Page 72 of Silent Vendetta (Vendetta Duet)

Hunter yanked my phone from my hand, clutching my screen so tightly, I thought he might break it.

“Grayson, go with Barry. Lean on whoever you need to get answers.”

“No.” I stood up. “We’re not doing it this way. I’ll take the text to detectives.”

But nobody was listening to me. It was like I was nothing more than a shadow in the room as the three men performed some silent secret handshake, united in a goal to find out who was threatening me.

“Wait!” I demanded.

But neither Grayson nor Barry so much as turned around, let alone stopped walking out of the room.

“Who are you going to talk to?” I pressed, watching with wide eyes as the two men approached the front door.

But they didn’t answer. And I didn’t have time to chase them because Hunter was charging up the grand staircase.

Twosteps at a time.

“Hunter, wait.”

But he didn’t wait. I had to jog up the stairs and trail behind him, each step echoing my rising anxiety. The hallway seemed longer than I remembered, shadows casting eerie dances on the walls, and his master bedroom was saturated with a palpable tension. We wove through his closet, a labyrinth of expensive suits and colognes that lingered in the air, to the Vigilante closet hidden behind the facade of his daily life.

“Hunter,” I said.

But he was already through the second fake door, and as we descended the spiral staircase, each twist took us deeper into the heart of his secrets. The amber glow from sconces illuminated the stone tunnel, revealing the moist beads that clung to the walls, sending a chill across my skin.

But when we made it to his weapons room, it took me off guard that Franco wasn’t there, nor was a single drop of his blood. The stone was pristine, reflecting the soft glow of the room, washed of all its dark history, and the once-foreboding chair had vanished—almost as if nothing in here had ever happened, any hint of it a figment of my imagination.

“Where did you put him?” I wondered aloud.

Hunter grabbed a knife from the wall.

Making my stomach sink.

“I won’t make you an accomplice after the fact.” His tone was sharp, his words slicing through the air with authority.

He stormed down the tunnel again so quickly, that I had to jog to keep up with him, my calls for him to stop going unanswered. His footsteps were so loud on the metal staircase, their clanks hurt my ears, and once he reached his closet, he yanked a Vigilante shirt off so hard, the hanger flew to the ground. All the while, he kept hold of the knife.

“Don’t do this.” My voice was rising and shaking.

When he grabbed a pair of boots, blood pumped through my veins so quickly, my limbs weakened.

“You have a choice, Hunter. Do you want to be the Vigilante? After everything we’ve been through, is this the man you want to be?”

His blue eyes locked with mine, cutting through false pretenses and exposing our inner truths, and when he stormed up to me, he released the shirt and boots and grabbed my chin.

Making me gasp.

“I’ll kill anyone who even whispers a threat against you, Luna.”

I swallowed, unsteadied by the feral look in his eyes.

It was wrong to feel adored, loved, and protected in this moment. I should have felt disgusted, but I didn’t. Not even a little. I knew, without a doubt, that Hunter would carry through with his threat if I allowed him to. He would seek out the owner of this letter, and he would kill them.

There was something primal and protective about that, which chipped away at the wall I had built around my heart.

But I couldn’t let him do this, whateverthiswas. I needed to find a way to stop him, and poking holes in his plan seemed like a good first step to get through to him.

“And how are you going to do that?” I challenged.

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