Chapter 50
Night had fallen over The Bluffs, bringing with it a blanket of stars that pierced the darkness like distant beacons.
Britt stood on the balcony, her fingers wrapped around the wrought-iron railing as she stared out at the obsidian waters.
The whisky in her glass hadn't dulled her senses—it had sharpened them, bringing every memory into painful focus.
Three years of her life stolen by The Visitor.
A man entrenched within the PISCOs.
They wanted to destroy her. She’d told them she would turn over evidence against her father.
Help them take down the man who raised her, who’d been her hero her whole life.
It was a move of desperation when she’d first found out she was pregnant and was consumed with fear that her child would be a constant target of her father’s rivals.
A misguided plan that she could never follow through with.
Reneging on that deal had consequences far beyond what she ever realized.
A soft knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.
"Come in," she called, turning from the balcony.
The door opened, and a tall figure stepped into the room. Broad-shouldered and lean, with dark hair cropped short at the sides. The years had hardened his features, but she'd know those eyes anywhere—dark like molten chocolate.
"Hunter," she whispered.
For a moment, Hunter Quaid stood frozen in the threshold, his expression locked in rigid disbelief. Then something broke behind his eyes, and he crossed the marble floor, pulling her into an embrace so tight she could barely breathe.
"It's really you,"he muttered against her hair.
Britt returned his embrace, bringing unexpected tears to her eyes.
This man who had been like a brother to her, sharing all the ups and downs of growing up in the shadow of the cartel, who had put aside his grief to become her father’s most trusted protector after his own father’s death simply because she asked him to.
The last piece of her old life falling into place.
"I thought you were dead," he said, releasing her but keeping his hands on her shoulders, studying her face as if cataloging every detail.
"I know you did," Britt said, squeezing his forearm.
Hunter stepped back, running a hand over his face.
"When one of our enforcers claimed there was a woman who looked exactly like you in St. Felipe—" Hunter shook his head.
"I couldn't believe it. I knew about the rumors of Britt lookalikes, the decoys our enemies tried to use after your supposed death. "
A flicker of understanding passed through her. "You thought I was a fake." Britt led him to the sitting area, gesturing for him to take a seat on the leather chaise that still carried a faint scent of her father's cologne.
"Hope is dangerous in our world," Hunter said simply. "We had your remains, or what we thought were yours. I couldn't let myself believe otherwise."
“Yet here I am," Britt said with the ghost of a smile. "Risen from the dead."
“And ready to take your rightful place in this organization?”
His question struck her like a physical blow.
The choice she'd been avoiding since her memories came back in a flash as she stared at Lachlan tied to a chair, about to be killed because of her.
“I don’t know, Hunter,” she hedged, feeling an avalanche of guilt for being torn.
Seriously, was she crazy to debate this?
Before she regained her memories, all she wanted was a chance to have a quiet life with Lachlan and their beautiful little girl.
A life beyond even her most hopeful dreams as she’d sat day after day in that damn underground room, held captive and kept away from the world.
Deep down, she knew it was the reason she refused to remember her old life.
Without knowing who she was or where she’d come from, she was free to walk away into the sunset with Lachlan and Paloma, without any fears or reservations.
But all that changed when she remembered who she was—Brittany Freeman, daughter of Titus Freeman, groomed as a teenager to take over her father’s cartel.
The memories came with a powerful stronghold.
A thirst for power, money, and control. Everything that stepping into her father’s shoes as the leader of Quattro would give her.
This had been her dream before Lachlan. Before Paloma.
And it burned just as strong within her as it always had.
Two incompatible worlds.
She could only have one of these lives.
But which one?
Hunter said, “As Titus’s daughter, you’ll always live under a cloud of danger. I hate to be blunt—”
“Do you?” Britt scoffed.
“Maybe I don’t. But Britt Freeman will never have a normal life.
It’s not in the cards for you. Quattro or no Quattro, you’ll always have a target on your back.
Someone who wants to use your name or your influence for their purposes.
” Hunter reached for her hands and held them in his.
“This decision can’t be based on fear or trying to protect someone you love from getting hurt. ”
Someone like Paloma. Like Lachlan.
Hunter continued, “You know I’ll always keep you safe. I’ll do whatever you need.” Hunter's loyalty was as much to her as it had been to her father, perhaps even more so after all these years. “Quattro needs you. But do you still need it as much as you used to? Have things changed?”
“I have a daughter,” Britt whispered, swiping at the tears that slipped down her cheeks. “That’s why I went off the grid. To try to protect her.”
“Lachlan’s daughter is yours,” Hunter said the words almost as if he was struggling to believe them. Struggling to reconcile the Britt he knew with a woman who was a mother. “That’s why Titus was keeping tabs on him, watching him, hoping for—”
“Some details on his grandchild,” Britt confirmed. “I told him I’d come back to Quattro, but that he could never know my child. My child would never know this life.”
“But when you died, he wanted to find that last connection to you,” Hunter said, nodding.
“He was murdered,” Britt said, sucking in a deep breath.
She knew the day would come when the full extent of her grief over the loss of her father would have to be dealt with, but it wasn’t today.
“I lost three years with him. Maybe I would’ve stayed gone for longer, maybe not.
But the choice was taken away from me. And I know what he would want me to do.
Part of me will always want to make him proud. Don’t you see why this is so hard?”
“You can have it all, Britt. If you want Quattro and your daughter, hell, and even Lachlan, too. It’s yours for the taking. You just have to tell us what you want,” Hunter said.
“Isn’t that selfish?” Britt balked, the weight of her legacy pressing down on her shoulders. “I can’t do that to them.”
“If he truly loves you, he’ll sacrifice everything to have a life with you,” Hunter said.
“But you’re not even in Quattro anymore. They pushed you out,” Britt said, reminding him.
“I’m wherever you need me to be. Always. You know that. Alejandro knows that,” Hunter said with finality. He straightened, his demeanor shifting from friend to enforcer, the change as palpable as the temperature dropping before a storm. “But this isn’t why you wanted to see me tonight.”
Britt shook her head, pushing the weight of the most important decision of her life to the recesses of her mind. Tonight, she was focused only on … revenge.
“Have you found the location where I was held captive?”
“I have.” Hunter's expression darkened, shadows deepening in the hollows of his face. "The bastard who took you from us will pay. I swear it. The team is assembled and waiting for orders. We have thirty minutes before we move on Little Turkey."
“How can you be sure that you found the right location? That you’ll know how to get inside?”
Hunter pulled a small metal object from his pocket—a brass compass, its surface etched with intricate markings that caught the light like tiny flares. “Our moles inside the Palmchat Islands military were able to procure this from PISCO's R&D facility.”
Britt took the compass, feeling its weight in her palm—heavy, like the choices before her. “What is this?”
“PISCOs have a unique and distinct electromagnetic signature on all their black sites.” Hunter's smile was cold. “We found a black site in Little Turkey. One that’s not in the military’s secured databases. An off-the-books black site in an area where you fled from can’t be a coincidence.”
“Definitely not.” Britt's heart accelerated, blood rushing in her ears like distant surf.
The Visitor. The room where he'd kept her for over a year.
The voice recordings played on an endless loop, trying to break down her mind even when she had no memory to break.
The struggle to keep her sanity and know who she was.
“We leave in an hour,” Hunter said. “We’ll destroy the site. Anyone found there will be brought to our ghost site on Dove Island. Nothing will happen with the hostages until we get further instructions from you—”
“No need.” Britt handed the compass back to him, her decision crystallizing into something hard and immovable. “I’m coming with you.”