Two guards stood beside the huge double doors of the house, their eyes passively watching her approach.
Morana kept her spine straight and chin up, her legs gratefully not wobbling on the heels, the pounding headache the only reminder of her drugged state. Moonlight and ground lights mingled in an erotic combination of white and gold, making the path in front of her feet seem almost ethereal. Had she been some stranger walking the same path at the moment, she would have thought of fairy lights and enchanted tales, of long walks under the pure moon, of warmth against the chill in the wind.
But she wasn’t a stranger. She knew these stones that seemed ethereal were nothing but an illusion created to hide the blood and gore than ran under, nothing but a mirage created to charm and impress the outsiders and remind the insiders of how deep things could be buried if they had to be. Secrets were the stones that paved these roads. Threats were the truths that lay in this ground, morbid tales of lost men never to be seen again ringing around in the wind.
Morana walked that path to the place she slept in, the place she’d been sleeping in for decades. She was more attached to her appendix than she was to this house.
One of the guards raised his hand and clicked the comm in his ear, holding the other up to halt her in her tracks.
‘Boss?’ he spoke in an even tone, listening to whatever command he was being given before he turned to her.
‘Your father is waiting for you in the study.’
Oh jolly.
Rolling her eyes, Morana walked around the bulky man and into the house, her heels clicking loudly on the marble floors. The lights in the house were dim since it was already way past midnight, the lights in the corridor leading to her father’s wing getting dimmer and dimmer through the endless space, artwork adorning both the walls as she kept walking forward, the door to her father’s study in sight. Her breathing remained even, not a bead of sweat popped up anywhere, not a knot twisted in her stomach. The headache throbbed under her temples but was otherwise manageable.
After the night she’d had, she doubted there could be anything her father could do that would make her say ‘what the hell’ again.
Finally reaching the door, not an ounce of fear in her system, she knocked.
‘Enter,’ her father’s baritone answered immediately.
Pushing open the door, Morana entered the spacious study, not sparing a glance towards the floor to ceiling columns he had for books, or towards the beautiful French windows on the extreme right that opened into the lawns, or towards the gun that lay openly on his organized desk. No. She entered and glued her eyes to him, his own dark eyes watching her carefully, and she walked to the chair across from his and sat down.
Silence.
Morana stayed silent, adept at the mind games he played, even with his own daughter, and being the genius that she was, she’d learned them very, very early. The wind whistled outside the closed windows. The huge aquarium on the left wall bubbled. The large clock near the bookshelf ticked, one ominous second after the other.
Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
Silence.
He watched her. She watched him.
He leaned back in his chair. She kept her face blank, her heart rate completely even.
And finally, he drew in a deep breath.
‘You were at Cyanide tonight.’
Morana just raised her eyebrows.
He studied her for another second, before speaking, his voice old and rough from too much use with his men. Only his men. She could count the words he’d spoken to her over the years on her hands.
‘What were you doing at Cyanide?‘
Morana played dumb. ‘Why do you want to know?’
He leaned forward, his jaw clenching, accenting his French-cut beard. ‘It’s an Outfit club.’
Morana felt amusement wash over her. ‘And?’
‘You know we don’t go into their property directly. They don’t come into ours,’ his steely voice brooked no arguments. ‘And you wouldn’t have made it home. Not unless someone had invited you.’
Morana stayed silent, just watching him back neutrally.
‘I want a name,’ he demanded.
Morana kept her face blank. He cursed loudly, smashing his fist on the table, his dark eyes flaring in fury. ‘You have a name, a reputation as my daughter. No child of mine forfeits that name. And this is the Outfit. I want to know who you’ve been pimping your name with.’
Morana’s jaw clenched, her hands fisting as fury filled her body. Her hands shook as she gripped them together, keeping her torso and her gaze still. Shark. Her father was a shark and she could not bleed. Not a single drop. But in learning not to bleed, she’d also learned how to draw blood.
Staying still, keeping her mask in place, a small sneer curling her lips, she spoke.
‘Your men couldn’t get within a mile of the place, could they?’
She saw the lines around his eyes tighten as his lips pressed together. ‘You are to remain chaste until your marriage. That’s how this works, that’s what I’ve always told you. If you deliberately set out to disobey me…’
Morana laughed. ‘You will what?’
‘I choose your husband, Morana,’ he told her in an icy voice. ‘Remember that.’
Morana grit her teeth and bit her tongue. She’d hit this stone wall and bruised herself so many times she’d lost count. She detested this world. She detested the way every man thought himself a self-entitled jackass. She hated how every woman either had to bend to their will or suffer for life. She despised this world. And yet, it was the only semblance of a home she’d ever known. She wondered sometimes why she hadn’t run away. She had the money, she had the skills, she had it all. And she’d stayed for some reason she couldn’t find anymore. And now, with the codes in the wind, she had to stay.
‘Is that all you wanted to speak to me about?’ she asked stiffly, keeping her voice as calm as she could.
‘This conversation is not over.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I want a name.’
‘And I won’t give you one.’
They stared each other down, her head pounding dully, exhaustion seeping into her bones but she didn’t even twitch. Morana stood up and turned to leave.
‘More men will be on your tail from now on,’ her father’s voice stopped her. ‘I’ve ordered them to detain you if you slip the leash.’
Her body almost quivered in her rage before she locked it in place. Leash? She wasn’t a fucking dog. She sure as hell wasn’t a fucking daughter.
‘When it comes to death, you’re mine.’
As the words from minutes ago came to her, the wheels in her mind started to churn. She inhaled deeply. ‘Send your men after me at their own risk, father,’ she informed him coolly. ‘Any one of them lays a finger on me and I will shoot.’
Her father paused, before speaking. ‘They will shoot back.’
She remembered the blue eyes of the man who’d claimed his right to kill her. Nobody else would be killing her. She knew he’d been serious.
She shrugged. ‘Then they will die.’
Before her father could utter another word, Morana walked out of the study and towards her own wing, quickening her steps once she was out on her own. She hurried up to her room and once inside, she locked the door. Undressing and freshening up, she took the drive out of the clutch and placed it in her bedside drawer. Then, tired and numb, she slid into her soft brown sheets, settling into her pillows and sighing as she stared out the window.
Not for the first time in her life, it hit her how truly, truly alone she was.
Her father wanted a puppet he could control and parade around to his whims. She knew he’d been serious about the marriage. And she knew that she would never marry someone like that. She wondered sometimes what would have been better – having had his love before he turned cold, leaving her with some childhood memories, or this aloofness that had existed between them forever.
She remembered being snubbed again and again when she’d been a little girl, remembered how early on she’d promised herself to never allow anyone to snub her again, how quickly she had hardened herself. A string of nannies had raised her, women who’d never stayed long enough for her to form a bond with them, and by the time she’d hit adolescence, she’d known she wouldn’t bond with anyone, not in this prison, not in this world. So, she’d turned to computers, and poured her heart into them. College had been a battle she’d won only by telling her father how profitable it would be to have a resource like her on his side. He’d eventually agreed, with guards on her tail every single day, limiting her contact with people. And then she’d met Jackson.
Asshole Jackson who’d led her to asshole Tristan Caine.
Morana exhaled loudly, blinking. She didn’t understand him. Honestly, she didn’t even want to, but since he kept showing up and since she had to deal with him anyways, she’d rather know what or who she was dealing with than be in the dark.
And with Tristan Caine, she always, always seemed to be in the dark. The man sprouted absolute nonsense one second, claiming his right to kill her like she was a prized gazelle on the run, his hate of her genuine. But he’d threatened her a little too many times for her to believe it. And even if he did intend to kill her, she really didn’t care since she slept under the same roof as the man who could kill her any moment without flinching.
No. It wasn’t his death claim-slash-threat-slash-words that bothered her. Much. It was his actions. He shoved her away like she singed him one second, and saved her life in a way the next. He cut himself on her one second and showed up at her meeting the next.
He was a pendulum. Swinging from one extreme to another within seconds. And that confounded her and irritated her because she couldn’t get a read on him. At all. And she hated it.
There was something going on with him, she thought as she looked out the window.
It was time she found out.
Morana worked the next day from her study on the drive Dante had given her.
And it did puke out a truckload of information at her, mainly IP addresses that did not belong to Tristan Caine, as they’d been framed to look like. Either Tristan Caine happened to be one brilliant Machiavellian mastermind who’d framed himself so he could look clean –which she honestly wouldn’t put past him, not from everything she’d heard and everything she’d seen.
And yet, staring at the screen, she could accept the possibility that he was, in fact, innocent of stealing the codes. But what else was he innocent of?
Shaking her head, she pulled her phone out and called Dante as she’d told him she would. The phone rang and she looked around her study, the scant sunlight filtering in through the window as clouds covered the sky, the wind speedy through the trees.
‘Morana?’ Dante Maroni’s heavy voice came after the third ring. ‘You found something?’ he asked, getting straight to business. Good.
‘Yes,’ she told him, changing tabs on the screen and looking at all the details. ‘There’s a list of IP addresses that I traced back to a warehouse in Tenebrae, and one here in Shadow Port. There is one though, that’s popping up with an error every time I try to track it. It’s a self-destructive virus basically.’
‘So whoever is behind this knows computers enough to create and install a self-destructive virus?’ Dante asked quietly.
Morana shrugged. ‘Or they could’ve had Jackson do it. He was good with computers.’
Dante sighed. ‘Okay. I’ll call Tenebrae and have someone look at it. Send me the address.’
‘Okay.’
‘Also,’ he added. ‘Could you meet and return the drive? I don’t want to risk any information leaking online. But I’d like all the decrypted information.’
Morana frowned. ‘That’s fine, but what after that?’
‘We can discuss it later. I have to go right now.’
With that, he disconnected and texted her the address. It was an apartment complex on the west side of the city, near the coast. That must be where they were holed up during their stay.
Morana got ready in record time, in loose black pants with multiple pockets and a loose sleeveless red top, simple but comfortable flats on her feet and hair in a ponytail. Hiking her black tote bag over one shoulder, with her phone and car keys in hands, the drive safely in the bag with her gun, Morana walked out of her wing towards the main gate.
Her phone rang just as she reached her car. She saw her father’s name on the screen and rejected the call, sliding in her red Mustang and pulled out of the space. Two muscle cars pulled out behind her. Oh goody.
Morana looked in her rearview mirror and pulled into the traffic, switching lanes and speeding up, the rush, the hit, exactly the same as it always was. The traffic was light and allowed her to weave in between vehicles and she sped towards the coast, her attention completely on the road and on losing the damn cars.
She lost one, but the other stayed on her tail almost half the way and she realized, aggravated, that he couldn’t be shaken. And she couldn’t lead them to the meeting point. Fuck.
Gritting her teeth, she pulled her phone up and put it on speaker, calling the last dialed number. It rang. And rang some more, then disconnected with no answer.
She kept looking in the rear-view, noticing the other car hadn’t moved at all, like a fly in the ointment, and just stayed on the trail.
It was getting very problematic because she was barely five minutes out.
Knowing she couldn’t lose the tail before time irked, but she accepted it and slowed down considerably, redialling the number.
No answer.
She almost smashed her phone down in frustration, before taking a deep breath and cooling her mind. Dante wasn’t picking up. Okay. Time to make the hard choice.
Scrolling through her contacts, she found the number she was looking for, her thumb hovering above the icon as her eyes drifted to the car again. And she pressed it down.
Her heart started to pound, stomach knotting.
And this, right here, she didn’t understand. She’d faced her father with no reaction at all while he’d been interrogating her, and yet she’d barely heard the phone ring and her body had come to life, all responses functioning and alert. She needed to figure this out, for the sanity of her own mind. She also needed to figure out what the hell to do with her tail and where to go.
‘Ms. Vitalio.’
That voice. The voice of death threats and old whiskey. Morana swallowed, shaking herself out of it.
‘Mr. Caine,’ she replied in an even voice, bringing her attention back to the road. ‘I’m supposed to meet Dante and my detail is still on the tail. He isn’t answering.’
Morana had half expected him to gloat that she was asking him for assistance. She definitely expected one scathing comment. What she hadn’t expected was his somber tone speaking quietly.
‘Dante is tied up in something important. Did he ask you to meet him at 462-‘
‘Yes,’ Morana interrupted.
There was a brief pause before he came on again. ‘Pull over wherever you are. Don’t disconnect.’
Heart picking up pace, Morana quietly pulled over, not knowing why she was even doing as he asked, and sat. She heard an engine thrum in the background and realized it was that damned bike. She did not need that right now.
She could hear him on the bike and a knot settled in her gut. He was quiet. Not the waiting-for-her-to-crack quiet. Just quiet. She didn’t like that she was observing anything.
The sky rumbled loudly overhead, thunder crackling dangerously just as the engine’s sound joined in the cacophony.
‘Drive,’ he ordered curtly, and Morana looked in the rear-view, to see the bike come closer and closer to her tail. She pulled back into the traffic, her heart hammering with the weirdest sense of deja-vu hitting her. His bike smoothly inserted itself between the two cars again. She saw him slow down, saw the tailing car brake to avoid a collision, and he ground out again in a rough tone.
‘Hit it.’
Morana didn’t hesitate this time, pushing her foot down and feeling the car zip straight ahead, adrenaline rushing through her system as the wind went wild around her. One last glance in the rear-view before she turned left showed her the other car far, far behind, and the bike zooming through the spaces in between cars and speeding towards hers.
Morana turned, going across the bridge, and sped towards the gate looming in front of her, guarding not a complex but one lone, tall building that almost touched the darkening sky. Quickly entering the parking lot as the guards waved her through, Morana looked for an empty spot and parked, turning the ignition off.
Just as she got out and locked the car, she saw the bike enter the parking lot, saw him insert the beast of a vehicle smoothly across from her car, a dark helmet on his head.
He wore tan cargo pants and a black t-shirt, his attire casual, telling her he’d not been meeting people. She’d always seen him in shirts and trousers when he was in public.
His back muscles flexed as he swung his muscled leg over it, his thigh bunching and releasing as he stood up, his tattooed biceps bulging as he pushed the helmet over his head.
Morana blinked.
Not at the scruff or the hair or the arresting blue eyes, but at the look on his face. For the first time since she’d seen him, she saw something akin to pleasure on his face, just a ghost of an expression but on a man like him, enough to be classified as an expression in itself. His eyes were on his bike, and Morana realized, surprised, that it had been the riding that had put that look on his face. She didn’t know why that surprised her, but it did.
And then he looked up to where she stood, the expression fleeting now, and his eyes hardened, his face shutting down.
Morana held his gaze, her heart thundering as thunder roiled outside, the clap in the sky loud and high, her own pulse skittering for some reason. She didn’t understand this, didn’t know why she did this even. It was a game. A staredown. She didn’t remove her eyes from his, and he didn’t remove his from hers, neither willing to look away first.
The entire parking lot was empty, the sound of rain loud in the silence of the lot, like bullets pelting down on the ground from the sky.
Her phone rang, the noise startling in the quiet, and she looked down.
Dante.
‘Yes?’ she picked up, her eyes coming back to where he stood beside his bike, leaning against it with his arms crossed, his forearms thick, the sinews and veins and ink adding to the brutality of his form somehow, his eyes on hers. He would look relaxed to any casual observer, lounging against his vehicle. He was anything but. Morana could see the alert tilt of his head, see the focused look in his eyes, see the tensed muscles ready to jump.
‘I apologize. An urgent matter came up. Have you reached?’ Dante asked.
‘Yes,’ she stayed still too.
‘Great. Just give the drive to Tristan. He’s in the penthouse,’ Dante informed her, while the man in question stood mere feet away, his intent gaze upon her.
‘Okay, but next time, I’m setting the meeting,’ Morana said and after a pause, Dante agreed before disconnecting.
She slid the phone down into her pocket, breaking their locked gaze to rummage through her bag. Finding the drive, she stood where she was, and extended her hand.
‘Dante asked me to give it to you.’
He extended his own, and their fingers brushed. Tingles ran up her arms and down her spine from the one spot of contact.
He didn’t remove his hand. She didn’t remove hers. Within seconds, it became another game where neither backed down. The sensations thrummed through her body, pooling in her belly and spreading through her blood, making her a little heady as she kept her eyes locked on his sharp blue ones, unable to read a single thing in them. Had she not felt his flesh and blood pressed against her own body, she would have believed he was a cyborg. Unfeeling. Cold. Aloof.
And that doused ice on her hammering heart.
‘Why do you hate me?’ she asked him the only question she could not find an answer to, the one question that had bugged her more than she cared to admit.
His lips tightened infinitesimally, his eyes flickering away.
And suddenly he stilled, his eyes leaving hers and sweeping through the parking lot. Morana blinked, clearing her head, and looked around, trying to see something.
All she saw were vehicles and all she heard was the thunder and rain.
The hand that hand been touching hers at the tips suddenly jerked her forward, his other hand clamping down on her mouth and drowning the muffled shriek that would have escaped her otherwise. One second she was standing next to her car, the next she was behind a pillar, pressed into it with a very muscled man against her front, one of his hands on the pillar beside her head, the other still on her mouth.
Morana tried to bite his hand off and he looked at her once, his eyes alert and telling her to be quiet. Morana felt anger fill her but she nodded. He removed his hand and leaned over the pillar, his eyes scanning the entire area. His chest brushed against her breasts as they both inhaled. And though she noticed that, she didn’t focus on it, keeping her own senses open as adrenaline filled her twice in half an hour and her heart pounded, her stomach knotting as she looked and tried-
Movement.
She shifted slightly to look better, and the man pressed to her followed her gaze. Three men, three burly looking men, jumped out from behind the car she’d been watching, attacking, their hands raised with knives in them.
Heart slamming against her chest, Morana watched, stunned, as before she could take a step, Tristan Caine had one man down on the ground and was fluidly moving towards the other. One of them broke off from the group and headed towards her. Morana had never fooled herself into believing she was a badass because of her strength. Nope. She was one because of her brain and using that very brain, she took out her gun, switching the safety off in the same motion, and shot the man right in the knee without blinking.
He fell down with a cry, whimpering in pain as he clutched his leg, and Morana turned to see two men down on the ground, unconscious or dead she didn’t know, and Tristan Caine flat on his back as the last man stood above him. Morana raised her gun instinctively before she stopped herself. She wasn’t going to save him. Not at all. If he couldn’t save himself, then someone else had done her job for her.
But she watched with her heart in her throat as the two men exchanged kicks and swift moves faster than her eyes could catch before the man slammed Tristan Caine down on the ground so hard Morana’s ribs would have cracked. But Tristan Caine raised his legs in the same movement, using the momentum, and wrapped his ankles around the guy’s neck, before flipping him down and getting him in a chokehold.
‘Who do you work for?’ he asked the gasping man in a cold voice that didn’t belay any exertion, even as his chest heaved with quick breaths.
‘Who sent you?’ he asked again, the same questions he’d asked her the first time he’d pinned her to a wall with her own knives.
The other man spit on the ground, shaking his head. And Tristan Caine snapped his neck.
Morana was no stranger to death and murder. It was as much a way of their world as women being controlled by men was. So she didn’t flinch or gasp or betray any emotion. But her stomach fell to the ground, her hands trembling slightly, the gun shaking in her grip.
Tristan Caine stood up and walked to the guy she’d shot, his eyes surveying her body once, for injuries maybe, before going back to the man.
‘Talk or you die.’
The man grimaced. ‘I will die anyway.’
Tristan Caine tilted his head. ‘But it can be painful or it can be painless. Your choice.’
The man fainted.
Morana stood a few feet away from him, her eyes glued to his face as he turned to hers.
‘You should leave,’ he told her quietly.
Morana nodded, her insides in shock, and turned towards her car, keeping her eyes peeled for any other jumpers with knives, her gun loose in her hand.
She walked towards her car, her eyes rising from the ground, and she came to a complete halt.
There, in the middle of the parking lot, stood her Mustang where she’d parked it, with all its tires slashed open. Morana stood in shock, staring at the car. She’d bought that car with her own money. Her first car. This was the only friend she had, the only friend that understood her thirst for freedom. This had been her companion in so many escapades and her partner in crime. She’d repaired it on her own, took care of it on her weekends. She loved it. And there it stood, with all the tires ripped open.
Morana had just seen a man be murdered, just shot a man herself, but it was now that she felt violated, now that her eyes moistened.
But she couldn’t shiver, couldn’t cry, couldn’t show an inch of vulnerability.
He stood behind her.
Morana steeled her spine and cleared her face.
‘Surely you have another car I can borrow?’ she asked in a completely natural tone.
‘Yes, but the storm outside is not feasible for driving.’
That made Morana turn, her eyes locking with his blue ones, a streak of dirt across his one cheek where he’d tussled on the floor.
‘You’re worried about my safety?’ she asked, disbelief thick in her voice.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m worried about my car.’
Of course. She could relate to worrying about the car. She nodded. ‘I’ll just call a cab then.’
His brows furrowed slightly. ‘Cabs don’t come to this area.’
Of course, they didn’t. Morana looked at the water pouring at the entrance to the parking lot with a vengeance, her gut in knots and she bit her lip, trying to figure a way out. She couldn’t call her father, or everything would be a disaster. Driving any of the cars was out of option because the visibility would be zero and the distance was long. Cabs were out. What option did she even have left?
Her heart hammered as realization dawned. She didn’t.
Her gaze flew up to collide with his. His blue, blue eyes arrested hers, the intensity in them searing through her, humming in her blood as her pulse pounded in her ears.
He tilted his head to a side, almost considering her before he spoke, and her heart jumped out of her chest.
‘Looks like you’re staying, Ms. Vitalio.’
