Implode hollows bay tril.., p.1
Implode: Hollows Bay Trilogy Book Two, page 1
Implode
Hollows Bay Trilogy (Book two)
E. K Hunter
Copyright © E.K Hunter2023
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places, Businesses, Incidents, and Events are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electrical or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover By: Getcovers.com
Edited By: Hunter Author Services
Created By: Atticus
To my fur babies.
Thank you for keeping me company when I was locked away in my writing cave, even if one of you did keep farting and distracting me.
Foreword
Readers should be aware that this is a dark romance with morally gray characters and contains the following topics that may be triggering for some readers:
Torture
Murder
Drug abuse/overdose
Suicide references
Dub-con (Mild)
Familial death(s)
Kidnap
Sexual assault (Touching)
This book ends on a cliffhanger.
Playlist
Fragile- Kygo
Never Be The Same- Camila Cabello
Roses- The Chainsmokers
Stuck With U- Ariana Grande & Justin Bieber
Love On The Brain- Acoustic- Veronica Bravo
Heroin- Badflower
Poison- Rita Ora
Antichrist- Holly Humberstone
11 Minutes- Yungblud & Halsey
Beneath Your Beautiful- Labrinth & Emeli Sande
Vampire- Olivia Rodrigo
Haunting Me- Loveless
See You Later (Ten Years)- Jenna Raine
Prologue
The sun beats down, heating my skin and warming my body all over. I’m in heaven, this must be what heaven is like. Waves crash softly on the powdery sand, the gentle noise helps to relax me. Tall palm trees line the beach, the vibrant green of the leaves a vivid contrast against the light blue sky.
I don’t know where I am, nor do I know how I got here, but I don’t care, and I’m certainly not complaining. It’s peaceful, peace like I have never experienced before.
A squeal draws my attention. I slowly open my eyes to find Angel playing in the crystal blue sea. She swipes her hand across the surface of the water and a huge splash hits a shirtless Kai in the face. He laughs his deep laugh that stirs butterflies in my belly, and he gives her a genuine smile, one he normally reserves only for me. It’s a sight to behold, and I can’t help but smile over at the two of them.
He pounces on Angel and she squeals again as he pulls her into his arms and lifts her above his head.
“Kai put me down!” Angel giggles, her words aren’t mumbled like they usually are. I don’t understand why though, I don’t remember Angel getting the cochlear implant she so badly wanted, and if she did get it, then she shouldn’t be wearing it in the water.
I don’t give it much thought as Kai launches Angel into the air, she flies high before crashing down underneath the waves, disappearing for a long minute.
Panic starts to creep into my body but her head bobs back up and she laughs so loudly that it echoes all around the beach, filling the air. I can’t help but laugh, causing both Kai and Angel to look over at me.
“She’s awake!” Angel cries, and Kai smiles his heart-stopping smile at me which I feel all the way to my core.
She grabs Kai’s hand and starts pulling him towards the shore, telling him to move faster. The second Angel’s toes hit the sand, she drops his hand and runs over to me, flinging her arms around me and soaking me with salty water.
But I don’t care, if anything, the water cools my heated skin. I throw my arms around her and pull her into me, holding her so tightly that I don’t think I’ll ever let her go.
I smell her hair, her usual raspberry scent just about detectable underneath the salt of the ocean, and I breathe in deeply, inhaling as much of it as possible. It’s a smell I will never get enough of.
She smells like home.
“Kai’s been teaching me how to swim underwater,” Angel beams as the shadow of Kai falls over us.
I look up at him, a strange feeling coming over me, it feels like I haven’t seen him for such a long time, and I realize how much I’ve missed him.
I drink him in, his black hair that’s shaved around the sides but messy on top, his strong jawline that’s usually clean shaven, but now has smatterings of dark stubble, and those eyes, those all-seeing, intense dark eyes which have flecks of gold in them.
My eyes travel down his body, over his broad tattooed chest, over every solid muscle of his firm body, and over the black ink that covers both his arms from shoulders to wrists. If this place really is heaven, then Kai is a god.
“Let me see my girl,” he says after a minute of me gawking at him. Angel reluctantly steps out of my grasp and I let her go, the need to feel his hands on my skin overwhelms me.
As soon as Angel moves, he swoops down. I barely have a second to prepare myself before his mouth is on mine, his full lips tasting exactly how I remember as he claims my mouth. His arms wrap around me as his tongue meets mine, the two of us pouring every little emotion into the kiss. For some reason, it feels like it was a lifetime ago that I last felt his mouth upon mine.
After what seems like an eternity, he breaks our kiss and steps back but still gives me the smile I love so much. It’s only then I notice Angel isn’t standing where she was moments ago, my brows furrow as I look around the beach in concern. She’s nowhere to be seen, and the once clear blue sky has turned a deep dark gray as storm clouds roll in, the waves now crashing powerfully onto the shore. In the distance, thunder rumbles menacingly.
“Angel?” I say, but the words don’t come out, they lodge painfully in my throat.
I look back to Kai, but now he isn’t there either, neither of them are anywhere to be seen. Fear works its way through me, my heart pounding fiercely against my chest.
The thunder roars again, only this time it’s much louder indicating it’s close, so very close. I call out again, but still, my words don’t come out. I try to stand from the bed I’ve been laying on, but my body won’t move, and suddenly, everything hurts. Pain rolls through my body making me nauseous, my vision grows blurry as darkness crowds around me.
I fight against it, but I’m so exhausted, and I start giving into the black hole that is trying to consume me. Just as my eyes are closing, hands come towards me. They belong to a masked man with eyes as dark as the night sky.
I scream, but nothing comes out.
And then the darkness finally sucks me in.
Chapter 1
Kai
The smell hit me the second the door to the dark room opened. Not the smell of death, death has a distinctly pungent smell to it.
No, this was the smell of dirt and sweat, of piss and shit, and all other delights a body produces after being locked away in a dark cold room for days without any food, no sleep, and the constant threat of death hanging over your head.
The human body is an incredible machine all the time it gets what it needs to survive: water, food, and sleep. But removing one element can quickly fuck it up.
That’s why I’d made sure Jane Timpson was given small glasses of water every eight hours, enough to make sure her body didn’t start to shut down, but not enough to keep her from the cusp of delirium.
Dehydration can be dangerous, and as much as I wanted the woman to suffer, just as I was suffering, I wanted her lucid enough to tell me what I needed to know.
Where the fuck was Danny?
If I was honest, I was on the fence as to whether she was involved in his deceit. Yeah, the phone he had been using to communicate with my enemy had been found in Jane’s handbag, but there was a possibility she was another victim in Danny’s twisted game. He could have set her up to make it look like she was involved.
Until I’d interrogated her personally, I was keeping an open mind.
It had been three days since everything I thought I knew was turned upside down. Three days since my cousin, Miles Wolfe, cracked the phone we’d discovered in Detective John Anderson’s backyard. When Miles had analyzed it, he’d found only one number saved in the contacts under the name ‘D’.
Anderson had been smart enough to delete all the messages between him and D, but not smart enough to delete the number. When Miles had explained all this to me, I couldn’t help but think back to what Isaac, my private investigator, had said.
It seems like someone is leaving you little breadcrumbs to follow.
Being the tech genius he is, Miles traced the location of D’s number, only to find it was at the care home where Jane’s mom was a resident.
The same place Jane was visiting right then.
His initial theory was that Jane was the sole culprit in feeding information back to Anderson. Determined to catch her in possession of the evidence, Miles headed straight to the care home where he and Jane’s protection detail, Matthew, detained her and searched her bag. Lo and behold, the phone was in there.
But when Miles unlocked the phone, that’s when he realized Danny was the real culprit. Anderson may have been smart enough to delete
In the hours after the crash, Miles showed me the phone, and I sat for the rest of the night reading the messages between the two of them. Danny had shared every little detail about my operations, my business plans, and of course, how much Riley had come to mean to me.
If I had any doubt that it was Danny behind the messages, I only had to look at how they were written to prove it was him. Danny despised texting, he couldn’t be bothered half the time so would always shorten words. Every message to Anderson was written exactly the way Danny sent his messages to me.
When Miles wasn’t able to contact me because there had been a problem with my phone, he’d instructed Matthew to take Jane to the cell, and that’s where she’d been since.
I hadn’t been to see Jane before now, I hadn’t trusted myself not to snap her neck the second I laid eyes on her. But Miles and my closest friend and associate, Hendrix Becker had. They both reported back the same thing, either she was a really good actress or she genuinely didn’t have a clue about Danny’s betrayal.
Apparently, she’d been horror-struck when Miles told her what had happened in the middle of West Bay, where the car carrying Riley and Angel had been hit by an armored truck, and Danny had kidnapped Angel. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was minutes away with backup, who the fuck knew what would have happened to Riley.
The constant image of her unconscious form hanging limply in my arms had stopped me from sleeping more than a couple of hours these last few nights. I was so scared I would lose her.
The girl who made my black heart beat again.
Jane’s cell was dark, damp, and freezing. It was located in the basement of my apartment block, next to my torture room. There were no windows, and the only door that would have allowed her exit was surrounded by two armed men at all times of the day. They had been stationed there since the minute Jane had been thrown in there on the off chance Danny was stupid enough to try a rescue attempt.
But there was no trace of the fucker.
I had ordered raids on every property linked to him, and no stone had been left unturned. Much like the ghost who killed my brother, Danny had disappeared into the night, taking Angel with him.
Hendrix, Miles, and I were working day and night to find Danny’s hideout, not just to find the traitorous cunt, but for when Riley woke up, her sister would be ready and waiting.
But we were failing fucking miserably.
Perhaps it was for the best my Star hadn’t regained consciousness, if she woke to find her sister missing, she’d be devastated.
After the crash, I held Riley while Hendrix drove us straight to Dr. Harris’ private hospital, and while the doctor was assessing the extent of Riley’s injuries, Miles set about hacking into the city’s camera network to find the route Danny had taken.
The camera footage showed the Audi being plowed into by the armored truck, followed by Danny getting out and dragging Angel from the back seat.
The little girl had been kicking and punching, trying her best to get free as he dragged her away from the wreckage and Riley. Fear was etched all over her face as Danny eventually hauled her into his arms and carried her down an alleyway.
It was less than a minute later when Miles, Hendrix, Frank and I arrived at the scene.
After watching the footage, I’d punched a wall and split my knuckles open out of sheer frustration at how close we had been to stopping Danny. More infuriatingly, at the moment when the four of us arrived at the carnage, the camera footage had been cut. There was no trace of where Danny went after that.
Miles was still hacking private cameras across the city, but it was taking fucking time, time we didn’t have, and the longer Danny remained out there, the longer he had to get further and further away from my clutches. You could get halfway around the fucking world in three days.
I had a million and one unanswered questions, but no matter how many times I went over the facts, the answers remained unknown. Why had Danny taken Angel when Riley was the target? Why had his car been ambushed if he was working with my enemy? Why had it been three days, and yet he hadn’t made any demands in exchange for Angel being returned unharmed?
But there was so much of this nightmare that didn’t make sense. Theo had been murdered several months ago when he was lured to his death. A Detective by the name of John Anderson knew something about Theo’s death, if he wasn’t directly involved in it. Then, when Riley and I had been at a charity ball, Anderson made an appearance and tried to kidnap her, telling her someone wanted to meet her, and she was going to be leverage in order to get to me.
Who that someone was, I had no fucking clue. And I was pretty sure that someone was going to strike again, and soon if I didn’t find out who the hell they were. That was without mentioning the involvement of a gang known as The Stags who ruled Huntsville, a city on the other side of the state. Somewhere along the line, they had been brought in to help overthrow me.
Talk about a mind fuck.
As I stepped into the cell, the light from the corridor illuminated the small room. My eyes fell on the tiny frame of Jane Timpson who was sitting in the furthest corner of the room. Her knees were tucked up to her chest, and her arms wrapped around them, trying to stop the cold from seeping into her bones.
At my arrival, she lifted her head. Dirty streaks stained her cheeks from where she had been crying, and heavy bags lay underneath her eyes, probably from lack of sleep.
As a torture technique, whenever Jane started to nod off, my guards were instructed to play white noise as loud as possible in her cell to prevent her from sleeping.
One way or another, I would break her.
Her face was gaunt, malnourished even, her mousy brown hair was thick with grease, and the room stank from her body odor. The waste bucket in the corner of the cell was almost full, adding to the stench and making me want to gag.
I didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy for the woman. In fact, my hands twitched with the need to make her feel pain. I didn’t make it a habit to hurt women, only when needs must, and this was a time if ever there was one.
I wanted answers.
I stared down at her for the longest minute, allowing the bile rising in my throat from the foul smell to settle. It also gave me a minute to control the rage that was vibrating underneath my skin. I was usually in control of my emotions, I never acted without thought, except when Riley was involved. But the last few days had been the hardest of my life, and I was finding it increasingly difficult to not fly off the handle at any little thing.
I feared the only way I would regain the power to control myself was for Riley to wake up and be back in my arms where she belonged.
“Mr….Mr. Wolfe,” Jane broke the silence, daring to speak before she was spoken to. Her voice was croaky, her lips pale and cracked from dryness. She couldn’t meet my eyes, her head dropping to her lap, but I wasn’t sure if that was because she was shit scared of what I was about to do or a sign of guilt.
I could understand what Danny had seen in her, there was something vulnerable about her, even before her current pitiful state, something you couldn’t help but want to protect. She had a sheltered upbringing that made her naive in adult life, and despite Danny being a vicious motherfucker, he had a caring side to him. He wanted to protect those who were weak. Or, at least, I thought he did.
Danny had been a victim of the system growing up, abused in practically every care home he had ever stayed in until he was old enough to protect himself. He was my best enforcer, my most savage ally, but give him a tiny woman with doe eyes, he was a goner.
I’d seen it between him and Riley, the bond they had developed in the short time she had stayed with us. As much as he had never said it, he had come to see her as family. I honestly believed he would have given his life to protect her.
How wrong I had been.
“Hello, Jane,” I replied coolly, honing in on my skill to keep emotion out of my voice.
“Have you come to let me go?” she asked feebly, although it was a waste of breath, she knew what the answer would be.
