“You don’t?” she asked me skeptically.
I swallowed, knowing the possible reason was an ugly one. “I have an idea.”
Her father.
She learned how to shoot to protect herself from men like her fucking father. The one man Hunter should have been able to trust unconditionally.
“I’m sure you know I went to juvie, but you don’t know the real reason why. No one does. Everyone thinks they know, and the ones who doubted didn’t care enough to ask the hard questions.” Hunter shifted uncomfortably, but she still didn’t look away, letting me see her ugly parts, too. “Not one person stood up for me. Not even my court-appointed lawyer. My father’s side of the story had more holes than Swiss cheese, but it made better headlines. Troubled Teen Stabs Father to Avoid Chores.” She scoffed, and I felt her disgust because it mirrored my own. “Who cares that the truth rarely fits in one sentence? Lock her away.”
“You pled guilty.”
Hunter nodded, but her gaze was fixed on her hands as if she could see her father’s blood staining them. “I did.”
“Why?”
She squeezed her eyes closed and inhaled deeply. “Because I didn’t look at those bars as keeping me in. To me, they were keeping my father out. When I was released, my forgiving father was there, waiting for his delinquent daughter with open arms.” Hunter laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “So I ran. With the news cameras watching and anyone who bothered to remember my name, I ran from that monster, and I thought that was the end of it, but it wasn’t. I thought I could move on, but I couldn’t. Not while he was alive.”
“That’s when you burned his house down.” She nodded. “But he got out, and you were caught.”
“A month before I got out of juvie for stabbing him, my mother died. The same one who abandoned me when I was just a baby. Luck must have finally been on my side because I somehow got the only attorney in the world who could convince a jury that I actually mourned that bitch. I was sentenced to grief counseling and community service. That’s when I met Coby.”
“What did your father do to you, Hunter?”
“Nothing.” She shrugged. “Not really. It’s what he tried to make me do.”
I inched closer but stopped just short of touching her. “What did he want you to do?”
“We were on the verge of losing the house because of my father’s gambling habit. He was about to lose his job, so my father promised his boss something besides a good work ethic.”
“What did he—” The answer hit me like a train before I could finish asking the question.
Hunter sighed, looking truly dejected. “I was supposed to fuck my father’s boss, two of his best employees, and threegolfing buddies so that my father could keep his minimum-wage job and his spot at his favorite poker table. Those were thechoresthe headlines unwittingly wrote about. I came home from school, and there they were—drinking my father’s beer and waiting for his fourteen-year-old daughter to come home from school. I begged my dad not to give me to them, but he wouldn’t listen. He said I would be fucking soon enough anyway, so he might as well get his fair share.”
Hunter closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, they were brimming with tears. I pulled her into me and wrapped her in my embrace.
“I don’t—” Her voice broke. “I don’t remember picking up the knife. I could hear the disgusting things those men were saying about me in the other room. I was so scared of what they’d make me do. My father grabbed my hair, and I grabbed the knife I’d used to slice my bagel that morning. And then I stabbed him with it before running away.” I felt her nails digging into my chest and welcomed the pain if it meant she didn’t feel any. “I didn’t get far before I was picked up as a runaway.”
Hunter suddenly pushed away from me, and I gave her the space she needed.
“I tried, you know,” she said as she stared at the ground. “I tried to tell the cops what happened, but my father got to them first. He had witnesses. Those men he brought home to fuck his underage daughter couldn’t let the truth get out, so they backed the lie. They told the police that I stabbed my father unprovoked, and it was their word against mine, so I pled down to simple assault and did a year in juvie just to get away from him.”
“And you’ve been training to protect yourself ever since.”
It wasn’t a question, but Hunter nodded anyway. “As long as my father lives, I will never feel safe. I’m sure he’s forgotten about me by now, but I haven’t forgotten him.”
“Who else knows about this?” I asked while fighting to keep the violence out of my tone.
“Only Coby,” she answered. Our gazes met. “And now you.”
“You may not care to hear it, but I need to say it anyway. Your father is a dead man. I want names. Every single man who was there. I want their names, and if you can’t give them to me, I’ll find them anyway.”
“I don’t need you to protect me,” she said weakly.
Losing my fight to be honorable, I pulled her into me. She didn’t fight me as she stared up at me, looking so innocent and vulnerable. “Someone has to.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can, Vengeance, but I want that honor. Tell me I can have it,” I pleaded.
