HE KNEW MY NAME.
In the first instant after the Hunter had spoken, that thought blotted out everything else in my mind. No one knew the name I currently went by, the name the household had given me, except the members of the household, who were all dead, and the Chaos Crew. And this man.
My questions were multiplying by the second.
I knew this was his one and only offer to talk. The Hunter wouldn’t reconsider, and if I turned it down, I had a feeling he’d simply kick us out of the club and call it a day.
But the thought of going off with him alone on his own turf made my skin itch with apprehension.
“You’re not taking her alone,” Julius said, who’d flanked me. “What makes you think we’ll trust you not to kill her the moment you two are alone?”
The Hunter gave him a blandly bored look. “What makes you think I couldn’t have had her killed a dozen times over before now if that’s what I really wanted?” He shifted his attention back to me. “Unless you don’t actually want answers as badly as it appeared. Make your decision. I’d rather not waste more of my time waiting on you.”
I felt Talon tense beside me, but I spoke up before either of my men could argue further. In the end, it was my call. “I’ll do it. Where do you want to talk?”
Julius adjusted his weight restlessly but kept his opinions to himself. I knew he and the rest of the crew would be watching over me as well as they could from a distance. I didn’t think I had to worry about my life in this situation, though. The Hunter had invested a lot of time and energy in developing a connection with me. I might have hated how much he’d manipulated me, but I didn’t think he’d have bothered with all that just to off me on a whim.
A small smile crossed the Hunter’s lips, chilly rather than warm. “I knew you’d make the right choice. Step into my office.”
He made a casual motion with his hand and led me around the bar to a discreet door. Two of his bodyguards followed us into the room on the other side, which did appear to be a pretty typical office. A big wooden desk took up a substantial portion of the space, with a heavy leather chair behind it, a bookcase on one wall and a liquor cabinet with a small private bar area on the other.
The bodyguards stopped by the door as it closed behind us. I couldn’t tell whether they were watching to make sure that I didn’t escape through it or that no one barged in after us. Maybe both.
The Hunter moved to the bar with the assured air that seemed to come naturally to him. He flicked his hand over his slicked-back hair and started pouring himself a glass of scotch.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” he asked smoothly, as if we were about to broker some high-class business deal rather than discuss his dirty underworld dealings. “You look like you need a shot or two.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “I don’t drink when I’m working.” I sure as hell wasn’t going to give him even more of an opportunity to mess with my head.
“Is that what we’re doing?” He carried his glass over to his desk and sat behind it. “I thought we were simply going to have a quick chat. The ability to unwind can be just as useful as any other skill.”
“The only thing I want to unwind is your role in my life,” I said, fighting to keep an impatient edge out of my voice as I stood across from him. “Why were you pushing me to look into the Maliks’ history? What’s your connection to the group that called themselves ‘the household’? How do you know my name?”
The Hunter tsked at me. “Patience, patience. Another important skill.” He took a slow sip and smiled with evident satisfaction. Then he set the glass on the desk by his left hand and retrieved a pistol from a drawer at his right. He laid that on the desk too, pointed off to the side but in easy reach. “Just so we’re clear that I’m quite capable of defending myself even without my guards, if you had any aspirations.”
“I just want answers,” I snapped. “Did you plan on giving me any or not? It seems like you’re the one wasting my time, yet again.”
“Oh, I don’t think any of the time I’ve spent on you has been a waste,” the Hunter said with an amused glint in his eyes that made me want to poke them right through his skull.
“Then you shouldn’t have any trouble explaining it to me.”
He leaned back in his chair with a subtle sigh, folding his hands in his lap. I noticed he didn’t have any other seating in the room—I guessed that for whatever meetings he normally conducted in here, he purposefully kept the other parties standing to stop them from feeling fully comfortable in his presence. An interesting tactic for a man teasing me about not being able to relax.
Taking another sip, he studied me over the glass of scotch. “You want to know how I’m involved in your life. And whether I’ve lied to you.”
“That’d be a good start.”
“Well, as I’ve already told you, my daughter was killed by the Maliks, almost thirty years ago. That’s what started us down the path we’re essentially at the end of. They set those events in motion. I merely paid back what they deserved.”
The Hunter had kept up his disinterested cool through the entire conversation so far, but with those words, I caught a ripple of grief and rage in his voice. I didn’t think he was lying. He had one sore spot in the death of his child, one small point of weakness, as awful as it’d be to make use of that kind of loss for my own ends.
“She was the blond girl in the picture,” I said, and paused. “Did you leave those photos for me to find? You set up that box in my grandmother’s name figuring I’d find it?”
He lifted his shoulder in the slightest of shrugs. “Everything I showed you about your family was true. I didn’t need to invent any horrors when they’d already committed plenty of perfectly real ones. Yes, I put some of the pieces together for you and pointed you in the right direction to get you to the truth sooner, but I won’t apologize for that.”
I wasn’t sure I could demand that he did. I was glad that I’d found out the truth about my birth family before I’d gotten any more enmeshed in their lives. Before I’d cared even more about my place with them and losing what I’d only just regained. I couldn’t challenge the Hunter’s claims—the Maliks had admitted to their child-torturing cult when I’d confronted them. My dad had been so delusional he honestly believed that killing kids would somehow create supernatural energies to stop other crimes…
It made me queasy just remembering his determined expression. The way he’d talked to me about bringing me into the fold. So convinced of his righteousness despite the horrible things he’d done.
But there were other answers I needed.
“Why wait so long?” I asked. “You said your daughter was killed almost thirty years ago. You’ve obviously got resources. Why were you only trying to get vengeance now—why did you have me do it? Wouldn’t it have been more satisfying to take your revenge with your own hands?”
A different sort of gleam came into the Hunter’s eyes, this one predatory enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “Oh, no, there couldn’t have been a more perfect vengeance than the one I crafted so carefully. He stole my daughter from me, so I stole his from him. I sculpted her—you—into the perfect killing machine to cut him down, so he’d not only know what it’s like to lose a child but to meet his end at her hands.”
The nausea in my gut coiled tighter. He’d just added one more piece to the puzzle I was still struggling to fit together. “You stole me from him? But—it was the household that took me and trained me. You had them slaughtered.”
Another of those barely perceptible shrugs. “They were mine to do with as I pleased. They carried out the task I gave them—to raise you so that you could deliver the most poetic justice possible—and then they sacrificed themselves to point you in the right direction.” His gaze hardened for a second. “It was unfortunate that a break in protocol meant you were left to your own devices for some time. But all’s well that ends well.”
I stared at him. They “sacrificed” themselves? It definitely hadn’t looked to me like the people of the household had given themselves up to the slaughter willingly. Anna clearly hadn’t had any idea that the attack was part of some master plan in which I’d be spared. She’d let me out of my rooms in an attempt to protect me.
That was the break in protocol he was talking about so coldly, wasn’t it? The only act of real caring I’d gotten in my entire time under their—or his?—rule.
I reached to the back of my neck, to the spot I’d seen using a mirror where I’d been tattooed with a shape like a teardrop with a line slicing diagonally through it. “The mark on my neck—there was a woman out there in the club with the same one. She belonged to the household too?”
The Hunter chuckled. “You all belong to me. I sometimes mark my property to ensure it can’t be stolen from me.”
I bristled automatically. “I don’t belong to anyone.”
“I made you who you are, Decima. If it wasn’t for me, you’d have been one of those duplicitous Maliks, spoiled and rotten to the core. You should thank me for making you mine.”
My teeth gritted, but I held back any cutting remarks about gratitude while there was so much I still didn’t understand.
“So you’re saying that the household worked for you. You ordered them to kidnap me and train me. And then you hired hitmen to murder all of them—well, almost all of them.” Noelle had survived, who knew for what purpose other than possibly to control me as she’d tried to in vain. “Why would you kill your own people?”
The Hunter spread his hands in front of him. “There were a lot of factors that went into that decision.”
I glowered at him. “How about you lay them out for me?”
“My reasons are hardly relevant to our current situation.”
“Then why are you hiding them from me?” I demanded. “Or are you ashamed of the choices you made? I thought you were so pleased with your whole plan, and now you don’t want to tell me about it?”
One of the guards stirred on his feet at the jab, but the Hunter made a brief gesture that stilled the other man. My pointed remarks seemed to have gotten through to him.
“Your path toward your father and the rest of your family was meant to be much straighter and smoother,” he said evenly. “Your main handler was to have released you from your rooms later that night after we were sure the mercenaries were no longer observing, and with her, you’d have discovered evidence pointing to Malik as the instigator of the massacre. You’d have gone after him and destroyed him simply for that.”
At the matter-of-factness of his tone, my stomach flipped right over. “You killed dozens of your employees so that I’d believe a lie?”
“You needed the right motivation,” the Hunter said. “It’d have been easier if you’d come to it directly. All of my people are willing to die for me if required. I choose my employees carefully. They rarely know when that moment might come.”
But I doubted they ever expected it to come from their boss’s hand, not while they were seeing through his orders with all the loyalty they could offer. My fingernails dug into my palms. All those people had died—Anna had died—so this monster could play his little game.
“It didn’t work,” I had to point out. “They all died, and you never got to put on your little charade of framing my father.”
The Hunter rubbed his jaw. “A miscalculation, I’ll admit. Your escape threw everything out of order, and I had to think on my feet to reach my goals. But we got there in the end, and I think in an even more satisfying way than I originally conceived.”
Killing dozens of people—people who’d devoted their lives to carrying out his work—was nothing more than a miscalculation to him? I restrained a shudder.
“None of that matters now,” the Hunter went on, as if oblivious to my revulsion. “Revenge has been served, and we can get down to other business.”
I arched my eyebrows at him. “Other business?” What made him think I’d want anything else to do with him after this?
He inclined his head. “Thanks to me and my resources, you’ve been trained exceptionally well. I don’t think I’d be overstretching to say you may be the best solo assassin in the world. I’ll give you as much credit for that as I give myself.”
Oh, he would, would he? Somehow he got half the credit when I’d done all the training? “Thank you so very much,” I said with a heap of sarcasm.
The Hunter ignored my tone. “Now that I’ve seen the results of my efforts in action, I’m quite pleased with what you’ve become. I’d like you to come onto my payroll officially.”
My jaw nearly dropped right off my face. “You… want me to come work for you?”
“Was some part of my wording unclear? I can offer you anything you could possibly want or need so long as you contract yourself to me and only me. I’m powerful—more powerful than you may realize, Decima. Nothing is beyond my reach. I have extensive connections all around the world. You would never want for another thing again as long as you carry out your work as well as you always have.”
I closed my mouth, but my thoughts kept spinning. Even if the Hunter could offer everything he said, I’d just heard straight from his lips how little consideration he had for his employees. He saw no issue with having them killed if it happened to serve his purposes at any given moment. I doubted he’d see me as any less expendable. One wrong word, one wrong move—or even just happening to make a convenient scapegoat—and I’d be at the wrong end of his gun.
Besides, there was nothing he could give me that I wanted. I had everything I wanted: the family I’d made with the men of the Chaos Crew, my freedom, the knowledge of who I was and how I’d come to be that person.
It didn’t seem wise to throw the offer back in this man’s face so blatantly, though, especially when he had a pistol a few inches from his hand right now and two armed men between me and my escape route.
“I don’t even know who you really are,” I said, hedging. “Obviously your real name isn’t ‘the Hunter.’”
“It’s close enough,” the Hunter said. “People at my level don’t give out their real names to anyone but family. To everyone else that matters, I’m known as the Blood Hunter.”
He flicked a business card across the desk at me, and I found myself staring down at a symbol that was far too familiar. A blood-red droplet sliced through diagonally by an arrow.
The back of my neck itched. That was the image tattooed on me. Not a teardrop but a drop of blood; not simply a line but an arrow. The Blood Hunter.
He’d all but written his name onto my body. I wanted to scratch the ink right off my flesh.
“That’s my mark,” he said, as if I hadn’t figured that out. “There are only twelve others as powerful as me in the world, and together we form the Devil’s Dozen. We control more than you could imagine—every significant criminal endeavor on this planet. Take me up on my offer, and you’ll be an essential player in manipulating global events. You’ll be more than you ever thought possible.”
This game wasn’t about making me happy or giving me what I wanted, though. He wanted to control me. But I’d already decided I was never going to be a pawn in anyone’s game ever again.
I raised my eyes to meet his gaze steadily. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m not interested. I like the freedom I’ve gained since I left the household, and I plan to keep it.”
It was a polite enough refusal to his offer, but I could see the frustration in his eyes. “I don’t know if you understand what you’re turning down here.”
“I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions. Even if you haven’t generally given me much of a chance to.”
The Blood Hunter stood up, shaking his head. “You’re going to regret that decision.” He flipped over the card to show a phone number printed on the back and pushed it the rest of the way to my end of the desk. “I’ll give you two days to fully think it over. If you change your mind, use that number to contact me. And Decima?”
“Yes?” I said with trepidation, knowing I’d already done all the thinking I needed to.
His cool gaze pierced into me. His voice came out as smooth as ever, but somehow it sounded like a threat all the same.
“Make your final decision wisely.”
