Page 94 of Silent Vendetta (Vendetta Duet)

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” he started. “You deserve a man who takes responsibility for his choices.” My heart clenched as he swiped his lower lip with his thumb. “I’ll find the man who did this to your father, and I will end him, but after that…” Hunter’s gaze cascaded over my features, as if drinking me in like a thirsty man afforded one last glass of water. “I’m going to turn myself in.”

I pushed off of him. “You can’t do that.”

“Luna…”

“I know I’m being selfish and immoral, but I don’t care. I’ve spent the last twenty years trying to do the right thing, and look where it got me—my father is in the ground.” My throat clenched. “And I have all this fresh resentment toward my family, my mom, for not being there for him. I’m done doing what’s noble, and foronce,I want to do something that makesmehappy. So please.” I turned to face him. “Don’t. I can’t go through having someone else I love stuck in prison again.”

Hunter’s chest sank, and he shook his head in agony.

“Luna, even if I don’t turn myself in, Sean, the detectives—they’re onto me. It’s probably just a matter of time.”

“So, burn the evidence. Get rid of the car, burn your weapons room. Burn everything. Everything they have is circumstantial right now. Arresting a prominent prosecutor and charging him with being the Windy City Vigilante will give Mayor Kepler and the police a huge black eye. They won’t do that unless they have airtight evidence against you.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Yes, we do.”

“They could arrest me, anyway.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But don’t make it easier on them. Please.”

Hunter’s lips curled down. “I can’t let you get yourself involved in a crime, Luna.”

“I’m already involved. I know your identity, and I will never tell anybody.”

His face softened into pity. “Look, you might feel this way today, but you just lost your father. I’m sure once you have time to think about this—”

“I won’t change my mind.” I jutted my chin up, staring at him defiantly. “I love you. You’re all I have left, and if you get taken from me and put in prison, I’ll have nothing.”

My words landed a blow to his features, which fell into agony.

“Don’t do this,” I pleaded.

“Luna…”

“I finally fell in love with someone so deeply that I can’t imagine spending one breath away from you, Hunter.” My vision blurred. “You said you would do anything for me.”

His lips thinned into a hard line.

“We could leave the country,” I suggested.

He shook his head. “And rob you of any hope of ever reconciling with your family?”

My heart burned. “I don’t want to reconcile with all of them.”

“Maybe not all of them, but what about your mom?”

I frowned.

He stroked my jaw with the back of his knuckles. “I’ll never take that from you.” I was about to protest, but he continued, “Besides. A life on the run is miserable.”

“Then do what you have to, to not get caught here.”

Silence.

“This is what I need. Burn your house down if you have to. Stop being the Vigilante, not because I reject it morally, but because I don’t want you to go to prison. I need to be with you, Hunter. Now and always.”

The muscles along Hunter’s jaw flexed and twitched, each clench betraying a battle of emotions roiling beneath his composed exterior. Like he was fighting an internal war between being the man he thought I deserved and the man who would be around to love me and cherish me all the days of my life.

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