Page 1 of Silent Vendetta (Vendetta Duet)

CHAPTER1

Luna

My boyfriend is the Windy City Vigilante.

And I’m here, in his secret underground lair with him.

Dim amber lights cast an eerie glow that highlighted the rough, moss-covered stone walls. The floor was gritty beneath my shoes, small pebbles and sediment crunching softly with my movements, while the heavy air, cold and dense, clinging to my skin, making it prickle. Every breath I took was laced with the musky scent of damp earth and a faint hint of the lair’s sinister purpose.

Franco’s bloody figure sat bound to a chair, making my heart launch into spasms.

“You shouldn’t have come down here,” Hunter said.

I didn’t even recognize his voice. Gone were the familiar tones of the boyfriend who loved me, and in its place, a chilling symphony of darkness, possessed with a haunting quality—the low growl of a killer.

How could two completely different people inhabit the same body? Hunter, the man who’d kissed away my past hurts and brought my heart back to life with a love I needed desperately, and the Vigilante, who’d slashed the throats of over fifty men, who’d used an axe to dismember one of his last victims—while the said victim was still alive.

Both Hunter and the Vigilante had claimed they were trying to protect me, but both had lied to me about who they really were.

And most sinisterly, what they were capable of.

I mean, holy shit, look at Franco.He’s missing his ears!And he’s covered in blood, all Stephen King’s Carrie style in an underground bunker that looked like a scene fromThe Silence of the Lambs, complete with a blood-soaked floor. Not to mention the wall of weapons that could dismember a small woman in no time.

No. Turns out, I didn’t know Hunter at all.

He wasn’t a protector—he was a predator. A lethal, violent man.

And I’d just uncovered the one secret that could cost him everything.

My palms burst into sweat, and a metallic tang brushed my tongue, as if I could literally taste the lurking danger surrounding me.

“I’m going to need you to sit over here.” Hunter pointed to a spot on the floor, using his bloody freaking knife as his pointer—because this wasn’t all sorts of screwed up enough. My heart, once full and vibrant, felt like shattered glass inside me, each fragment piercing deeper than the last.

I looked at the ochre glow of horror stretching through the rock-lined tunnel and focused on the shadow of light at its end—the source, the staircase that illuminated the path to freedom.

Hunter held that blood-soaked knife and took deliberate and heavy steps toward me. Shadows seemed to gather around him, and the room’s atmosphere grew thick with tension, making my throat run dry.

“Luna, you need to listen to me.” He’d used his soothing boyfriend voice this time.

Listen as inlet me explain why I’m a serial killer? Or listen as inobey, so I can kill you easier?

I wasn’t sure, but as he advanced toward me, adrenaline soared through my veins so much, it made my fingers tremble. I needed to get away from him. Run back up that staircase, and make my way through the mansion to the front door, where, soon, the police, who I’d called a minute or so ago, would arrive. They would arrest Hunter Lockwood, capturing the Vigilante who had been slaughtering people for two years.

I took a step, but slammed into the steel arm that snaked around my waist and pulled my back to Hunter’s chest. Which sent a jolt of pain through my body.

Still holding that damn knife, he did not say,Don’t worry; I won’t hurt you. No. Instead, he said, “Step with me, Luna.”

My breathing quickened.

The blade glistened, painted with a slick coat of crimson—the color so vivid against the metal, it almost seemed alive, like a fresh wound warning me what would happen if I didn’t get away. My right hip pinched against the force of his forearm as I put my palms up, pretending that I was going to comply with his orders.

“Good,” Hunter cooed in my ear when I began to move with him, like we were in a psychotic slow dance toward my demise. His hot breath against my skin used to elicit a warmth in my lower belly, but now, it felt like a chilling ghost haunting my body—something I wanted to wash off me.

I matched Hunter’s pace, giving him no sign that I was just waiting for the right moment to strike as he led me deeper into this underground room.

Hunter twisted me slightly to my left so he could turn me around, but when he did that, the knife shifted away from me just a bit.

I jerked to the left, then my hips to the right, breaking through Hunter’s man-made barrier.

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