Page 4 of Sebastian

“How old was your brother when he disappeared?” I suddenly asked.

Dahler stared at me with a startled expression, mouth gaping like a fish for a moment as he struggled to form words. People tended to forget I was in the room when my brother took over a conversation, so when I did speak it usually startled them. I’d had people in the past compare the unexpected sound of my voice to suddenly hearing the furniture speak.

I tried not to take offence, but seriously, people treated silence like an abnormality. As if there was something wrong with me just because I didn’t feel the need to constantly fill the air with words.

Raising one eyebrow, I took another sip of my coffee and waited for Mr. Dahler to answer. Hopefully, he heard my question the first time, because I wouldn’t be repeating myself.

“Oh, um, right.” Dahler shook his head to chase away the shock and managed to find his voice again. “Clay was fourteen when he disappeared. He’d be twenty-three now. Old enough to drink. I never thought he’d be gone long enough to miss that milestone.”

Hmm, not as young as I’d originally thought but still young enough nonetheless. I frowned but didn’t say anything else and let my brother continue with his line of questioning.

Dahler’s wording bothered me.

Gone.

Not missing. Gone.

That word almost made it sound like Clay Dahler had just decided to leave one day, and his continued absence was his own fault. No child just up and left home on their own unless there was some very nasty reason they didn’t want to be there, and that wasn’t the feeling I got in this case.

I wasn’t sure if Jason Dahler was hiding something important that he simply couldn’t handle admitting to, or if he refused to use the word “taken” so he wouldn’t have to face reality, but either way, I didn’t predict a good outcome for this job.

CHAPTER 3

Sebastian

Damien’s fist hit my stomach, causing me to double over as the air suddenly left my lungs. The position put me off balance, and he used the opportunity to sweep my feet out from under me. My back hit the ground with a harsh thud, and before I could even take a breath, he was kneeling over me with one knee on my chest and his hand at my throat.

He smiled down at me. “You’re dead. That’s the third time I’ve killed you today.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled, slapping his hand away. “You win. You don’t have to gloat about it.”

Almost every important conversation Damien and I ever exchanged happened while sparring. Something about the movement of our fists made the difficult words flow easier. Any time one of us had something to say, we dragged the other off to our little homemade gym on the residential floor above the office, which I’d moved into when Damien had bought a new place with his partners recently. Not that he’d expected me to move away from him, we’d always lived together over our fifteen years on the run, but I did it because being around the three of them as they were all lovey dovey and having sex all the time wasn’t my bag. It just made more sense for me to live in the apartment above the firm, even if it was rather small. I didn’t need much space, after all.

Creating the gym upstairs meant taking space away from the rest of the apartment, too—the bedrooms barely had enough space for double beds and the kitchen was basically just a cluster of appliances in one corner—but it was worth the sacrifice. I’d take training, sparring, and talking with my brother over the luxury of more space any day. Especially since we rarely saw one another outside of work these days.

Once assured of his victory, Damien sat on the floor next to my shoulder. One elbow balanced on his knee while his other hand stroked his newly re-grown beard.

Damien had a unique talent for keeping his short beard perfectly groomed. Not a hair stood out of place, even after our sparring match. The sharp line it created along his jaw rivaled the edge of the finest blade. It was an impressive sight. It was also an obvious giveaway to anyone who knew him well. When Damien’s hand went to his chin, beard or no beard stroking, that meant he had something on his mind. So, I didn’t bother to get up and just reclined on the mat as I waited for him to find the right words.

Less than a minute passed before he spoke.

“You seem agitated. Something about that client bothered you.”

I shrugged, though the action probably looked awkward from a prone position. “Not bothered, just... brothers, you know. One of them missing. The other desperately looking for him. Clay Dahler was only fourteen when he disappeared. No fourteen-year-old kid goes missing suddenly for innocent reasons. You and I both know he’s probably dead by now. Even if he isn’t, and we do manage to find him, the condition he’s likely to be in is... well, not good. It all just reminds me of how easily that could have been us.”

A memory passed behind my eyes, so fast it was barely more than a blur of color.

Voices arguing.

The bright light of a muzzle flash, followed by the reverberation of a gun firing, and finally, the horrible sound of absolute silence.

Hiding in the closet with my brother’s hand pressed tightly over my mouth, holding in the petrified sobs that threatened to escape my chest.

Slowly making our way down the stairs to the living room, fear of the gunman and his goons still being there or coming back for us despite the fact we knew we’d heard them leave.

The sight of bright red blood staining the white carpet only inches from my shoe.

I shook my head, pushing the memories back.

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