing. It wasn't me he was meowing at... Rather a bird or perhaps next door's tuna again.

  I reached forward and opened the kitchen window. Rossi jumped out, his paws hitting the grass silently, and he bounded up onto the wall. I swore he was Tigger in a past life. The feline had back feet made of springs.

  With a sigh, I picked up the bowl he'd licked clean of tuna and put it in the dishwasher. The older I got, the more I found my thoughts traveling back to the life I had before this. I'd made myself a promise the day we left New York, and I had every intention of keeping it... until I realized exactly what that promise would entail.

  Sneaking away from California and across the country. Into New York. Find the Hamptons house my father was happily living in... the one that belonged to me... And kill him.

  That was the short version. I imagined the long version to be a lot bloodier than that one.

  So it never happened. I'd stayed here in California, afraid that telling Darien would make him put me on lockdown, and that's the last thing I wanted. My life was sheltered enough as it was, limited to attending UCLA for an advanced degree and grocery shopping.

  Oh, not to forget the monthly meetings with the highest members of the Los Angeles family. How else was my existence supposed to remain secret? With my mother's death, the job of protecting me fell to... me. The meetings every few weeks consisted of my buying their silence for another month and them updating me on whether or not my father knows about me.

  Just because they protected me doesn't mean that other families did.

  All it would take would be for one person to look hard enough. I was hardly hiding. I didn't care enough about hiding. The only reason I didn't have a neon sign proclaiming my existence on the roof of our Calabasas house was because I promised Mamma I would do what I could to stay safe until the time for revenge came.

  That's why the only friend I had other than Darien—and Rossi, of course—was Gaige Pontarelli, the second son of the head of the Los Angeles family. His brother, Angelo, was his father's shadow, which left Gaige to amuse me, as it was put.

  Like the fact the money I handed his father every month didn't keep his place at the head of the family secure. I could collapse his family in a heartbeat if I was willing to take the risk of being found by my own family.

  That day was coming closer.

  My phone buzzed on the counter and I picked it up. Gaige's name flashed on the screen with a new message, and I clicked 'open.'

  Gaige: Ciao, bella. Let me the fuck in.

  I laughed loudly as I put the phone down and headed for the front door. Our community was gated, but he was on the entry gate, so I rarely knew he was coming unless he... Well, unless I called him first. Usually this was how he showed up: randomly.

  I peered through the spyhole in the door and down at my ruggedly handsome friend. His hair looked like he'd just had ten rounds on an electric chair, as it always did, but the rest of him was impeccably put together, from his soft brown eyes, sharp cheekbones and plump lips.

  I pressed the button on the intercom. “Who is it?”

  “Bite me, Addy.” He hammered his fist on the door. “Let me in. I'm turning into a fucking tomato.”

  I rolled my eyes and unlocked the door, then opened it. I turned without waiting for him to follow me. “Tomato, right. Is that under that thick Italian skin of yours?”

  “You wound me, baby.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at his grinning face. “What do you want, Pontarelli?”

  “You know,” he started, “I want a coffee.” He grabbed my shoulders and steered me into the kitchen. “Be a doll.”

  “Or you can kiss my ass and make your own damn coffee.” I shrugged his hands off of me and pulled a bottle of water from the fridge. “Aren't you supposed to be... I don't know. Doing something this afternoon?”

  “Oh, like work?” He raised his eyebrows as he fired up the coffee machine. “Yeah. Supposedly. Except Dad decided Angelo was doing it instead.”

  “What were you supposed to be doing?”

  “Not a fucking clue.”

  �
�Don't you think that's why Angelo is doing it instead?”

  “I know that's why Angelo is doing it,” he confirmed. “Why do you think I don't know what I was supposed to be doing? I'm already the black sheep. All I had to do was stare blankly at Dad when he called me down this morning and he told me to come protect the little princess.”

  I snorted. “Little princess. Next time he says that, remind him who keeps his ass from being sliced off by someone else.”

  “Not the greatest visual in the world, but it works.” Gaige dumped three teaspoons of sugar in his black coffee, making me wrinkle my nose in disgust. “What?”

  “I don't know how you drink it like that,” I told him. “Just the smell of black coffee makes me feel sick.”

  “What can I say? I take my coffee the way I like my women; sweetness and darkness all in one.”

  Yet again, I rolled my eyes. “Yes, those poor women. I bet they last as long as a cup of coffee, too.”

  “Now, now, Addy,” he chastised me. “I last longer than a cup of coffee, so they certainly do.”

  “And once you're done with them?” I walked into the front room. “Precisely.”

  “Look, baby, I'm the son of the head of Los Angeles's crime family. I can't settle for just anyone. And she certainly needs to have real tits, because if a fake one gets shot, I don't wanna be cleaning that mess up.” He sat on the other end of the sofa. “Besides, they all think I'm an up and coming actor.”

  “You're a permanent actor. I don't think I've ever seen you be honest with a woman.” I tucked some hair behind my ear. “Except the time we met and I caught you masturbating because you didn't shut the bathroom door properly.”

  A hint of red flamed in his cheeks, and I just about bit back a laugh. Yeah. I'd never tire of reminding him of that. He hadn't been told that Mamma and I were coming to his house, and when I'd gone to use the bathroom, I'd found him in it.

  “Why do you keep bringing that up? I was fifteen. I had to get my kicks somewhere.”

  “I'm just saying, Gaige, you should have been in your room or have locked the bathroom door.”

  “One day, I'm going to walk in on you masturbating, and then you won't be so cocky. Mostly because I won't walk out.”