‘`Please, please God, no please.” I dropped to my knees on the soft dirt as crimson red pooled and disappeared into the granules. I watched helplessly, searching between my legs to find more fresh blood covering my pale fingers before a scream barreled from my lungs and my blurred vision registered a tall, dark man standing across from me, a glint of cold metal in his hand.
Fresh blood glistened on my fingertips. The baby. No. Not the baby.
I woke in a cold sweat to the sound of wind whistling through the old logs of the cabin. I was in the woods with Hunter. I was safe. With a quick stretch, I searched for Hunter’s warm body buried in the blankets next to me and came up empty. I yawned then stood, walking from the room, thinking orange juice and a midnight snack didn’t sound bad at all. I glanced across the main living area in search of Hunter. His automatic rifle sat on the coffee table where he’d left it after cleaning. The man was an arsenal of deadly weapons. I sighed and kept looking for Hunter when a shout caught my attention from outside.
I turned for the door, bursting out on the wide wraparound porch to find Hunter in the small dirt driveway, his gun aimed squarely at a chest not ten yards away.
“Oh God.” My heart slammed against my rib cage and my hands rose to my mouth as I caught sight of the snarled teeth and blocky form of JW.
“I know you flipped on me, son,” JW said with cold malice.
“No, no, no,” I whimpered before my brain kicked into overdrive and I thought about grabbing the weapon behind me on the coffee table. The one Hunter had cleaned earlier, never knowing tonight that we’d need it.
“Erin! My sweet girl!” JW called just as my gumption was ready to propel me into action. My muscles tensed and my knees locked with fear. Rooted on the front porch, I turned my eyes to Hunter’s.
“Don’t go near her,” Hunter warned, his stance unwavering, his aim steady.
JW’s sardonic chuckle carried on the breeze and chilled my bones. “Wishing you hadn’t gotten involved with Clu now I bet, huh?” His laugh rattled me and I took a few mindless steps forward before freezing in place. As if confronting him was the smartest option. Hardly.
“Erin, go back inside,” Hunter ordered, his gaze still focused on JW.
“Don’t move, Erin,” JW barked before a terrifying smile lit his hard face and he opened the rear door of his vehicle and pulled a trembling form from the back seat.
“Oh my God.” I lifted a palm to my mouth to cover my horror. My mom. The bastard had my mom.
“Thought you’d like that.” JW hauled my mom across the dirt, her eyes wide with terror. “Had to duct tape her mouth she fucking screamed so much.” He huffed and fisted her hair, lifting her face to my sight.
“Let her go. This is between you and me.” Hunter’s voice and the sound of a gun hammer cocking echoed in the night.
“You’re gonna wanna think twice about that, son,” JW sneered and wrapped a forearm around my mother’s chest, the blade of a knife glinting at her trachea. “Get rid of the gun or we’re going to find out what happens when I sever her windpipe.”
“No!” I shrieked as fear, like a ragged blade, sliced my heart. I watched, helpless on the porch and shaking uncontrollably as Hunter’s eyes, without wavering, tossed the hunk of metal in the dirt.
“Let them go in the house. They’re innocent in this.” Hunter took one slow step forward, hand outstretched as he eased closer to JW and my mom. Her eyes blinked as they darted from Hunter to me and back again, her chest heaving with choked pants.
“Innocent?” JW’s eyes flared. “Your husband fucked me over,” turning his attention to me. “Now you’re fucking my son? I try to give you everything on a fucking platter and you fuck it up.” I stood caught in his icy stare.
“What are you talking about?” I whispered, riveted despite my better sense.
“I set your ma up all those years ago with that place outside the city. Take care of her and you. I didn’t want you in this life, so I bought your way out of it. You never would have had a chance growing up with me as a dad.”
His words vibrated through every cell of my body and caused horror to pulse through my blood. Dad? This couldn’t be real, no way it was possible. Sure, I’d grown up on the East Side, had a mom addicted to booze and drugs, but JW? How was it that his blood ran through my veins? His vile, evil, tainted blood laced through my genetic makeup like poison?
“W-what?” My eyes flared with utter fear at the possibility. He was manipulating me, knew I wanted to find my dad, so he was using it against me. Spitting vicious lies and confusing my head.
“April sixth. My beautiful brown-eyed girl was born.” His sinister voice rang my birth date. “`Round six pm if memory serves.” His eyes flashed to my mother’s, a vile smile curving his mouth. “Go ahead,” his wretched lips flashed at my mom’s ear. I shuddered as if the faint odor of cigars and death were creeping up my own skin. “Tell her the truth.” His fat fingers caught my mother’s chin and forced her gaze to mine.
She blinked once, twice, before her eyes finally fell closed, her chin dropping to her chest in defeat. No. Not possible. This man was not my father. I had not spent nearly thirty years of my life daydreaming about a man who murdered and maimed for a living.
“Shut the fuck up.” Hunter took another long stride towards his step-father. “She doesn’t need to know.”
“The fuck she doesn’t,” JW snarled and tightened his hold on my mother.
“No,” I said loudly, shaking my head in disbelief. “NO!”
“Don’t look so disappointed. Who do you think paid for that fancy education of yours?” JW chided. “The Christmases with presents around the tree. Your ma even sent me school pictures.” He spoke, the blade still pressing at the soft flesh of her neck. “See, I never wanted any brats, knew this wasn’t the life for them, but then your ma goes and gets knocked up,” JW said. “Couldn’t raise a kid in this city and do business, but I did take care of you. I was raised to put family first, whatever Clu may think.” He didn’t break my gaze as he spoke. He watched my heart shudder and shake before it crumbled into one thousand jagged pieces at my feet. The bastard enjoyed this.
“Truth was I loved your ma,” he gruffed and my mother’s eyes grew as wide as saucers. The ones that haunted my dreams, that resonated something ugly and honest to their depths. How hadn’t I noticed before? They held that same cold lifeless gleam that’d taunted me.
“So I made sure the house was bought outright so I at least knew you had a roof over your head. I don’t know if she raised you right–even then she was too fucking broken to see past herself, but I figured she was better to raise a kid than me.” I watched as Hunter slowly approached, listening to every word JW uttered while he was distracted in the sins of his past, my mother weak and trembling in his defiant arms. “Tried to take care of you when you married that asshole too. I knew he was an asshole, Erin, how didn’t you see that?” JW said, just another of his startling revelations that felt like a blow to my chest, before continuing on. “Set the dumbfuck up with a foolproof company to pass money through. It was as legit as I could make it for you, baby, but he got fucking money hungry. I didn’t mind it at first, saw the life you were living, the big house, the cars, the trips, but then I saw he started fucking treating you bad. No one treats my little girl bad.” How could he actually be trying to convince me that he’d done what was best? My emotions raged like a caged animal, my rib cage the prison.
“You tied me to a chair in a warehouse!” I screeched, anger finally vibrating through every cell of my body. I wanted to kill him myself for all the lies and violence he’d caused.
“Just had to put some fear into you. Make sure you didn’t make any bad decisions.” His golden eyes sparkled as a half grin lifted his face and turned my stomach. This man wasn’t a father — he was the devil incarnate.
“Fuck you,” I spit, equal parts rage and anguish pulsing through me.
“Interested how I found you way up here in the fucking sticks?” His eyes gleamed with the promise of another startling revelation just as my mom’s eyes averted to the soft dirt at her feet. “Your ma has a weakness for one thing, and we both know it.” He looked at me pointedly. Money. My heart crushed by a vice, drowning my anger in despair, I gasped for breath. I couldn’t look at her right now, my gaze riveted on the man who’d manipulated my life like the strings of a puppet. “Offered her a grand to let me tap her phone. Tracked the signal and followed you right up here. Your mama gave you up, Princess. I wasn’t going to bring her along for the ride, but it’s been so long since we had a little family chat.” He tapped the knife at my mother’s throat, her head shaking back and forth in violent repulsion. “Thought it would be fun.” His smile widened with malice.
“M-m-mom helped you?’ You helped him? How could you?” Shock seeped through my system as my lungs deflated in one agonizing swoop.
“Sorry. She’s never been one to trust. Too bad it took you thirty years to figure it out,” JW’s eyes held mine as if focused on a target. “Thought I finally owed you a little delivery.” JW loosened his hold on my mom, his cryptic statement echoing in my ears as time seemed to shudder and halt to a stop. My life began a slow parade before my eyes. This was my nightmare coming true. Someone would soon be bleeding in the dirt as life slipped away. JW, the man who’d just confessed to being my father, had a death grip on my life, and now he was about to make it official.
In the next instant Hunter had reached JW, gripping JW’s wrist and bending it awkwardly before landing a swift punch at the inside of his elbow, causing JW to drop the knife in reflex.
Without letting go of his wrist, Hunter spun JW’s body away from my mother, causing her weak body to skitter into the dirt. Without thinking twice my feet pounded down the steps and I sprinted across the driveway to land next to her, pulling her head into my lap to shield her however I could.
I heard a soft thud in the dirt and watched as JW dropped to one knee, his calf twisted at an unnatural angle before I heard a soft snick. I trembled and shook before Hunter pulled JW up from his kneeling position and wrapped one hand around his throat, the other landing a sharp object into his carotid artery, fresh blood spitting from the wound. In another blink, Hunter twisted JW’s arm behind his body, exposing the soft underside of a pale wrist, before plunging the instrument into the pulsing veins there. Hunter landed one final kick to the back of JW’s shin before JW collapsed in the dirt, his form eerily silent as the grunts and gasping ceased.
I watched with wide, absent irises as Hunter stood over the lifeless form, a bloodied BIC pen, used as a dagger of death, dropping in the dirt at his feet. Blood pooled beneath JW’s body and darkened the sandy earth. Hunter bent and placed fingers at JW’s neck checking for a pulse, before he pulled JW’s arm from his side and pulled the worn leather jacket open. A small manila envelope fell out, the edges scalloped in JW’s darkening blood.
Hunter stepped away, his gaze finally turning back to me, shimmering with sympathy and maybe something else, something akin to regret. I saw him swallow before he took the remaining steps to close the distance between us. “He didn’t have a gun.” Hunter tossed the envelope in the dirt, my name written in quick chicken scratch across the top, before he kneeled and very gently peeled the tape from my mother’s mouth “Are you hurt anywhere?”
Her dark brown eyes the size of saucers, she shook her head slowly before trying out her voice. In a croaky tone she whispered, “Thank you.”
My heart thumped in slow beats, barely pumping blood through my system as my body adjusted to the tragedy of the entire night. I didn’t know if I would ever recover, could ever. I also didn’t know if I wanted to see what that envelope contained.
“You okay?” He finally turned to me, his hands darting to my face while his thumbs caressed my cheekbones. I looked in Hunter’s eyes before tears surged down my cheeks in relentless waterfalls of pain and heartache as the life I thought I knew morphed into something much more horrifying. “I can’t do this anymore,” I choked before my body succumbed to full tremors and a cold sweat lit my forehead as the dark navy night faded to black.
