I shrug. “I’m not sure.”
My chest tightens, my pulse erratic, and I force myself to stay still. To not run after him.
Because running after people doesn’t stop them from leaving.
I know that better than anyone.
Chapter 16
Hunter
Craig is going to fucking pay. I just couldn’t stand by and look at the destruction he has caused. No man should be able to do what he has done and get away with it.
But it’s more than that.
It’s more than Blake’s bruises, more than Charlie’s wide, terrified eyes.
It’s Elizabeth.
It’s six years of silence where her laughter used to be.
It’s every night I’ve spent trying to drink away the hollow ache in my chest, knowing that there is no person responsible formypain—but this bastard?
Craig still exists.
I pull the throttle and move faster down the road, seething, my grip tightening on the handlebars. My pulse is a violent drumbeat in my ears, drowning out reason, drowning out everything except the unrelenting need to hurt.
Blake said she was leaving.
That’s all I needed to hear.
I grabbed her driver’s license from her car earlier. Her old address, the place she still calledhomeout of habit. The place she’s too fucking afraid to let go of.
I’m heading straight for it.
Straight forhim.
Craig wanted to meet me earlier?
Fine.
Now he’s going to get his fucking chance.
I pull up and kill the engine. There’s a truck in the driveway, and the screen door is open to the house. Good, it means he is home.
Instead of bringing my gun with me, I place it in the saddlebag on the back of the bike. I am not going to kill him. At least not yet. But he will feel the brunt of my anger. Anger for what today means to me and the rage I feel at the thought of him touching Blake.
I knock on the door, only to hear him groan from somewhere inside the house that he will be here in a minute. After a moment, his skinny figure comes from around the corner of the middle of the house and when he spots me, his smirk turns into a sneer. “Asshole with my wife’s phone, I presume?” he growls as he stands on the other side of the screen door.
Does he think that this measly screen will protect him? I grunt and punch through the screen, hitting him directly in the nose. Then, I grab him by his shirt and pull him through the hole.
After I toss him on his back, I punch him in the face and chest and anything else I can make contact with. He screeches like a little girl the entire time until I finally stop.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” he cries through the blood coming from his nose.
I point down at him. “All I did was give you exactly what you fucking deserved. The next time you feel the need to pick on women, how about you give me a call and I can teach you another fucking lesson?” I pull a business card from my front pocket of my vest and drop it onto his chest.
As I step onto the grass, I turn back toward him. “Oh, and the next fucking time I see your name pop up on Blake’s phone, it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
