The Hunter: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Boston Belles Book 1)

It occurred to me, as I stepped into my father’s office for the first time in four days, that I was about to get my ass fucked so hard, I’d be able to easily slide an entire watermelon into it by the time he was done with me.

Four days.

Zero sleep.

Zero work time.

Two unwritten college assignments.

Plenty of half-leads regarding Syllie’s wrongdoings.

Victory was within reach. I could brush it with my fingertips, and I was rabid for it. Maybe the bloodthirsty Fitzpatrick lineage did run through me. Because I’d never felt particularly competitive until I moved here.

The visit to the refinery was scheduled for tomorrow, and guess who’d finally decided to show signs of life and reappear at the office?

Ding, ding, motherfucking ding. Yours truly.

“You’re alive,” my father pointed out rather unhappily, still reading something on his iPad at his desk, his eyebrows somewhere on his upper forehead.

Cillian sprawled in front of him in his designated seat, texting.

“Don’t sound so disappointed.” I stepped inside, planting my ass on the seat next to Cillian.

I turned to my brother. “Leave.”

His molten eyes shot up from his phone. He had the challenging, taunting gaze of a man who was waiting to be invited to war.

“Are you high?” he inquired politely.

“Sober as a miserable, bloated celebrity post-rehab. I need to talk to Da. Alone.”

They exchanged a look that spoke dozens of sentences. Finally, Gerald nodded. My brother stood, but not before flashing me a warning look that said after Da plowed into my ass, he intended to shove explosives into it.

The door closed, and I turned to my father.

“I have some great leads about what Sylvester is up to,” I started, but he cut me off with a wave of a hand, sending the iPad crashing against his desk.

“You go MIA for four days after your agreement with the Brennan girl goes bust, and you think I care about your conspiracy theories?”

“I think you care about this company,” I enunciated through gritted teeth. “And I have information.”

“Stop being a professional timewaster,” Da countered. “And get to the heart of it. You are here because you messed up and didn’t have the guts to face the music. You broke the rules. You weren’t celibate.”

“No,” I admitted. “I wasn’t, but I didn’t sleep with that other chick, Lana. And that thing with Sailor…” I paused, feeling my nostrils flare. “It wasn’t just fucking.”

I wanted to take back the sentence, take it all the way back. What was I saying? I didn’t have feelings for Carrot Top, did I? Only she hadn’t been Carrot Top for a long-ass time. She was the girl I wanted to talk to every day, all day, if I could. The girl who made me laugh. The girl who gave me a hard-on, not only up close, but just thinking about her. The traces of her scent alone made me want to hump the shower tiles.

I hated that I cared about Sailor Brennan, that I couldn’t stop thinking about her, worrying about her, obsessing over what she was doing, thinking, DoorDashing. The little huntress had gone and conquered every inch of my brain, filling it with herself, and without my notice—without my fucking permission—slipped from my brain to my heart.

“Don’t try to sell me the girlfriend angle.” Da raised his hand to cut me off. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“I didn’t say she was my girlfriend. But I feel…things,” I said vaguely. I also said the word things like it was made out of pube hair, spitting it out of my mouth in record time.

“Was?” Athair regarded me skeptically.

“She dumped me,” I admitted.

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck what you believe.” I smiled courteously, crossing my legs and cupping my hands over one knee. “It is the truth, and you don’t get to dismiss it. I guess this is the part you’ve been waiting for, where you wave your new signed will in my face. Go ahead. Have your fun.”

Not missing a golden opportunity to shed blood, he opened his drawer and produced that goddamn will, making a show of flipping the pages by licking the pad of his index (side note: people who do that should burn in hell. Twice), signing his initials on each page quickly.

Looking up, he flashed me a grin.

Song of the day: “Dead Bodies Everywhere” by Korn.

“I do have a proposition for you,” he said while signing.

“I love propositions,” I replied, oddly calm. “That’s what got me into this mess in the first place. What do you have in mind?”

“You say you developed feelings for that girl—” He air-quoted the word feelings, a Parker Jotter pen between his fingers.

I wanted to put him in a box. It’d be worth the solitary confinement.

“Sailor,” I cut him off. “Her name is not ‘that girl’. It’s Sailor.”

“Yes. Her. And I say this is just a desperate plea to try to save your inheritance. So how about this? I’m giving you a second chance. A clean slate. A redemption, if you will. Admit that this was a lie, that you didn’t actually develop feelings toward Sailor, and I will tear this will apart right now. But there is a condition.”

“What’s the condition?” I asked, unblinking.

“You cut all contact with her. Forever.”

The last word sat between us like a ticking bomb. Forever was a long-ass time. An hour? That sounded more doable.

“Genes aside, we’re cut from the same cloth, aren’t we, ceann beag?” He cocked his head. “This is what you’ve been trying to prove to me. That you’re a Fitzpatrick. That you belong.”

“If you’re asking me to choose between my family fortune and a girl, my answer is obvious—the fortune.” I paused, watching his throat working behind his silky orange tie. “But if you’re asking me to choose between the family fortune and Sailor Brennan, I’m going to have to kiss your money goodbye and bow out of this one, Fitzpatrick or not.”

His smile evaporated. He wasn’t expecting that plot twist. Honestly, I wasn’t, either. Especially considering Sailor had conveyed to me her lack of wanting to stay in touch verbally, by text, physically, and every other way short of skywriting. Maybe she had told me to piss off through skywriting. I hadn’t looked at the sky in a while.

Nevertheless, it was the truth. I couldn’t resist the chance to pursue her. I couldn’t forfeit the right to hug her, order DoorDash food with her, argue about who was a better tipper, and tell her about my day. Because those were the happiest moments of my life, and every single goddamn time I reached for my Dala horse and my neck was bare, I knew she had it—my one possession that meant something.

If she hasn’t burned it by now, that is.

“You’re rejecting my offer?” Da sobered, smoothing his tie.

“Trust me, we’re both bummed about it. So I guess that means I’m fired?” I stood.

I still needed to finish my Sylvester investigation, no matter what. I no longer stopped midway when shit became hard.

“You’re not coming to Maine,” he confirmed. “Start looking for a job.”

“Bet.” I gave him a little bow and flipped him the bird for good measure. As I stepped out, I grabbed the chrome handle of the glass door and turned around to him with my parting words. “By the way, this door? Designed by a masochist. It takes three hours to close it. Here, that should fix it.” I kicked the door’s cylinder. Unhinged, it flew into Da’s office and crashed on the floor in one piece.

I looked up at him, flashing an unhinged smile from the supervillain variety. “Maybe I am a Fitzpatrick after all. Look how good I am at ruining things. You’re welcome.”

That evening, I sat my ass down to listen to how Syllie’s night was going. The answer was bound to be better than mine. I tried to DoorDash the Cypriot place that had opened three blocks from my apartment, but found out my bank account had been cleaned by Daddy Dearest—all future and current transactions declined.

The old Hunter—the one from six months ago—would’ve called the mom he ghosted not-so-friendly and had her Venmo the necessary funds to feed Africa. But the new Hunter was too prideful to beg, let alone for food. So I cracked open a can of beans, tried to microwave it, almost caused an explosion (who knew metal wasn’t microwave-safe? Not this fucker), and settled for crackers and expired cream cheese.

I was legit the bitch-eating-crackers-like-he-owns-the-place meme. FML in the ass.

I was wondering how I was going to continue paying Knox, who was literally sitting in a van, freezing his balls off, to record Syllie live through the devices he’d sold me. I hoped he accepted sexual favors, because homeboy was currently more broke than Jenna Jameson had she switched careers to celibacy expert. I was fucked in the most unorgasmic way known to man.

I was three hours into the evening’s investigation on Syllie—he’d just finished having dinner with his family, during which he and his wife had discussed the riveting subject of matching Christmas sweaters—when I heard the three knocks on my door.

I put my crackers down, frowning. If it was Cillian with one of his devil’s pep talks, we were going to exchange some fists, not words. But no. Cillian should’ve been on a plane on his way to Maine by now. I went to the door, throwing it open.

And there she stood.

Aingeal dian.

Holding a bag of takeout food. Grease trickled from the edges of the brown bag. Sailor and junk food. My mouth watered, and my balls tightened.

Am I dead? Is this heaven?

“This is not a let’s-have-sex offering, Hunt. It’s not even a peace offering.” She raised one palm in warning. “But I come bearing gifts and an offer. You helped me nail Lana. Let me help you nail Syllie.”

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply through my nose.

“Can you say nail again, please? Specifically, nail me, Hunter. You practically already said all the words, just not in sequence.”

She burst out laughing as I hooked a finger into her jacket and pulled her in, not giving a fuck about being broke and unemployed and neck-deep in trouble.

“What’d you get?” I threw my arm over her shoulder, kissing the crown of her head as we walked toward the living room. And just like that, it felt like she was never gone. Just another blissful night with my girl.

“I thought we’d try the new Cypriot place. It got rad reviews.”

I bit my fist again. I’d made the right choice.

Fuck the money.

I knew, in a subconscious way, that the only shot I had at catching Syllie was if he made a mistake. But Syllie was a careful bastard, so when I found out I’d been the one to throw him off-kilter, I nearly jizzed my pants.

It was right after Sailor and I polished off our souvlaki and halloumi cheese wraps. We listened to him as he got the call in which he was informed that I hadn’t boarded the commercial plane to Maine with my father and brother.

“What do you mean he is not on the plane?” he seethed to the person on the other line. I couldn’t listen to what the other party was saying. Sylvester had used another burner phone. “How could he not be on the plane?”

Sailor and I exchanged glances, our backs hunched over the laptop, listening to the live recording.

“The whole plan is pointless without him there! No, don’t tell me to calm down. Months of planning, all down the drain. You might as well cancel the entire operation if he’s not there. The idiot will take over once they’re done and dealt with, and my troubles will triple.”

“Done and dealt with?” Sailor whisper-shouted, her eyes widening. “Did he just say that?”

A few things happened in that moment. Maybe because Sailor looked at me like I was an intelligent, capable human being and not a moneyed gigolo. She looked at me like I could crack this riddle.

And I realized…well, that I could.

I did a quick math:

1. Syllie sent my father and brother to a refinery that’d been dealing with health and safety issues.

2. The machinery was faulty. Three of them, at least. That’s why we were scheduled to visit there in the first place.

3. Syllie could and probably planned to stage an accident in which all three of us—Da, Cillian and I—would die. All he needed was one orchestrated explosion. Mom and Aisling, while they’d inherit the majority of shares, wouldn’t run the company in a million years. Which put the position in Syllie’s capable hands.

Holy shit. He wanted to kill us. And I’d just fucked up his plan big time. Now the question was—would he go through with it still, or was he postponing because my ass wasn’t en route to Maine?

Sailor seemed to read my mind, shoving my phone into my hand. “You have to call them.”

I called Cillian five times. I tried another three times to reach my father. I also texted them a thousand times. They were either on the plane or somewhere with zero reception. I remembered Cillian complaining about the lack of reception in that part of Maine. I was sure Syllie took this into consideration when he’d planned all this.

“What do I do now?” I stood, pacing back and forth. “What do I do to save my asshole family?”

“Now,” Sailor said simply, “you do what Fitzpatricks do best: you go to war, and you win.”