[BAD 07] - Silent Truth by Sherrilyn Kenyon

“I will not give up my sons.”
    That’s when Hunter saw a gleam of victory in his mother’s green eyes. She said, “In that case, here’s my only offer, and it’s good for twenty-four hours. I get everything in the prenuptial plus two million. That’s a million for each kid.”
    She’d sold him and his brother with no more thought than she’d have given to pawning a diamond ring. Actually, she might have shed a tear over losing the jewelry.
    From that day forward, Hunter held his trust close, refusing to risk letting go until Eliot forced him to take a leap of faith.
    The limo slowed and turned right onto the road to the Wentworth estate.
    “You’ve got being an arrogant, cold-hearted snob down to a science.” Korbin’s sarcasm cut with a razor’s edge. “Doubt anyone else on the team could pull off your level of asshole—or even wants to. We’re lucky to have someone who’s born to it.”
    “Did you come out of the womb a dickhead or develop that jockstrap personality on your own?” Hunter considered the heat in Korbin’s anger over the issue with Rae. Sounded too much like that of a sack mate instead of a teammate. Maybe he should warn Korbin only a fool would break Joe’s rule of no fraternizing with a teammate.
    But he didn’t know if Korbin and Rae were doing the midnight tango or not.
    He didn’t care.
    Joe and Retter’s problem.
    Hunter had no trouble keeping everything in a professional capacity on a mission. That way he never had to think about anything unrelated to the job.
    Like the possibility of watching his only true friend fall to his death.
    Korbin swung the car left, then stopped at the gate to clear Wentworth’s entrance security before continuing down a one-way drive bordered with spruce trees. Tiny blue-white lights glittered along the branches. He pulled into the circular drive that encapsulated a granite fountain with a bronze fifteen-foot-tall sculpture of a fierce Poseidon battling a sea serpent.
    Not what Hunter would have expected to find in front of a French Country–styled home sprawled under seductive up-lighting and custom steel-and-bronze sconces.
    The wealthy called any oddity “style.”
    Four valets attended vehicles. Two doormen stood at an arched entrance with custom gold-plated double doors. A smattering of international luxury sports cars and sedans lined the expansive horseshoe drive, along with stretch limos. The rest of the vehicles were likely stashedin a hidden lot on the estate.
    Korbin parked and hopped out, which thankfully prevented any further conversation.
    The car door on Hunter’s left swung open.
    Shoulders straight, Korbin looked every inch a professional driver without a trace of a smirk or attitude on his face. Hunter hadn’t thought he had it in him, but Korbin had proved more than once he also had ice water running through his jugular.
    When Hunter stepped onto the driveway paved with stones cut in swirling designs, he paused to straighten his cuffs. The temperature had dropped with the last rays of sun, leaving the air cooled to a frosty mid-forties.
    Korbin closed the door and slowed as he walked past Hunter’s shoulder long enough to whisper, “Asshole or not, we’ve got your back.” He climbed in and drove away.
    Hunter pinched his silk cuff so hard the material should have turned to powder. He missed Eliot at the strangest times. Eliot would have also called him an asshole, but in a way intended to draw a smile instead of blood.
    Screw it. Hunter had a package to retrieve and a killer to find.
    He took several steps forward, pausing to lift his phone from the inside pocket of his tux and tilting his chin down as though to check a text message.
    In truth, he used that moment to take stock of the exterior security mixed in with the valets.
    A car door opened and closed behind him, offering a plausible reason to turn so he could scan the rest of the setting.
    His gaze bottlenecked at the woman exiting a blackcorporate sedan. Age