Page 47 of Hunter's Revenge

Then sell me.

With my soul shaking and the pain in my face spreading over my entire body, I stand.

My gaze lands on the picture of my grandfather dressed in his Air Force uniform. It’s hanging near the fridge. Grams put it there because my grandfather loved her cooking, and her pancakes were one of his favorite ways to start the day.

As I look at the picture now, I see my grandfather’s smiling face, but he makes me think of another military man I know.

I can’t go to the police about Conrad, but there’s someone else who might help me.

Maybe I can go to the ex-Navy lieutenant I’ve felt wasn’t entirely who he claims to be. That tattoo of his means something, and he might be exactly the person who can deal with a man like Conrad.

Maybe in this instance, the devil I don’t know can help me before the one I know destroys me.

I have to try.

ChapterEleven

Malik

Itake a drag on my cigar and blow out several rings of smoke. They drift outside through the window and blend in with the darkness of the night.

I suppose I blend in too. I’m sitting on the window bay with the lights out in the room. The only visible light is the glowing fiery end of my cigar.

I’m alone in the house. Zakh left for Allyson’s party a little while ago. I could have gone with him but I decided to stay back and keep looking through the recordings of the park.

We spent the entire day searching through a total of a hundred videos and found nothing.

The day feels like it was wasted, but I’m going to keep going until the end. Only then will I accept that I tried everything.

I’m just taking a break now. And thinking about Gwen. St. James.

She’s crept right back in my mind, along with the wildness we shared last night.

I’m fully aware I only dragged myself away from her body because she fell asleep. Chances are if she hadn’t, I’d still be balls deep inside her.

Her slumber gave me the moment of reprieve to come back to my senses. But I haven’t been able to shake her from my system.

I know never to mix business with pleasure, and what’s worse is mixing business with the pleasure of a woman who’s not from my world.

The unwritten rules imply never to do it, and the written ones dictate the same thing.

Even though my father allowed me to branch out and join the Navy, if he were still alive, he would have married me off by now to an heir of the Knights or a woman from the Bratva elite. That is the rules and the law of the Knights.

As a Volkova, it’s also my legacy. I’m just not one for playing by the rules.

Since I’m planning to marry the heir to the Navarro Cartel and their pharmaceutical company so I can take over, no rules on earth or Valhalla apply to me.

No one can come and tell me having control over such a giant wouldn’t benefit us in unimaginable ways many have never thought of attaining.

Of course, that’s if I get it.

This is all taking too long for men like my brother and me who have technology at our fingertips. And I guess that’s just the problem—technology can’t solve everything.

People can still hide their secrets and bury them deep, deep in the earth where people like us can’t find them.

Right now, I’m in this Pleasantville-looking town where everyone knows their neighbor and they’re all too close for comfort. I’ve come to a standstill and I can’t see my way around.

I’m not one to accept defeat, and I won’t. Not when I’ve come so far. It’s just that, as usual, time is fucking with me. It wants me to wait the way I did for that year in Kazakhstan when those motherfuckers made a game of me. And time wants me to wait like an idiot for another six years to pass before I get another breakthrough. Or nothing.