Page 70 of Hunter

My Darling Bella,

Time is meant to be the great healer. We are told that if enough days pass, pain will dull, memories fade, and that we can eventually move on.

This is a lie.

No amount of time will heal what I’ve lost losing you. All that happens is that what is already broken, calcifies and hardens. I have become a splintered version of the man I once was.

A few days ago, one of my garages got hit. Some local deviants decided to take what wasn’t theirs: wages, wallets, tools. My staff were left humiliated. I burned with rage I didn’t know how to control.

Of course, I replaced it all. Paid everyone double for their inconvenience and stress. Security is heightened, and the little bastards who trespassed are deep below ground. None of it mattered though. No one said thank you. I am merely the thug who fixed it by force. I shouldn’t be surprised, deep down that is all I am. The man you turn to when afraid, one who gets results by any means necessary.

You used to see me. Not the power, not the danger. Only me. I don’t think anyone has ever known me the way you did. And I know no one ever will. Sometimes, I wonder if he was a figment of my imagination. A concoction of my hopes and dreams, of who I could be with you loving me.

I miss you, Bella. I miss what we had and what we could have become.

But the world needs men like me. And I have to accept that perhaps those men don’t deserve more than a brush with love. Maybe I was always meant to be this, a villain in everyone else’s story.

I hope, despite everything, that sometimes you think of me and smile.

All my love always,

Hunter xxx

When Bella had passed me the pink envelope and I extracted the letter, I remembered writing it as a young man in my office all those years ago. I hadn’t written it for comfort, but to expend the rage within. The anger at not only being violated by the thieves but also my men. A furious, scrawled rant about how tired I was of being the unseen person who cleaned up and took care of those around him, even if it was never acknowledged. I wanted her to know that I was still the man she fell in love with, not just the evil being portrayed by others.

And Isabella…she read my words like it was scripture. There was no judgment, only understanding and belief. She saw me like no one else ever has. Her eyes had softened with every word I read back after years of burying them.

“See,” she said. “You’re not the monster you believe you are.”

Perhaps I am almost starting to believe she is right. For all my faults, all my crimes, when I love, I love completely.

“Hunter,” Damon barks. “Get with the fucking program. Have you been listening to a word we said?” His voice slices through my recollections. I look up, and he’s standing above me, hands on his hips like a pissed headmaster. “Sabotage,” he says slowly. “The whole thing is a fucking set up.”

I force myself to focus, sitting up and scanning the reports laid out in front of me. Two ships lost. One confirmed as rerouted, the other vanished. Both carrying orders for our Russian client, someone we don’t want to piss off.

“So you’ve found the second ship?” I ask, realizing I probably missed this important piece of information when I initially arrived.

“It’s in St. Petersburg,” Connor confirms.

“They used one of our own clearance codes,” Harrison adds. “Encrypted. Which means…”

“I know what it fucking means,” I grunt. “We have a fucking mole on the inside.”

“There is also this,” Damon says, passing me his phone. A short text message sits on the screen. Cryptic at best, but the hint obvious.

Some alliances are built on sand. Easy to shift when you upset the organ grinder.

“Rodion,” I mutter, my jaw tightening with fury.

“That’s the working theory,” Russell says, finally removing his feet from the table. “You pissed him off by rejecting his family’s request to marry that niece of yours. So he’s taking you out from all sides.”

“Did you know Lombardi has connections with the Russians?” Harrison asks. I shrug my shoulders; it isn’t exactly a surprise. The whole world is interconnected somehow. It doesn’t matter how many miles you put between people in our world, there is always a connection. A business deal, a marriage, a proposition. Danger and money flirts with danger and money.

“No doubt there will be a union between them somewhere,” I say.

“Rodion’s distant cousin was married to a Lombardi,” Connor tells me, looking a fraction too pleased with himself for having information I don’t possess. “The marriage was transactional, similar to the one you planned. But it went south, and Zoya Anastasov was found dead the morning after the wedding at the hands of her new husband’s mistress.”

“When the fuck did this happen?” I spit, blindsided.

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