Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
HUNTER
Song- Glass Houses, Bad Omens.
I don’t speak for the entire drive.
Ace knows better than to fill the silence. He sits in the passenger seat with his gun on his lap. The window is cracked, letting the night air cut through the cab. He’s watching the road. Watching me. Reading the temperature of what’s about to happen, the way he reads a bull before the gate opens.
He knows this isn’t going to be clean.
Reese’s house sits at the end of a gated lane on the outskirts of town.
He bought it three years ago. A six-bedroom show home with a wraparound porch, a three-car garage, imported Italian tile in the bathrooms, and a kitchen that costs more than most people’s houses.
He renovated every inch of it. Hired designers from Scottsdale.
Put in a wine cellar, a home office with mahogany bookshelves, and a pool he barely uses.
It’s his pride and joy. The physical monument to everything Reese thinks he is.
I park across the driveway and kill the engine. The house is dark except for a warm glow behind the downstairs windows.
He’s home.
“Rules?” Ace asks, tucking his gun into the back of his jeans.
“Don’t let me kill him.”
“And if he pulls something?” Ace questions.
“Then you can let me kill him,” I reply coldly.
And whatever mess we make, Enzo’s team can help us clear that up. But I hope it doesn’t escalate to that. I don’t need more heat on me.
Ace nods like I’ve just told him the weather.
We cross the driveway. I know the code to his gate.
I know the spare key he keeps under the third planter on the porch.
I’ve known for years. I’ve sat in his living room, drank his whiskey, and listened to him talk about cases and women and money as if those were the three pillars of a meaningful life.
I’ve known Reese since I was four. That’s how long I’ve called this man my brother.
That ends tonight.
I don’t use the key this time, though. I put my boot through the front door. The frame explodes inward. The lock tears clean out of the wood, and the door cracks against the hallway wall, leaving a dent in his pristine paintwork.
The first thing I see is the hallway console table. Some designer piece he bragged about. Italian walnut. Cost him four thousand dollars. I grab it by the legs and flip it. The mirror above shatters. A vase hits the tile floor and detonates into a hundred pieces.
I keep walking.
Into the living room. His seventy-inch TV is mounted above the fireplace—I pick up one of his brass bookends and hurl it through the screen. The glass caves inward with a satisfying crack, and sparks spit out the back.
His bookshelves are next. I rake my arm across them. Law textbooks mostly, framed photos of his parents—all of it hits the floor in a cascade of glass and paper.
Then I spot his wine rack. I pull it from the wall. Bottles smash on the Italian tile, and Merlot bleeds across the floor like someone dying. And I hope that his blood pours over them later, too.
Ace stands in the doorway, arms crossed, watching me dismantle our friendship one expensive object at a time.
And then I find him.
Reese is in the kitchen. Standing by the island, frozen, his scotch halfway to his mouth. He’s changed out of his suit into sweats and a T-shirt. And he’s holding a bag of frozen peas against his crotch.
That’s my girl.
He looks at me. Then at the trail of destruction behind me. Then back at me.
“Hunter—”
I grab the scotch glass from his hand and smash it against the kitchen island. It explodes. Amber liquid and glass spray across the marble countertop.
Then I grab him by the throat, lift him off his feet, and slam him down onto the kitchen floor. His back hits the tile so hard the air punches out of his lungs in a wheeze. The frozen pea bag skids across the floor.
I don’t give him a second to recover.
My boot comes down on his chest. Not enough to break ribs. Enough to pin him. Enough to let him feel the full weight of me standing over him like the cunt he is.
“You want to pick a fight?” I press down harder. “Try doing it with a man, you piece of shit.”
He grabs at my boot with both hands, trying to push it off. His face is turning red. His eyes are bulging. “You—you don’t know what happened—”
I lift my boot and stamp down on his stomach. He curls onto his side, retching, spit and bile on his precious tile.
“I know exactly what happened.” I crouch down beside him.
Grab a fistful of his hair and wrench his head up so he has to look at me.
“You went to her apartment. You cornered her. You put your hands on her. And she had to elbow you in the dick and run you down with her car to get away from your psycho ass.”
I slam his head back down against the tile. Enough to make him see stars. Not quite the force to knock him out. “A woman half your size had to fight her way out of a room with you in it. Think about that. Let that sit in your skull and rot there.”
I stand. Walk to his fridge. Open it. Pull out a bottle of water. Crack it open and take a long drink while he writhes on the floor.
Then I pour the rest of it over his face.
He sputters and then drags himself up to a sitting position against the kitchen island, clutching his stomach, blood dripping from a cut on the back of his head where it hit the tile.
“Sit in a chair,” I tell him. “Now.”
He crawls to the nearest kitchen stool and pulls himself onto it. He’s shaking so hard the stool wobbles on the tile.
I pull out the stool opposite. Sit down and cross my ankle over my knee.
Ace moves into the kitchen and stands behind Reese.
“Lola is mine.” I let the words land. Watch them register behind his swollen eyes. “She’s been mine since the moment I laid eyes on her. Before you. Before your bullshit apartment and your pathetic little hat stunt. I looked at that woman, and I knew.”
His jaw tightens. I see the muscle feather under the blood.
“And I will stop at nothing to protect her. Nothing. There is no line I won’t cross. No friendship I won’t end. No man I won’t bury. Do you hear me?”
He stares at me. And then something shifts in his face. The fear gives way to something uglier. Something bitter.
“Protect her?” He spits blood onto the floor. “You don’t even know her. She’s a gold-digging whore from New York, Hunter. She came here with nothing, and she targeted you because you’re the richest man in the county. She’s using you. She’s a cheap, desperate, scheming little—”
My fist connects with his mouth so hard his head snaps back, and he flies off the stool. He hits the floor and skids on the wet tile, coming to a stop against the base of the island.
I’m on him before he can curl up. I grab the front of his shirt and haul him up to my face. “Say that again.” My voice is barely human. “Say one more word about her. Please. Give me a reason.”
He doesn’t. Blood is pouring from his mouth. He’s lost a tooth. Maybe two. His lip is split in three places, and his eyes are glassy with pain.
I release him, and he slumps back to the floor. “Every time you open your mouth about her, you lose something.” I stand over him. “First, it was a tooth. Next time it’ll be something you can’t replace.”
I step back. Roll my neck and flex my hands. “Put your hands on the counter.”
His eyes go wide. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Hunter, please—”
“You used your hands to hurt her. So your hands are going to remember what that costs.” I pick up the scotch bottle from where it landed on the floor. “Right hand on the counter. Now. Or Ace holds you down, and I do both.”
He’s crying. Tears cut tracks through the blood on his face.
The slick-suited lawyer is gone. The man who put a hat on a woman’s head like she was property is gone.
All that’s left is a pathetic, bleeding shell who just learned that money and charm don’t mean shit when you’re on the wrong side of a Sterling.
He places his right hand on the counter. Fingers spread.
The hand that grabbed Lola’s wrist. The one she’ll still feel when she wakes up tomorrow.
I bring the bottle down.
Something crunches, and Reese screams. That raw, animal sound that bounces off the kitchen walls and rattles the pans on their hooks.
His body tries to fold, but Ace catches his shoulders and holds him upright. His left hand scrabbles at the counter, nails scratching the marble.
I set the bottle down. Leaning in close to his ear.
“That’s the hand you grabbed her with.” My voice is quiet.
It’s almost gentle. “Every document you can’t sign.
Every pen you can’t hold. Every time you try to button your own shirt and you can’t, you think of her.
You think of what you did. And you thank God I left you the other one. ”
I pull back and look at him.
He’s destroyed. Good. Snot and blood and tears. His right hand is a swollen mess on the counter. He won’t be using those fingers for a long time.
Good.
I sit back down. Taking a breath to calm myself. I want to fucking rip his head off. “Here’s how this goes.”
He’s cradling his ruined hand against his chest, rocking back and forth on the stool, barely conscious.
“You’re done as my lawyer. I’m bringing in someone else. Her lease is terminated. No fees. No penalties. You eat every cent. She’ll be collecting her things in the morning, and you will not be within a mile of that building when she does.”
He nods. Not looking at me, though.
“You go near Lola again—you speak to her, look at her, send her a message, pass her in the street, and so much as nod in her direction. I won’t come for a conversation. I’ll put you in the ground, and nobody in this town will find you.”
“Yes. Okay. Yes,” he agrees, his voice shaking.
Pussy.