Hunter by Blaire Drake

his lips and mine.
    Was that why I couldn't sleep? Because I couldn't scrape the kiss, of all things, out of my head?
    No.
    It was the gun, mostly, but the kiss was definitely up there. Either way, it was all Hunter. He was the sole cause of this insomnia.
    I couldn't believe he was here in Los Angeles. I couldn't believe he was in California or anywhere near me. A member of the Romano family in Pontarelli territory would never end well. The families worked together in the mafioso because it was beneficial to everyone, but that didn't mean Armo would take kindly to my father sending one of his men into his city, let alone his assassin.
    Darien assured me that he hadn't told them who was here or who he was in the family, but I didn't know if he was telling me the truth or not. He had no reason to lie to me, but I couldn't help but wonder if he was worried I still loved Hunter and didn't want me to worry about him getting hurt.
    If he thought that, he was wrong.
    Thirteen year old Adriana loved fifteen year old Hunter.
    Twenty-three year old Adriana had absolutely no idea who twenty-five year old Hunter was.
    He may as well have been a total stranger plucked from nowhere and sent to bring me to my demise.
    I wished he was, but that was ridiculous. If my pezza di merda father wanted me dead, he was going to send the person I cared about the most to do it. I'd bet anything he was sitting in his office in the Hamptons residence, his feet on his desk as he held a lit cigar between his teeth. The fact he'd sent Hunter proved to me that the heartless bastard hadn't changed a single bit.
    It made me angry.
    I was angry that he thought to prolong the silent war Mamma and I had waged for the last decade, the one I now stood all but alone in. My father was no fool—stupid on occasion—but no fool. He sent Hunter for a reason.
    It was a test. To see if he really was the assassin he'd been raised to be. I had no doubts that he was. He admitted it himself, the mistake was when I spoke. When I said his name. If I hadn't, I'd have a bullet lodged in the middle of my brain right now.
    The boy I'd once loved was now a monster. Nothing more than a cold-blooded killer.
    Or was he?
    I was alive. I was breathing and moving and speaking. I was wholly alive, the only reminder of his assassination attempt a fleeting memory of the cold barrel against my skin.
    No silencer.
    He either wanted my death to be heard or he deliberately didn't put it on. Someone as meticulous and careful a murderer as he was wouldn't forget a silencer. Even I knew it was a necessary item for a quick and easy kill.
    I still couldn't believe he'd almost done it. He'd almost pulled the trigger on me. I didn't know how I felt. Maybe I was numb? I was shocked. At least, I think I was shocked. I had no idea how to explain the heaviness that had settled in my heart. I knew he wasn't my Hunter, but I wanted him to be.
    Even if, at the very core, he did belong to me. But that was only because of blood, because the Romano blood wasn't my father's. It was Mamma's, which meant it was mine, and my father's only claim to being the Don was if we were dead.
    I couldn't begin to imagine how much that pissed him off, but I was enjoying the thought of it.
    My thumb hovered over Hunter's number on the log. I didn't want to see him again. It wasn't a lie, but that didn't stop my heart from stuttering every time I glanced at the digits on the screen. I wanted to tap the number, just once, to hear his voice. To hear the deep, guttural tones of his voice that had swept across my skin earlier.
    I put the phone face down and slid it beneath my pillow. I had to be delirious from a lack of sleep. There was no other explanation to the way I was feeling. When it came down to it, the past didn't matter. It rarely mattered when the present was so dangerous.
    Would Hunter protect me?
    I don't know. The thought bolted through my mind, and I stared into the darkness of my bedroom as I realized the truth in