25. Hudson
HUDSON
The silence between us feels less awkward.
Maybe that should have worried me.
Eventually, I ask a question before I can stop myself.
“How did you feel about marrying Baron?”
Eva makes a face.
“I wasn’t exactly thrilled,” she says with distaste. “He’s old. He could be my father, and that’s gross. Beyond that, he’s as horrible as you remember.”
“Mmm,” I grunt. The image of him standing over my mother flashes through my mind so quickly it almost takes my breath away.
“He’s volatile,” Eva says. “Mean when sober. Worse when not. Total coke addict. Honestly, I’d already decided to kill him eventually.”
My head turns toward her.
“Wedding-night cocaine laced with fentanyl,” she says, her voice flat. “That was Plan A.”
I stare at her.
“Jesus.”
“What?” she says. “You kidnapped me. We both made questionable choices.”
A laugh slips out of me.
“Fair.”
She takes another sip of coffee.
“I wouldn’t have felt bad about it either.”
I believe her completely.
“Did you really not know what the Saints were involved in?” I ask.
Her expression tightens.
“I knew the charity stuff was mostly bullshit,” she says. “Drugs, weapons, money laundering, violence. I wasn’t na?ve.”
She traces one finger along the rim of her mug.
“But nobody told me specifics. My dad kept me away from the actual operations.”
“Why?”
She lets out a humorless laugh.
“Because my father thinks women are decorative.” Her mouth twists. “Useful for appearances, marriages, social leverage. Not leadership.”
“He’s wrong.”
The compliment surprises her. Her cheeks turn a little pink.
“I spent years trying to prove otherwise,” she says quietly.
“Why?”
“Because it was mine. Or at least it was supposed to be.”
The wind rustles through the trees.
“The deal at the event was my idea,” she admits. “Using one of my client parties as cover.”
I look at her.
She laughs, but there’s no humor in it.
“I thought if I helped Baron pull it off, they'd finally take me seriously.”
“Well,” I say, “you really fucked that up.”
Eva barks out a laugh.
“Yeah,” she says. “Turns out I’m not criminal-mastermind material.”
I let out a short breath and take another sip of coffee.
Then I ask the question that’s weighed on my chest since Chicago.
“Did you know your dad was trafficking people?”
Eva turns toward me sharply.
“What?”
I hold her stare.
“Young women,” I say. “Some of them are underage.”
Her face goes pale instantly.
“Seriously?”
“Unfortunately, that’s what we’ve been hearing. What I’ve seen.”
“I didn’t know,” she says immediately. “I swear to God, Hudson, I didn’t know.”
Her hands shake a little as she holds the cup.
“Women started disappearing from shelters,” I say. “From food banks and outreach programs too.”
Eva freezes.
“Most of them were vulnerable already. Homeless women. Girls nobody was paying enough attention to. Every place reporting missing women had connections to the Saints.”
Eva covers her mouth.
“Oh, my God.”
“Those smiling social-media posts?” I ask quietly. “The ones with your guys handing out canned food and posing for pictures?”
Her eyes lift slowly to mine.
“That wasn’t charity,” I say. “It was access.”
Horror spreads across her face.
“They were scouting,” I continue. “Finding these vulnerable women. Then shipping them overseas to buyers.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It ain’t good. I know I sound like a fuckin’ hypocrite because our club runs guns, drugs, and other illegal shit, but this is…”
“It’s innocent people.”
“It’s hunting people who can’t fight back.” My jaw tightens. “That’s different.”
A heavy silence falls between us.
Eva stares out across the water for a long moment before asking.
“Why do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“The club.” She looks back at me. “You’re a professional athlete. A successful one. You don’t need any of this.”
I breathe out slowly.
“Same reason you wanted in with the Saints, probably.”
She frowns.
“You just said it yourself,” I continue. “You wanted a bigger role. Wanted to prove yourself.”
She looks down at the coffee in her hands.
“Yeah,” she admits quietly. “I did. But I think maybe it was more about being told no.”
I stay quiet.
“I grew up around it,” she says. “Then I got shut out completely. So I wanted it more, even when I probably shouldn’t have. I already had my own business. My own life. Most of my clients aren’t connected to any of this.”
Her voice catches.
“Technically, I could’ve walked away anytime.”
She looks back at the lake.
“After my father left me there to rot…” She shakes her head. “I don’t think I can go back now.”
A tear runs down at the corner of her eye, and she quickly wipes it away with her good hand.
I know that feeling too well: the confusion, guilt, and sense of being left behind.
I want to reach for her hand, but right now, touching her feels too personal.
Instead, I decide to tell her some of my own story.
“After Baron killed my mom, I woke up in the hospital with cops standing over my bed.
Eva’s attention shifts fully back to me.
“They kept asking questions. I was eleven.” I let out a dry laugh. “Back then, I was kind of a scrawny little shit.”
Eva blinks.
“You were small?”
I snort softly.
“Briefly.”
She narrows her eyes at me.
“I honestly assumed you came out of the womb looking like a retired linebacker.”
I laugh before I realize it.
Somewhere along the way, talking to her feels easy.
Fuck.
“I hit a growth spurt around thirteen,” I say. “Then another one at sixteen. I was six-three by graduation.”
“And you went to high school in Chicago?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Sorry, I derailed your story.”
You derailed my entire fucking life, I think.
“The cops kept asking if I had any other family,” I continue. “I told them no, because as far as I knew, it had always just been my mom and me. And Baron, for a while.”
Eva’s expression darkens immediately at his name.
“But they kept pushing. ‘You’ve got a father somewhere.’”
I exhale slowly.
“I told them if I did, he clearly didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“You never knew him?”
I shake my head. “He was long gone before I was sentient enough to notice.”
“Sentient,” Eva snickers. “What a word. Like a little alien. I guess babies are a little alien at first. I haven’t been around many, but I think they’re like tiny old people. Sorry, continue your story. I did it again.”
“Seems to be a theme,” I grumble, taking a swig of coffee. “Anyway, I’d heard the name Hunter Cross before. That’s what set Baron off and got Jonas involved.”
Eva listens attentively.
“So I gave the cops the name,” I continue.
“They tracked him down. Turns out he’d died a few months earlier.
He’d started another family and had a kid.
But he and his wife were killed in a car accident.
My little half-brother, Lucian, was being raised by Martin.
” Heat crawls under my skin at the memory. “And he agreed to take me in, too.”
I look back toward the lake.
“If he hadn’t, I probably would’ve ended up bounced around foster homes or dumped into some overcrowded state facility.”
I shrug.
“Instead, I got on a plane for the first time. A black car picked me up at the airport. Suddenly, I was living in a giant mansion in Chicago. It felt incredible.”
Eva stays quiet, taking it all in, her eyes wet with tears.
“This isn’t a feel-bad-for-me story,” I tell her. “It happened long ago.”
“I know.”
Her voice grows softer.
“I just keep picturing you that young, completely alone, getting on a plane to go live with strangers.”
I look out at the lake.
It’s easier to look at the lake than at her.
Eva curls both hands more tightly around her mug.
“I lost my mom too,” she says quietly. “Not like you did. She died from an illness when I was little.”
The wind lifts a few loose strands from her braid.
“I barely remember her. But people always say she was the only person who could calm my father down. Which is hard to imagine considering the way my dad thinks of women.”
She shakes her head, and more curls fall from the braid over her shoulder.
“Can I fix that?” I ask before I think better of it.
Eva blinks.
“What?”
“Your braid.”
She hesitates briefly before nodding.
“Uh…sure.”
I stand and move behind her chair.
Her hair feels softer as I loosen the braid and run my fingers through it.
Red curls slide through my hands while I put the braid back together.
The whole thing feels strangely domestic, but also dangerous in a different way.
I tie it off and step back around to my chair.
Eva glances at me.
“So,” she says, “you move into a mansion withMartin Cross acting as your terrifying surrogate father. You suddenly have a little brother you didn’t know existed.” She lifts her mug. “What happened next?”
“I was in everybody’s business all the time,” I say. “Didn’t talk much back then either.”
Eva snorts.
“You don’t talk much now. This is probably the most I’ve heard you say at once. Honestly, it’s a little overwhelming.”
I roll my eyes at her.
“Anyway. I was curious about everything. There were always people around the house—club guys, bikes, chaos. I started acting out pretty quickly. Stole a couple of motorcycles. Wrecked both.”
“Of course you did.”
“Got into a fistfight with a guy twice my size, too.”
“And?”
“Lost spectacularly.”
That earns a laugh out of her.
“Eventually, somebody told Martin I needed an outlet before I killed somebody,” I continue. “So he shoved me into hockey.”
“Did it help?”
I tilt a shoulder.
“Kind of. Mostly, it just gave me a socially acceptable outlet for violence.”
Eva huffs into her coffee.
“Honest.”
“You asked.”
I lean back a little.
“As I got older, I got meaner. Hockey worked for that. I didn’t hesitate physically. Didn’t mind getting hurt. Coaches loved it.”
“And that’s why you became a goalie?”
“Pretty much. Goalies are a little insane. You have to be willing to throw your body in front of things moving at stupid speeds. Instinctively, most people protect themselves.”
I tap my fingers once against the arm of the chair.
“A good goalie does the opposite. Protects the net first. Doesn’t matter what it costs.”
Eva watches me carefully.
“That sounds psychologically unhealthy.”
“Probably.”
“So when did you realize you were good enough to go pro?”
“Around sophomore year. Scouts started showing up.”
My attention drifts back to the water.
“I barely graduated high school, though.”
Her eyebrows rise.
“Not because I was stupid,” I add. “I got good grades when I showed up.”
“But?”
“But I was an asshole.”
Eva laughs again.
“That part I believe.”
I ignore her.
“By senior year, I had college offers, but most hockey guys go straight into the draft if they can.”
“So you skipped college.”
“Yeah. Got drafted at seventeen. Played juniors for a while, then moved up.”
“And what about the club?” Eva asks. “Where did that fit in?”
The question lands differently than the others.
It’s sharp enough to make my shoulders tense.
My eyes narrow slightly at her.
Eva notices immediately.
“What?”
“You recording this somehow?”
Her face hardens instantly.
“Seriously?”
She doesn’t even have a phone anymore. I took it from her myself.
There’s no computer in the cabin and barely any signal half the time.
“Jesus, Hudson,” she says. “I’m trying to get to know you.”
Her voice sharpens.
“God forbid somebody asks you about your actual life.”
She's right.
I sound like a paranoid fucking idiot.
I exhale and scrub a hand over the back of my neck.
“Sorry.”
“You should be,” she says without real bite. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on between us. But I think the only way we survive without losing our minds is if we start acting like human beings instead of enemies.”
That hits hard.
“And honestly?” she adds. “I have significantly more reason not to trust you than the other way around.”
Fair.
My jaw shifts, thinking it over.
Finally, I nod. “Okay.”
“Please continue your story about the club.”
“I annoyed the absolute shit out of Martin until he finally taught me how to ride motorcycles and shoot.”
Her brows lift slightly.
“Healthy childhood hobbies,” she says.
“Then I got bigger. Stronger. Martin liked having extra muscle around the club, so he started giving me small jobs—loading trucks, standing lookout during drops, escorting stuff.”
Eva watches me steadily.
“Eventually, he figured out I was useful for intimidation, too.”
My voice flattens slightly.
“Turns out I was just as aggressive off the ice as I was on it.”
I rub my thumb absently against the side of the coffee mug.
“So one thing led to another. Enforcement jobs. Collections. Violence.”
I glance at her briefly.
“It felt inevitable at the time.”
Eva studies me for a second before asking,
“Did you ever think about walking away?”
“Not really.”
The answer comes easier than it should.
“Why not?”
I pause to think about that.
“Because hockey and the club never felt separate to me. That was just my life. I thought I could do both. And Lucian…” My jaw tightens briefly. “Lucian made it impossible to seriously think about leaving.”
Eva says nothing, but I can feel the unspoken thought sitting between us.
You already left him there in that house.
Guilt hits me so hard my stomach turns.
I stare down into my coffee.
“I hope I didn’t fuck this up,” I say quietly.
Saying it out loud leaves me feeling exposed in a way violence never has.
Eva’s expression softens immediately.
“He’ll be okay,” she says.
But I can see the worry in her eyes too.
And seeing it reflected at me deepens the dread already sitting in my chest.
“Will you leave the club now?” she asks after a moment. “After you get him out?”
I look straight at her.
“I already left.”
Her brows pull together slightly.
I hold her gaze.
“The second I carried you out of that house, there was no going back for me.”