Page 82 of Oathbreaker

“Too bad,” I say.

“So what, you’re going to keep me prisoner? You’re no better than he was,” she says, and I snap.

In a second, I’m in front of her, crowding her, looming over her. Fear radiates from her eyes, and for the first time, it’s fear of me.

It guts me.

I get closer to her, pulling her into my arms. She pushes at my chest, and I allow her to separate from me.

“Don’t say shit like that to me ever again, Sunbeam. I’m not keeping you prisoner because I know you want to be here. You want to be here with me.”

“You sound like Adam. That’s the type of shit he’d say,” she retorts. She looks caged in, ready to fight if she can’t flee.

“Don’t say things you can’t take back, Winter.”

“I wish I never met you. You and your father are toxic, fucked-up people.”

“I am nothing like my father,” I say. Anger and grief and fear—fucking fear—crawl up my spine.

“Oh, yeah?” she asks, her tone mocking. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are swollen, but none of this stops her from spitting her vitriol at me.

I deserve it. I can take it.

“I’m nothing like him,” I say. “I love you, Winter. I won’t hurt you. I won’t use you. I love you. I’ll kill anyone who dares to hurt you.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” she hisses.

“I already fucking have,” I grind out, matching the energy of her words. My chest pinches tight, the up and down of my rapid breaths are painful.

That gives her pause. “What?”

“The commissioner that took the bribe? I hunted him down and slit his throat in his bed.”

“You lie,” she says, scoffing but looking at me warily all the same.

“Adam’s parole officer? I cornered him in an alleyway in his shitty neighborhood. Leo and I put a bullet in his brain.”

She shakes her head, her eyes wide and her mouth open.

“Oh, you don’t believe me?” I say in a voice laced with the force of my agonized fury.

“No, I don’t.” She visibly swallows. “You wouldn’t do something like that. You wouldn’t protect me like that. You wouldn’t avenge me. You couldn’t even stick up for me to your father. You lied to me about being engaged for weeks. You are—you are not a good person, Hunter.”

I whirl her around, bringing her over to the small desk in the corner of the room. “I have never pretended to be a good person, baby, but for you, I’ll be evil incarnate.” I rip the drawer open, pulling out the file.

I pull her in front of me. “Don’t believe me?”

I slap the picture Rio took of the newly deceased body. “Buck Fitzgerald. Parole officer to one Adam Collins. He really fucked up when he took that hush money and decided to ignore his duties. See that nice round bullet hole in his forehead?”

Violent tremors start at her back and creep down her arms and legs.

I fling Buck’s picture away, slamming the picture of Michael Uvalde on the table. His slit throat and gaping neck make a grotesque image.

“Michael Uvalde. Commissioner for the Virginia Parole Board.”

She gasps, trembling. “Hunter,” she says.

“He was the one who signed the order for Adam’s release. Mr.Uvalde also signed his own death warrant that day. The people who helped orchestrate your abduction? I’m hunting them down, and soon they’ll all be gone. My father. Blair. Morris fucking Winthrope. They’re all on borrowed time. I will annihilate anyone who has dared to hurt you, baby. I will protect you. Even if that means protecting you from yourself.”

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