Page 147 of Silent Vendetta (Vendetta Duet)

I balled my hands into fists.

“You know what he’s done?” I asked.

“We didn’t come here to discuss Dillon.”

“How do you know him?”

“Look, our paths crossed during a work thing once, but I don’t have much time, and this isn’t why I asked you to come.”

A work thing?

Suspicion and fear churned in me. “Grayson, are you running drugs?”

“What? No.”

“That guy was the most wanted criminal kingpin in the country.”

Grayson sighed and flagged the bartender down. “He’ll have a scotch.”

I ground my teeth, but after a few seconds, I sat down.

My brother had picked the two seats at the far end of the bar, out of earshot of everyone. In theory.

To be safe, I kept my voice low. “If you’re not involved in narcotics, then whatareyou involved in?”

How did Grayson have mysterious contacts with contract killers and seem unfazed when killing a man and dumping his body in the waterway behind our property? So skilled, I might add, that the police never found it.

“Here you go, sir.”

A wiry bartender with tattoos snaking up his arm set my drink down and walked off.

“Do you really want to get into this?” Grayson leaned over, putting his mouth by my ear. “Because I never did ask you about your secret underground room. Or why you’d go to prison if anyone found it?”

“I kept it from you, so you’d have plausible deniability,” I said.

A slow smirk crept onto Grayson’s face. He lifted his scotch, letting the amber liquid swirl for a moment as he looked deep into it before taking a deliberate sip and setting it down with a clank.

On the television in the corner, some story was running about the Windy City Vigilante. I couldn’t hear what they were saying—perhaps talking about how there hadn’t been an attack recently. But my brother looked at the screen, then back at me with knowing eyes.

“It wasn’t hard to connect the dots,” he said.

I didn’t deny it. No reason to, so instead, I let the unspoken confirmation settle in the space between two brothers.

Grayson scrubbed his jaw. “I have to take off for a bit. Will be out of touch.”

“For how long?”

Grayson shrugged. “Hard to say. Some jobs take a couple of days; some take a couple of months. The job I just got hired for sounds complicated…”

“Hired to dowhat?” I pressed.

“Nothing I’ll tell a lawyer.” Grayson’s mouth curled up. “I’ll be in touch when I can.”

He got up, but trepidation yanked my stomach to the ground, wanting to pull him back to me, and beg him to stay. I had a bad feeling about this—he’d never given me a heads-up before one of his disappearances.

“Grayson,” I said before he could walk away. “Will you be safe?”

Grayson put his hands in his pockets. “Safety’s an illusion, Hunter. No one in this world is truly safe.”

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