SATURDAY NIGHT I SAT wrapped in a warm cashmere blanket on the cool leather couch reading a book while Brant worked away diligently on his computer. He’d been at it all day to the soundtrack of frustrated grunts with constant glances at his phone. All of it seemed like evidence in hindsight. I no longer wavered in my belief; I knew down to my toes that the man I’d shared my life with the last four years had a darker side, something criminal that lived deep, he just dressed it up in a white collar and tie.
I trained my eyes on his bent head his brow furrowed deeper than it’d been all day. Thoughts swirled in my mind as I tried to remember acquaintances from dinner parties or even people he may have met back in college that had brought JW and Brant together.
‘Something on your mind, Erin?’ Brant’s hollow voice pulled me from my thoughts. My eyes focused, and I saw his eyes pin me with some dark mix of fear and hate. I swallowed the lump in my throat and felt the pit in my stomach turn into cold cement. Brant shot from his chair and stalked across the room and yanked me from my place on the couch to stand with him. I squirmed in his tight grip.
‘That hurts, Brant,’ I mumbled as I tried to pull my elbow from his hand.
‘You’d better keep your fucking mouth shut, Erin. Whatever you think you know,’ he snarled in my face with his hot breath washing across my skin in a sickening wave. ‘It’s in your best interest to keep your mouth shut.’
I nodded with quietly contained fear, unwilling to see the end of his rope tonight. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brant,’ I whispered before his palm loosened and his eyes flicked to mine, a wild lost look burning bright in his brown depths.
He sucked in a slow breath then ran a hand across the back of his neck kneading at a taut muscle.
‘Do you want me to get you a drink?’ I simpered, trying to play my role as his blind wife for my own safety and thinking red wine sounded more than perfect to calm my own racing nerves.
“Got Laphroaig’s?” Brant uttered as he stalked to his chair.
“Of course.” I padded out of the living room and into the kitchen to pull down a bottle of my husband’s expensive vice from the shelf.
It was then that I heard it.
The small unassuming noise that carries with it so much possibility. So much dread.
The slamming of a car door, the crunch of steps on the brick sidewalk, and then silence. Loud, stifling silence.
Knock, knock, knock.
My heart dropped to my feet and I nearly choked on my tongue.
“Can you get it?” Brant called from the far off room, and I sucked in a slow breath.
I had a fraction of an instant where my mind went back to before I’d run into Hunter on that street, and I knew nothing of the financial affairs of my husband or his company. I could’ve opened that door, head held high and without fear and greeted the visitor with a smile just like I would anyone other.
But this, this was different. I could feel it. It tightened my throat and suffocated my lungs. “Okay,” I croaked, hoping he could hear me, shuffling my feet into motion.
This moment. This was the moment Hunter had been talking about. This is where I chose to survive or go down with Brant.
“Hello?” I swung the door open with as much bravado as I could muster and had only a split second to scream before a blanket was pulled over my head and I was rushed from my home.
My eyes burned as I was hustled down the sidewalk and shoved into a car. With a soft hum, the vehicle whipped from the curb and we were speeding down the street. Just as we turned a tight corner, I heard car tires squealing to a halt and saw fading red light flittering at the edges of my sight. With my heart thundering out of my chest, I pulled the blanket from my head and swung my eyes around the dark interior of the car.
“Hunter?” His eyes moved to me, sympathetic for a moment before turning back to the street, his knuckles white with clutching the wheel. “What’s happening?” I struggled to contain my terror.
“Shit went down tonight,” he said, as if that were the only answer necessary. I turned away, flabbergasted.
Hunter’s eyes focused doggedly on the road as I sat waiting for his answer. He stared on, as if he hadn’t even heard me, his knuckles white as he clutched at the wheel. I’d never seen him like this, so hardened, so lacking the soft comforting side I’d come to know of him. This Hunter was intense, relentless, his eyes sparking with that cold glare that chilled my heart. Had I been wrong all along? Maybe Hunter had betrayed me, was handing me over to JW tonight, and had played me for the fool all along.
Tears stung my eyelids as I twisted my hands in my lap and thought it was over. If I’d been wrong about Hunter, my life was over tonight. I had trusted him, and it may have signed my own death warrant. And Brant’s.
“He put his hands on you,” Hunter finally growled, yanking me from my anxious descent into fear.
“Hunter?” My hand shot to my mouth. Of course he’d been watching all night. The timing made perfect sense.
“He’s lucky I didn’t kill him.” Hunter’s gaze hardened as he focused on the road, the speedometer pushing over ninety miles an hour as we sped through the night, giving no indication that he would answer any more questions. I turned my attention away from his fierce and rugged profile and focused on calming my breaths and my thoughts. Just how much trouble was I in with him?
By the time we were turning down a darkened road a while later, Hunter’s forehead was cut with worry lines, his jaw clenched in the suffocating silence.
“Where are we?” I finally questioned when the road curved into the woods before ending at a small cabin, weathered and in need of upkeep.
“A cabin up north. We’re going to lay low for a while.” He tipped his head at me and winked.
“Does JW know you’re here?” I asked, worry infiltrating my voice.
“No one does.” He shook his head, eyes watery with sincerity. I calmed my throbbing heart and sucked in a breath, looking back to the cabin silhouetted in the moonlight. “I don’t trust a single soul.” His eyes shuttered closed for a moment in pain, then he opened the car door and was out of the car. “Sorry I had to take you like that. I didn’t want you there when they took Brant. I wasn’t sure how everything would play out, and I had to keep the ruse that you were clueless. Brant and JW had to think you were taken; I didn’t want anyone asking too many questions.” His eyes shot to my own then back to the road. “And I didn’t want you to see anything you couldn’t handle.” His low rumble cut through the silence of the car. I sat listening quietly, hardly comprehending the words.
“How long are we here for?” I asked meekly as I pulled a few duffels that he’d brought from the backseat. By the number of bags, I had a feeling he’d packed for me too. It seemed I was never far from his thoughts.
“We’re here until things die down in the city. Headlines aren’t good, babe.’ Hunter’s eyes sliced to me. ‘Few weeks at least. I don’t want you around that.’ He finished and then turned back to the cabin, taking steps ahead of me.
I shook the fog from my brain, cleared my thoughts, and put one foot in front of the other to follow him.
One step at a time. One moment at a time. One day at a time. That’s how I would get through this.
