Chapter 5 THE HUNTER’S ORIGIN

Adeline’s POV

The penthouse felt like a gilded cage, all glass and steel and suffocating silence. I stood at the window, city lights blurring through the floor-to-ceiling glass, and tried not to think about how high up we were. How far I'd have to fall.

The wedding dress hung in the closet behind me, black silk and lace that had transformed me into something I barely recognized. A Gravano wife. The thought still tasted like poison on my tongue.

My neck throbbed where I'd been rubbing it—a nervous habit I'd developed since that night three weeks ago. The night everything changed. The night I should have been smart enough to walk away.

But I'd never been smart about the dangerous ones.

Footsteps echoed behind me, expensive leather against marble. I knew that walk—predatory, confident, completely at ease in his own territory. I didn't turn around. Couldn't. Not when my pulse was already racing from just the sound.

"Having second thoughts?" Kayden's voice cut through the quiet, smooth as aged whiskey and twice as intoxicating.

"About which part? Marrying you, or not killing you when I had the chance?"

He moved closer. I could feel the heat radiating from his body, the way the air seemed to thicken around him like he carried his own gravity. My reflection in the window showed him approaching, all dark elegance and controlled power.

"You mean the hotel."

It wasn't a question. Of course he knew exactly what I was thinking about. He'd probably been waiting for this conversation since the moment I'd agreed to his twisted proposal.

My fingers found the faint scar at my throat—barely visible now, but I felt it every time my pulse jumped. Every time he looked at me like I was prey he hadn't decided whether to devour or keep as a pet.

"I should have slit your throat," I whispered.

"But you didn't."

The memory hit like a physical blow, dragging me back to that night when I'd still believed I was the one in control.

The Phoenix Hotel had been a fortress of glass and gold, the kind of place where men like Kayden Gravano held court over their kingdoms of blood and money. I'd spent hours mapping every security system, every blind spot, every possible escape route.

The contract was simple: eliminate the Mafia Prince. No complications, no witnesses, no mercy.

I'd slipped into his suite like smoke, every movement calculated and silent. The target stood with his back to me, completely unaware that death had just walked through his door. It should have been over in seconds.

One bullet. Clean death. Another name crossed off my list.

But when he turned...

"You hesitated," Kayden said now, his voice closer than before. I could see him in the window's reflection, standing just close enough to touch. "Just for a second. Right there at the end."

His eyes. Gray like storm clouds, sharp as broken glass, holding intelligence and danger in equal measure. When our gazes locked across that hotel room, something electric had passed between us. Recognition of a kindred spirit. Challenge accepted. Danger wrapped in the most intoxicating desire I'd ever felt.

Rain pounded against the windows, slicing the darkness into jagged shards of neon. The city outside blurred, drowned beneath the storm, but inside, it was all him—all weight, all heat, all danger.

I didn’t need to see him move. I felt it—the shift in the air, the impossible certainty that he had been waiting for me, knowing I’d come. My knife hovered, a sliver of cold steel trembling in my grip, but the real threat wasn’t the blade—it was him.

Every motion he made was a shock to my senses. Every step, every move, every near-miss carried a pulse I hadn’t felt in years. My heart thundered, not from fear, but from the awareness that every second with him was a gamble I couldn’t afford to lose—and one I might not want to win.

He mirrored me instinctively, reading me like an extension of himself. There was no violence yet, only tension, tight as a drawn bowstring. Every breath we shared, every brush of our bodies, was a silent negotiation neither of us could name.

And then, sharp and undeniable, the truth struck me: he wasn’t just a target. He wasn’t a mission. He was the fire I had buried, the part of myself I had sworn never to awaken.

I steadied my voice, though my pulse was betraying me.

"Any last words?" I'd demanded, trying to ignore the way his body felt beneath mine, all lean muscle and controlled strength.

"You're beautiful when you're about to kill someone," he'd whispered, and something in his voice—challenge, invitation, raw honesty—had made me freeze.

That heartbeat of hesitation had cost me everything.

"Why didn't you kill me that night?" I asked now, finally turning to face him.

"Same reason you didn't kill me." His hand settled on my shoulder, thumb brushing the edge of my scar with devastating gentleness. "You felt it too."

I spun fully to face him, anger flaring hot and bright to mask the other emotions clawing at my chest. "Felt what?"

"The pull." His fingers traced my jawline, gentle as a prayer, deadly as a promise. "That moment when hunter and prey realize they're perfectly matched. When the chase becomes something else entirely."

My breath caught in my throat. He was close enough to kiss, close enough to kill. Close enough to destroy everything I thought I knew about myself and the careful walls I'd built around my heart.

The city sprawled below us through the floor-to-ceiling windows, millions of lights in the darkness. All those people living their simple, safe lives while we played this dangerous game sixty stories above them.

"You're my enemy," I whispered, hating how breathless I sounded.

"Yes."

"I'm supposed to hate you."

"You do hate me." His thumb brushed across my bottom lip, and I had to fight not to lean into the touch. "But you want me anyway."

The truth of it hit like a physical blow. Three weeks of marriage, three weeks of this impossible tension stretching taut between us like a wire ready to snap. Three weeks of pretending the electricity in every accidental touch didn't set my world on fire. Three weeks of telling myself this was just survival, just playing a part.

But survival didn't make my pulse race when he walked into a room. Playing a part didn't make me dream about those storm-gray eyes every night.

"This is just the contract," I said, but even I could hear how hollow the words sounded. "One year, and then I'm free."

"One year," he murmured, echoing the terms that bound us together. His free hand settled on my waist, thumb tracing small circles through the silk of my dress. "Think you can resist me that long?"

I lifted my chin, letting all my defiance blaze in my eyes even as my traitorous body leaned slightly into his touch. "Try me."

His smile was sharp enough to cut, predatory and knowing and absolutely devastating. "Oh, sweetheart. I plan to."

The promise in his voice sent shivers down my spine. This wasn't just about the contract anymore, wasn't just about Belle's safety or his need for a wife. This was about the fire that had sparked between us in that hotel room, the recognition that we were two sides of the same deadly coin.

The city hummed below us, sixty stories of steel and glass between us and the ground. But the most dangerous fall wasn't the one outside the window.

It was the one I was already taking, straight into the arms of the man I should have killed when I had the chance.

Then the balcony door behind me slid open. Footsteps—slow, and deliberate—echoed against the marble floor. My pulse jumped. I pressed back against him, knife hidden, breath catching. Whoever was out there didn’t know I was ready. But I had a feeling…they were about to find out.