Hunter
Authors: Blaire Drake
Chapter Twenty-Three – Adriana
Chapter Twenty-Seven – Adriana
blaire drake
Copyright 2016 Blaire Drake.
All Rights Reserved.
BOOKS BY BLAIRE DRAKE:
Dear Professor
Hunter
Prologue– AdrianaTen 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.
