Page 7 of Hunter's Game
The unspoken threat hung heavy in the air. If Hunter didn’t check out, he was dead. Simple as that. Another body added to the long list of people who’d disappeared after catching Merrick Mitchell’s attention.
“Want me to keep an eye on him?” The words tasted like ash in her mouth. Playing her father’s games made her feel dirty, but it was necessary. Every compromise, every lie, brought her closer to justice.
“That’s my girl.” Merrick’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. Never had, not since the night her mother disappeared. “While you’re at it, show him the new pieces in the gallery. See how he reacts.”
The gallery. Eden’s pulse quickened. The private room where her father displayed his “art collection”—pieces stolen from museums across the country, each one worth millions on the black market. The room her DEA handlers were desperate to document.
She pulled up the museum’s documentation on her tablet, scanning Dr. Chen’s latest condition reports. The curator had been cataloguing everypiece that passed through the Institute’s restoration department with an almost suspicious thoroughness. But it was her personal notes that caught Eden’s attention—detailed observations about irregularities in certain artifacts’ provenance, carefully worded questions about authentication processes. All technically proper, yet somehow feeling like coded messages meant for specific eyes.
Eden had spent enough time studying the woman’s reports to recognize the pattern. Dr. Chen never directly flagged anything suspicious, but her documentation created a perfect record of every piece that had later proved to be stolen. Almost as if she were building a case, one meticulous note at a time.
“Speaking of the gallery...” Merrick gestured to a painting on his wall—a dark, twisted landscape she’d always hated. Something about the scene had always seemed wrong, beyond just the artist’s style. Now she wondered if it contained hidden messages, like the ledgers her mother had discovered. “We’re having a private showing tomorrow night. Some...international buyers are very interested in our collection.”
Eden’s fingers itched for her phone, wanting to transmit this intel to her handlers immediately. Instead, she forced herself to examine the painting with feigned interest. “The Rembrandt? I thought that one was spoken for.”
“Plans change, baby girl.” He took another drag of his cigar. The smoke curled between them like all the lies and secrets that had poisoned their relationship. “The market’s...shifting. Romano’s brought us some interesting opportunities.”
Opportunities. The word triggered another memory—her mother’s voice, urgent and frightened, talking about “opportunities” that were really threats. The night before she disappeared, Sarah Mitchell had tried to warn Eden about the darkness hiding behind seemingly innocent words.
A sharp knock interrupted them. One of her father’s lieutenants stuck his head in. “Boss, Romano’s here with the manifests.”
“Send him in.” Merrick’s attention shifted, dismissing her. “Close the door on your way out, Eden.”
She forced herself to walk slowly, naturally, even as every instinct screamed to run. In the hallway, she nearly collided with Romano and his ever-present briefcase. Their eyes met briefly—his cold and calculating, hers carefully blank.
“Miss Mitchell.” He smiled, the expression reminding her of a shark. “Always a pleasure.”
She nodded and slipped past him, but not before catching a glimpse of the papers in his hand. Shipping manifests, just as the lieutenant had said. But what caught her eye was the logo at the top—a shipping company known to the DEA as a front for international trafficking.
More pieces of the puzzle clicked into place. The stolen art wasn’t just about money laundering. The gallery showing, the international buyers, the shipping manifests… They were moving something bigger. Something that required elaborate covers and multiple layers of legitimacy.
Back at the bar, she found Hunter waiting. He nursed a beer, but his eyes tracked every movement in the room with predatory focus. Their gazes met, electricity crackling between them.
“Your father’s office is interesting,” he drawled, voice pitched low. “Lot of valuable art for a motorcycle club.”
“Daddy’s always been a collector.” She mixed a drink she didn’t need to, using the motion to scan the room for watchers. The careful way Hunter had mentioned the art confirmed her suspicions about his true purpose here. “He’s got excellent taste in acquisitions.”
The double meaning hung between them. Hunter’s eyes darkened. “Dangerous hobby, collecting things that don’t belong to you.”
“Everything’s dangerous in this life.” She leaned closer, letting her hair fall forward to shield her face from the cameras. Close enough to catch his scent—gunpowder and leather and something uniquely male that made her pulse quicken. “But some things are worth the risk.”
Her phone vibrated—a text from her DEA contact demanding an update. Another from club security about a perimeter breach. And beneath itall, the weight of her father’s expectations and suspicions, the constant fear of discovery, the mission that had consumed her life.
But looking at Hunter, seeing the same shadows and secrets in his eyes, Eden felt something she hadn’t experienced in years: hope. Dangerous, foolish hope.
Tomorrow night’s showing could give her everything she needed to bring down her father’s operation. All she had to do was survive until then. Simple.
But nothing was simple anymore. Not with Hunter watching her with those knowing eyes. Not with Romano’s mysterious manifests. Not with her father’s empire of blood and theft hanging by a thread.
The bar’s security cameras caught her attention, their steady red lights a constant reminder of surveillance. She’d designed the system herself, building in backdoors that let her monitor every corner of the clubhouse. Including the storage room where Romano was now meeting with her father.
Her hidden screens showed them examining something—not the manifests, but what looked like ancient tablets. The kind that shouldn’t exist in any legitimate collection. The kind her mother had been investigating before she disappeared.
Eden’s hands tightened on the edge of the bar as painful memories surfaced. Finding her mother’s research hidden in a false bottom of herjewelry box. Discovering the truth about the artifacts her father dealt in. Realizing that Sarah Mitchell’s disappearance wasn’t an abandonment but a murder.
The DEA thought this was about drugs and stolen art. They had no idea how deep the conspiracy really went. No idea that the artifacts weren’t just valuable—they were dangerous. That they contained secrets powerful people would kill to protect.
Secrets her mother had died trying to expose.
