Page 5 of Hunter's Game
“Oh yes.” His voice carried dangerous memories. “We worked together, briefly. Before she made certain...unfortunate choices.”
Through her screens, Eden watched the intruder probe her defenses. The attack patterns were familiar. Military-grade, but with distinctive quirks she’d seen before.
Understanding hit like a physical blow. The intruder was testing her. Checking her capabilities against remembered protocols.
Against her mother’s methods.
“Talented girl.” Romano’s approval made her skin crawl. “You really are Sarah’s daughter.”
“My mother abandoned her family.” Eden kept her voice steady as she countered the intruder’s attempts. “Left me with my father to run off with some boyfriend. At least, that’s what everyone says.”
“Is that what Merrick told you?” Romano’s laugh held no humor. “Your father always did prefer simple explanations. The truth about Sarah’s disappearance is much more...interesting.”
Eden felt reality shift slightly, that strange sensation she sometimes got when pieces of a larger pattern started falling into place. “Truth has a way of coming out eventually.”
“Indeed it does.” Romano moved toward the door but paused before leaving. “History leaves its mark, Eden. Even when we try to forget. Remember that.”
The door closed behind him with a soft click that seemed to echo with destiny.
Eden sat stock still, processing implications. Romano’s words carried layers of meaning she wasn’t sure she was ready to understand.
Her screens lit up with another intrusion attempt. This one carried a message hidden in the code: Like mother, like daughter. Time to wake up, little girl.
Eden’s hands moved across keyboards with inherited grace as she traced the signal. The path led to multiple dead ends, but something about the pattern felt familiar.
Felt like blood calling to blood.
Or maybe that was just her overactive imagination.
The security feeds showed Romano watching her from his office, that knowing smile still in place. Through other cameras, she saw her father meeting with familiar faces—federal agents who shouldn’t be anywhere near an MC compound.
And through it all, that strange sensation grew stronger, reality bending slightly around her as pieces of a larger pattern clicked into place.
Her phone buzzed with another message from Thompson: Handler compromised. Trust no one.
Eden deleted it automatically, mind racing through implications. If Thompson was compromised, if Romano knew her mother…
The cameras caught movement in the artifact storage room. Eden zoomed in, watching asprospects carefully unpacked crates marked as art restoration projects.
The objects inside made her breath catch. Ancient tablets covered in patterns that seemed to shift when she looked directly at them. As she watched, one of the tablets began to glow with soft blue light.
Warning or welcome, she wasn’t sure.
But something in her blood recognized that light. Recognized the power hiding in seemingly innocent artifacts.
Recognized the truth Romano had hinted at, that some patterns were written in blood rather than code.
Eden sat very still as reality settled into new configurations around her. Three months of gathering evidence suddenly felt like preparation for something much bigger.
Something written in her very DNA.
The cameras showed her father watching Romano’s men unpack those glowing tablets. Showed federal agents exchanging documents in back rooms. Showed patterns of power and corruption that went deeper than simple artifact smuggling.
Through it all, that strange sensation grew stronger—events aligning too perfectly to be coincidence, suggesting something more calculated at work.
Eden smiled as she archived the footage in hidden servers. Let her father think she was just the loyal daughter, the perfect tool for his ambitions.
Let Romano think he was the only one who knew the truth about her mother. Let them all think she was exactly what they needed her to be.
