I can’t breathe. The room spins around me as I stare at the empty cliff edge where a man just died. Where my father died.
“Who was he?” I manage to ask, my voice barely audible.
“Does it matter?” Jax’s voice sounds distant through the roaring in my ears. “You see it now, don’t you? Hunter is exactly like me. We do what’s necessary.”
The footage loops, playing again. Hunter and the stranger on the cliff. The argument. The push. The casual walk away. Each time it feels like another blow to my chest.
“He saved me there,” I whisper. “He pulled me back.”
Jax laughs softly. “Did he? Or did he recognize the perfect opportunity to manipulate you?”
My mind reels, questioning everything. Every touch. Every promise. Every moment I thought was real.
Is it possible that the man I’ve fallen for is a monster like Jax?
16
HUNTER
The bourbon burns my throat but doesn’t touch the hollowness inside me. Fourteen days. Three hundred thirty-six hours since Aurora disappeared.
I study the digital map dominating my office wall, red pins marking Jax’s properties we’ve already hit, blue pins indicating targets remaining. The map’s getting crowded with red.
“Hunt.” Penn appears in the doorway, face grim. Blood spatters his tailored shirt—not his own. “The Northside warehouse is clear. Six of Jax’s men were eliminated. No sign of Aurora or her sister.”
I nod, not bothering to look up from the satellite images of our next target. “And the intel?”
“Recovered. Four more locations not on our original list.”
Four more places to tear apart. Four more facilities to burn to the ground.
“Martinez and Rogers have declared for Jax,” Penn continues. “Publicly.”
“Let them.” The words taste like ash. The Vipers organization I helped build is consuming itself, tearing itself apart at the seams. Half of our members have aligned with me, a third withJax. The rest are desperately trying to stay neutral in a war that allows no middle ground.
I haven’t slept more than two hours at a stretch since that rogue six hours. The edges of my vision blur, but I force clarity through sheer will. I’ve become precisely what I need to be: a weapon.
“The body count is rising,” Penn says quietly. “Sullivan’s people hit one of our safe houses in Chelsea. Grayson retaliated—three of Sullivan’s lieutenants won’t be reporting for duty anymore.”
I look up at last. “Any word from our inside source?”
Penn shakes his head. “Nothing since the psychiatric facility. Jax is getting paranoid, limiting information even to his inner circle.”
I check my watch. “The next operation begins in forty minutes. Brief the team.”
When Penn leaves, I stand before the wall of surveillance photographs. In each one, Jax smiles, unaware he’s being watched. In each one, I imagine putting a bullet through his skull.
The Vipers used to rule this city from the shadows. Now we’re tearing it apart in plain sight, spilling blood on streets we once controlled silently. Every hour that passes without finding Aurora, I burn another piece of the empire to ash.
And I don’t regret a single flame.
Grayson bursts through the door without knocking, tablet in hand. The circles under his eyes match mine, but there’s something different—a spark I haven’t seen in days.
“I’ve got something,” he says.
My pulse quickens. “Show me.”
He swipes through satellite images on the main screen. “Coastal warehouse complex, forty miles north. Officially ownedby Maritime Solutions LLC—a shell company buried under three layers of corporate bullshit.”
