dead, exhausted after the sexual wringer he’d put her body through at Moonflame. She had surprised him. Out of all of her inhibitions, being on display had been the one that she’d hated the most for understandable reasons. But somehow, she trusted him to take care of her, and that more than anything made him feel like the most powerful of all. Her had her love, he had her trust, and that was how he knew it was time.
Looking down at the tablet, he looked at the gallery of photos he’d taken through the years, and sighed. Locking the tablet, he put it on the side table and lay down, his arm going around her small frame.
She curled back into him unconsciously, her lips moving in a mumble he couldn’t hear, and he felt something tighten in his chest. Holding her, sleeping next to her, being with her, it had changed him, opened him up to possibilities and ideas, and the range of emotions he still didn’t feel to the fullest extent but one he knew about.
Giving her a squeeze, he pressed a soft kiss to her head, before getting out of the bed. Knowing she’d sleep through the night—she always did after an intense fucking—he dressed in his dark athletic wear, put his phone in his pocket just in case she woke up and needed him, and quietly went to the window.
One of the reasons he stayed in this room was because of the emergency access ladder that was right outside his window. He could use it and go down without getting on any cameras inside the hotel. It also gave him the additional thrill of stymieing any watching eyes.
To the world, Blackthorne was asleep in the bed with his beautiful wife. It was time for the Shadow Man to walk.
Out the window and down the ladder, he jumped into the side alley, slowly walking down the street to the warehouse they had kept her locked up in. Poetic justice or simple vengeance, he didn’t know, but he was keeping both Hector and the second guy there. She had been right under his nose and he’d been looking everywhere else.
Six months. They had kept her in chains and broken down the last remaining pieces of her, to the point she had been driven to the arms of death when she’d gotten out. The first week she had been back at home, she had barely left her room, barely eaten, barely talked. It had taken her days to slowly unfurl, open up, and let him in. Days where his connection with her over the years hadn’t meant a thing because she had been too depressed.
Enjoying the dark of the night as he made his way through, he realized this was probably the one thing he was going to enjoy the most.
The warehouse they had kept her in came into view and he slipped inside. The long, industrial space was empty, just like he wanted it to be for anyone who came stumbling. Making his way through the side, he went to the back, to the tiny hellhole of a room she had been put in, the ceiling she had stared up at day after day. He had seen every single video they had sent out, seen the way her eyes had slowly died, her body had given up, her mind had left. He had seen, and if there was one thing on this planet that could make him go berserk, it was that. He had killed more people in those six months than he had in the last decade, asking, interrogating, disposing.
The Syndicate was fucking shaking in their boots at that point. Out of the five members they had at the top of the pyramid, he had already finished off three, with only two remaining and both of them in the wind, hiding like the snakes they were until he was done.
Oh, he wasn’t done.
He pushed open the door to the little room, and entered, the hood drawn over his face.
The pungent scent of blood, urine and decay filled his nose. He was glad that his olfactory senses weren’t as sharp.
Hector was strung up, hanging from the ceiling much like the woman in Moonflame had been. The difference? He was bleeding from little cuts and he wasn’t about to get any pleasure. Of the three men, Hector had been the one who broke her the most, the one who came to her the most and killed little parts of her every time. And he was the one who put the camera in the room, to make sure Dainn could live every moment with her. That was how he’d seen her rip the roses he’d given her, how he’d seen her hack into her beautiful, long hair until it was all on the floor.
His chest tightened with the memory. He remembered watching that, breathing through his nose as his glass of water had cracked in his hand, just glad that she was alive and breathing. As long as she kept breathing, he would find her. As long as she kept breathing, he would bring her back. As long as she kept breathing, he would stay in control.
A man with nothing to lose was the most dangerous creature on this earth. And as long as she breathed, he had something to lose, something to long, something to live for.
He left Hector as he was, unconscious and hanging, and turned to the other guy, one tied to a chair and not bleeding. Yet.
“Rise and shine,” he said, throwing the little cabinet on the side on the floor.
Both monsters jerked awake from the bang.
Hector’s eyes widened with terror, the other guy swallowed.
“P…please,” the second guy stuttered. “Let me go. I didn’t do anything. I swear. I can get you whatever you want. Let me go.”
Dainn simply sat down on the upturned cabinet, his hands hanging loosely, elbows resting on his knees, his lighter in his gloved hands. He didn’t wear the gloves because he didn’t like people seeing his burned hands—from an accidental fire when he was younger. No, that he didn’t give a shit about. It was because hands touched things, and he didn’t like other people’s essence on him. They also helped his fingerprints not land on things and that was useful, especially since Blackthorne Group was a well-oiled machine. But mainly, it was because of the essence. The only essence he liked on his naked hands was hers. Just hers.
“What did you think was going to happen?” he asked casually, enjoying the fear in his eyes. “When you raped her, multiple times, on camera, knowing I was going to watch, hmm?”
He stood up, walking around to the back, seeing how both of them turned their necks to keep him in sight. It was useless. He knew how to use shadows, and that’s what he did, merging into them until they couldn’t see him, only hear his voice, amping up their terror.
“You invited the devil to play, don’t beg for mercy when he shows up.”
The second guy whimpered, the sound grating on his nerves. His whimper was like chalk on board, making him want to snap it. When she whimpered, sometimes in pleasure, sometimes in pain, it made him want to wrap her in his arms and keep her to himself.
Hector spoke, breaking the silence. “I can give… I can give you information. About The Syndicate. Whatever you want to know.”
Not surprising, since the bastard wasn’t loyal to anything. Still, he played along, humoring the man. “What can you tell me?”
“I can…” Hector thought for a second. “I can tell you that there’s a change in leadership now. There were five before.”
“I already know,” the Shadow Man told him. “I killed three of them.”
Hector gulped visibly. “And one of them killed the other. There’s only one in power now.”
Interesting. He must have missed that in the two months he’d spent with her, giving her all his time to heal slowly.
“What about the rest of the organization?” he asked, walking around in the shadows, watching the other men constantly turning to see where his voice was coming from.
“It’s the same. They don’t know about the change in leadership.”
That meant Vin, Dante’s man, didn’t know about it either, which meant that entire side was still in the dark. Over the last few months, he had left breadcrumbs for them to find her, keeping them busy while buying himself more time, and mainly he had sent Vin chasing Lyla’s friend, the girl who had been good to his little flame. For that alone, she deserved his consideration. While Vin had found a list of redheads in the business, Dainn had mainly had him focused on Malini, knowing that she would talk about her friend and give him a clue.
“And how do you know that?” he asked Hector. The man’s brother, Victor, was rampaging through the underworld trying to find him, with no idea that he was in Gladestone. Too many people wanted a piece of Hector, and no one deserved it more than Lyla.
“This man… he was the one who contacted me when I worked for Alpha, about getting his sister-in-law,” Hector elaborated. “Zenith was one of the girls who went missing twenty years ago. That was the last big batch they got, and it got fucked up because she had been the kid of some mafia boss.”
Indeed she had been. Zenith had been the real Morana, which made him wonder about her.
“Why the attacks on Morana?” he asked, genuinely curious. That was the one thing he hadn’t been able to put together.
Hector hesitated. “Her father had had information about The Syndicate. When they realized she was his child, they thought she had the information too, especially since she’d begun to dig into the organization. So they began to work to eliminate her.”
Stupid of them, considering she had both Tristan’s and Dante’s protection. And unbeknownst to them, she had his protection too, mainly because of Xander. She was good for the boy, and he needed that. Until Lyla could decide for herself what she wanted to do with her past, he was going to keep an eye out for the kid, just like she’d asked him to. She could ask him to do anything and he would, and he wondered if she even realized half the power she had over him.
He circled around the small room again. “Tell me about this man, the leader.”
Hector groaned, his arms shaking with his weight. He was hanging from the same chains he had put her in. “He’s an older guy,” the man began. “I haven’t met him but his user account was ‘thesyndicater03’. He was interested in Zenith. Wanted her bad.”
“Why?”
“Because she escaped. She left behind L… Lyla.”
He had not known that, but it made sense. Both girls had been taken together, so both girls had become friends. And Zenith had escaped as a child, leaving his little moon behind.
“Did the man punish Lyla for it?” he asked, wondering if he needed to add another reason to his list kill the man.
“I don’t know. But he did keep her with him for a while before sending her out.”
Hector was proving useful after all. Maybe he’d let him live another day.
He stepped behind the second man, the one who had been silent, the one who had also done lesser damage to her, and broke his neck in the blink of an eye.
Hector cried out in shock. “Please, no, I’ll tell you everything else. Let me go.”
The Shadow Man walked out, locking the room, as the cries followed. Mulling over the new information, he made his way back to the hotel, climbing the ladder and jumping into the room on quiet feet. His eyes went to her, to see her hogging his pillow and snoring softly, wrapped in the blanket like a burrito, and something inside his chest loosened at seeing her like that.
He headed to the bathroom to take a quick shower and wash the night off, before walking back to the room and rounding the bed to his side. He slowly slipped inside, adjusting her so as to not wake her, and she settled on him, clinging to his chest, her head on his arm, her lips parted, her eyes moving behind the closed lids as she dreamed of something.
Pressing a soft kiss to her delectable mouth, he hoped she dreamed of something nice as he watched her, marveling at the woman she had become. He had seen people through his life become monsters, especially people who had traumatic childhoods found it difficult to break the chains. And though he had helped her, she had been the one to always defy the chains, even bound to them. She had been the one to run off into the dark and save her child. She had been the one to endure punishment and keep her head high. She had been the one to live day after day just so she could know more about her son.
Pushing her flame hair back from her face, he wondered where she got the courage from, to keep going without letting the world tarnish who she was, without them extinguishing her light, without them taking away her ability to ceaselessly love. She faced her traumas with him and let him make another memory for it. She saw him for who he was and still looked at him with her heart in her eyes. She doubted herself everyday and still kept going on.
He didn’t know if the tightness in his chest was what she called love, but he knew if there was an alternate reality where he could feel like normal people did, he would love her. His main motive now was to never let her long for that alternate version of himself.
