Page 68 of Hunter

“I miss you, Mama; I mean, I miss not having a mother, but it’s not your fault,” I sigh, feeling really sleepy all of a sudden. “Daddy and Phoenix have done their best for me, but I’m glad I finally get to have you.”

“I know, Lou, but you can’t have me just yet,” she says but sounds almost happy about it. I feel myself frowning, but I can’t open my eyes, I’m just too tired.

“What do you mean, Mama?”

“It’s time to wake up, baby,” she says before I feel a soft pair of lips press against my forehead. “It’s time for you to live!”

The sound of hospital machines is softly buzzing all around me. The voices are quiet, the screech of rubber on the linoleum floors is soft, and the sound of my breathing is almost louder than any of it. When I first open my eyes, the artificial light is painful, and I have to wipe my eyes to make everything clear again. It looks dark outside through the blinds and I’m in a room on my own, lying in a hospital bed, wondering what on earth is happening to me.

I groan, my throat feels so dry and sore, I reach out to try and get someone’s attention. I feel like I’m stuck in the middle of the desert, gasping for my last breath. A man, a blur at the moment, shuffles out of the seat next to me and flaps his hands in front of my face before moving away altogether. Moments later, he returns with another blurry figure, much smaller and with a soft, feminine voice.

“Hey, sugar,” she says in a friendly tone of voice, “I’ll be betting you want some water; here, sip on this, sugar.”

A small object is placed inside my mouth and instinctively I suck, bringing in the lifesaving coolness of water into my arid throat. It hurts as much as it soothes, but I keep drinking until the nurse pulls it away, warning me to slow down. It’s only then I can make out her warm, dark features, smiling at me as I nod along to whatever she says. She then passes the cup over to a face I know; one I would never have expected to see, but it is familiar and smiling at me all the same.

“I’ll go and get the doctor. You ok to help her, Hun?” she asks him and when he nods, she smiles back at me before shuffling off altogether.

“Evening, Louisa,” he says to me in his distinctive deep, accented voice. It’s calming, it always has been and reminds me of childhood and innocence. “I hope you don’t mind me being here; your brother asked me to watch you while he and Mr Hunter sorted out some things for you.”

“Hello, Javier,” I whisper, my voice still very much crackly from lack of use or moisture. “H-how is Tony? Is he…?”

I can’t even say the word out loud. There’s been far too much death in my lifetime, and no matter what he’s done, he was still a very big part of my life once upon a time.

“Antonio will be fine,” he says with a smile and a shrug of his shoulders, “but I’m afraid he won’t be around for a while. The police don’t take too kindly to men who shoot women.”

“You’re not going to help him?” Javier and my brother could have easily hidden what Tony did.

“No, your brother and Mr Hunter persuaded me that it was for his own good to suffer the consequences of his obsession.” His smile is sad, and I feel guilty for it. “I blame myself, Louisa.”

“What? Why?”

“I should have left him out of this life; should have made him stay with you; should have let him have what I wanted.”

“I don’t understand,” I say just before I swallow back this feeling of emotion that I don’t even understand.

“I think I was twenty-one when I fell in love with you, Louisa, ever since that night when you had offered your comfort to me,” he says with a serious expression while my eyes feel as though they double in size over his admission. He curls up the corners of his mouth when he sees my gobsmacked reaction to his declaration, then leans forward and takes hold of my hand inside of his. “At first, I thought it was a love of parental affection; after all, I had watched you growing up just as I had watched Antonio. But then you grew into a beautiful woman, and I saw the way you mothered my brother and I decided that you were exactly the type of girl I wanted.”

“Did Phoenix know?”

“After a while,” he laughs. “We fought a little over it, but it was only when I told him I had no intention of acting on it that he stopped pounding my face.”

“Oh, God,” I wince over the thought of these two alphas going to town on one another. “What about Tony? Did he know?”

He shakes his head with a sad smile; this has obviously tortured him over the years.

“I looked everywhere to find a girl like you, Lou, but what was the point of looking for something you’ll never find? So, I gave up and loved you from afar. Tony came to work with me, and I tried to be happy for him, all the while it made me miserable to see him with you.”

“Why have you never said anything?” I ask bravely.

I know I could never feel the same way about Javier, he’s too much like Phoenix. But it seems odd that he never made his feelings known, especially after his brother betrayed me.

“This is where I need to make a confession, Lou,” he says, looking away as he talks, as if unable to meet my eyes. “We all saw Tony changing into a man like me - a killer, a criminal, a gangster if you like. When you were attacked and we went after the animal who had hurt you, it was I who killed him. Louisa, I had his blood on my hands, and I felt nothing but venom. I wasn’t sorry for what I’d done, he had destroyed the love of my life. Tony and I fought about it afterward, and when I saw the hatred, the ruthless lust for blood in his eyes, I knew I didn’t want that for you. If he had been the man who I thought you deserved, I would have left you alone and welcomed you into the family as a sister. But he wasn’t that man anymore; I had destroyed that man by letting him join me in the family business.”

“You can’t help Tony changing, Javier, he wanted to join you, he always said he would join you. He practically lived for it-”

“It was me, Lou,” he sighs, cutting me off and leaving me to frown even harder. “It was me who got him drunk that night, me who sent him to your brother’s bar, me who paid the woman to seduce him. I set the whole thing up. I needed him to destroy you both so you could find someone worthy of you.”

“W-What?! How could you do that? How could you betray both of us like that?” Guilt and empathy have now been replaced by pure rage, and I can already feel angry tears escaping down my cheeks. “Do you have any idea how much it hurt? Seeing the man who I was in love with betray me so cruelly, after everything?”

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