“I said shut. Up!” Hunter shoved him, hard, causing Rafa to stagger forward.
“Oh, piss off,” Rafa said, spinning around to confront Hunter but, unfortunately, connecting with Hunter’s elbow in his gut instead. Rafa stumbled back, trying to regain his footing before landing on the ground and hitting his head against the dirt.
Rafa saw stars in his eyes as he slowly propped himself up,holding the back of his head. But Hunter didn’t stop there. Without waiting for Rafa to recover, he hopped on top of him, grabbed his shirt by the collar, and delivered a blow straight to Rafa’s face.
“Entitled…prick!” Hunter growled between punches.
Rafa struggled to fight back, arms flailing and legs kicking, but he couldn’t get in a decent shot amid Hunter’s unrelenting fists. Through his blurred vision, he spotted the knife tucked in Hunter’s waistband, but when he reached for it, Hunter snatched it from his hands then pointed it at Rafa’s throat.
Rafa threw up his hands in surrender. With the knife directed at Rafa, Hunter raked his fingers through his hair with his free hand, his chest heaving as he considered what to do next.
“Who got their ass kicked now?” Hunter said, smiling with his mouth wide open, panting for air.
“That’s only because you fight dirty.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Should I have let you have the first punch?” Hunter asked, feigning remorse before scowling again. “Fighting fair is for chumps.”
“Fine, you win. Now get the hell off me, will you?”
This conversation was getting old. But Hunter didn’t budge, even as Rafa tried to wriggle free underneath him. What the heck?
“I don’t think so. I’m not taking you back to camp so you can take what’s mine.”
Rafa rolled his eyes. “I already told youandmy dad—I don’t want any part of whatever you’ve got going on here.”
“Sure you don’t. I take you to camp and you and your dad squeeze me out. I’m not stupid.”
I beg to differ.
“You know,” Hunter continued, digging the tip of the bladeinto Rafa’s neck, causing him to hiss, “I could just get rid of you right now.”
Fuck. Maybe he wasn’t so stupid. Rafa’s heart rate picked up and his eyes shifted back and forth, looking for something—anything—he could use to fend off Hunter. But unless the plants surrounding him were poisonous, Rafa was shit out of luck.
“How will you explain my absence at camp to my dad?” he asked, steadying his voice as best he could.
“I’ll say you ran away.”
“And if he sends someone to find me and they find a knife cut through my neck? How about then?”
Hunter sneered. Clearly he was getting tired of the conversation, too. “Then I’ll make it look natural.”
“Make what look—” Rafa started, but then Hunter lifted his arm—
And everything went black.
Chapter
Eighteen
It had been an hoursince Miri had been forced to leave Rafa with his sorry excuse for a father.
And her tears had yet to stop.
The scene with Vautour played on repeat in her head. That look on Rafa’s face when he’d realized his father was none other than the most notorious man in the archaeological world. The man who’d been working against them since they’d arrived.
Rafa had no one. Only a mother he never knew and a father who betrayed him.
He didn’t deserve that. No, even after ripping apart her heart he didn’t deserve to have his broken by his own dad. She couldn’t abandon him, too.
