Morana: You too.
Opening another window, she quickly texted Dante.
Morana: Would it be possible to have a pair of shoes delivered to Tristan’s place from the mansion? I kinda didn’t think of them last night.
Dante Maroni: Of course. I’ll have them sent in 10 minutes. Drop by my place afterward.
Morana: Thanks. See you in a few!
Finishing her breakfast, she cleared up the dishes and organized the kitchen, perusing through the list on the refrigerator, seeing Tristan’s handwriting for the first time. The strokes were surprisingly straight, the scrawl masculine and bold. Shaking her head, being careful on her feet and being light on them, she pocketed her phone and hurried up to the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Two locks clicked into place and she headed to the main door just as a knock came.
Swinging the door open, she found Vin on the porch carrying a shoebox with him. He didn’t even blink at her wearing what was clearly Tristan’s clothes.
“Good morning,” Morana greeted him with a slight smile.
He nodded, silently handing the box to her, stepping back and waiting. Morana frowned. “Um, I’m sure you have better things to do.”
“I’m supposed to escort you, Ms. Vitalio,” Vin informed her in a quiet voice. “Orders.”
“Whose?” she asked, taking out her simple, comfortable black bellies and slipping them on her feet.
“Mr. Maroni’s,” he replied succinctly.
‘Which Maroni?’
‘Dante.’
Nodding, she stepped out into the fresh morning air as well, making sure the door was locked behind her and the alarm was on. That done, she started towards the direction of Dante’s house, Vin silent behind her.
“Did you go into my room to get the shoes?” she asked, both to break the silence and because she was curious.
“Yes, Ms. Vitalio,” he said, facing forward. Morana studied the grim man, definitely younger than Tristan but older than her, his hair cropped so near to his scalp it was almost shaved, and she tried to picture him ruffling through her very feminine closet for footwear.
“Call me Morana, please,” she corrected him. “Was the room organized?” she asked, going on a limb. If Dante had sent the man to her room and Tristan’s place, then clearly he trusted him to an extent. And Dante had earned her trust, so by extension, she was going to treat Vin as one of the good ones.
“No,” he said, his eyes flickering to her before going straight ahead. “It was a mess. Things were not in place.”
This meant that aside from the evidence of her struggle, someone had trashed the room as well. But to what end? In rage or search of something?
Walking the sprawling lawns in broad daylight was such a vast contrast to running through it in the pitch black. The mansion loomed in the distance, as always, like a beast. There was activity around it, clean up from the party of the previous night perhaps. Morana turned her eyes towards Dante’s house instead, the place that had been her haven, her refuge in her time of need. The warmth in her heart expanding, she quickly climbed the steps and knocked on the door, aware of Vin standing back.
After about a minute, Dante opened the door, dressed in his staple dark suit and tie, his hair swept away from his gorgeous face, highlighting his beautiful bone structure. His dark eyes roved over her clad in Tristan’s clothes than hung on her, and crinkled in amusement.
Morana rolled her eyes and stepped into the house.
“Give us a few minutes,” Dante nodded to Vin. Vin inclined his head and walked off to the mansion.
Closing the door behind him, Dante pulled Morana into a light hug, holding her shoulders gently. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Chest tight, Morana wound her arms around his huge form tightly, inhaling the scent of his cologne. “Thank you for last night. It meant a lot to me.”
He pulled back, looking down at her seriously. “Last night should never have happened. But I’m glad you felt you could come here, Morana.”
Morana smiled, her lips trembling slightly and he gave her a squeeze, leading her to the living room. Taking her place back on that couch that she had claimed, she watched as Dante typed something on his phone and took a seat opposite her.
Clasping his hands together loosely, his demeanor somber, he finally spoke. “Tristan and I talked last night about what happened. We’re going to take care of things on our end. You, in the meantime, need to get on to the software. All of this is way too closely timed for me to believe it’s coincidental.”
Morana nodded. “Agreed. I’ll be looking at stuff on my end, don’t worry. I have a few questions though.”
“Shoot.”
Morana pulled her phone out, opened her gallery, and clicked on the image of the unconscious assassin she had taken. Turning the screen over to him, she asked. “Do you know him?”
Dante glanced at the screen for a long minute before shaking his head. “Haven’t seen him before. Send me the picture though. I’ll check up on it.”
Picture sent, Morana brought up her next question. “Did you see the man talking to me last night?”
She saw Dante’s eyebrows hit the hairline. “What man?”
“He warned me about the assassination at the party last night,” Morana told him. “I didn’t see his face or even what he looked like.”
Dante was shaking his head even before she finished speaking. “No one could’ve entered the party without an invitation.”
“Not to rain on your parade but I did a few weeks ago,” Morana pointed out sheepishly.
Dante grinned. “You did. I’ll have a look at the cameras later. But be careful of this guy.”
Morana shrugged. “He’s had plenty of chances to kill me and he hasn’t. On the contrary, I think this is the crack I’ve been looking for and I’m willing to take a chance even if you or Tristan don’t like it. You’re big boys. Deal with it.”
Dante sighed, shaking his head. “I still don’t like it. Take Vin. He is your security for now at least until whoever wants you dead is caught.”
Morana huffed. “That’ll be quite a few people. Oh, and do you mind arranging my stuff to be moved to Tristan’s place? I really don’t want to step back into that pit right now.”
Dante stood up, a small grin playing on his face. “You moved in quickly. Shouldn’t you wait a bit, see if this is the man you want to spend the rest of your life with?”
Morana picked up a cushion from beside her and chucked it at his head. Dante laughed, his face creasing in a way that would stop a hundred female hearts in its tracks. She could see why a young Amara had been infatuated with the man.
“I’m happy for you two,” he said, walking to the door. “Zia is at the mansion. I’ll ask her to get the stuff packed and moved here. You can take it back to Tristan’s with her.”
“Thank you, Dante,” Morana called out to his disappearing back.
“Vin’s gonna be here,” he called back.
She heard him close the door, heard his footfalls as he left, and then slowly settled into the silence of the house. Cracking her neck, her shoulder twinging just slightly, Morana pulled her laptop across the table towards herself and turned the screen on.
Her programs that had been progressing at a shockingly slow rate were at ninety-four percent. Satisfied, but still suspicious, Morana logged into her system and opened her software for facial recognition, uploading the assassin’s picture and hitting search to run in the background. Then, she got digging into all Tenebrae Outfit related news dated back twenty years ago. A killing here, a robbery there, nothing too conspicuous and nothing too alarming. She sat on the couch, reading article after article, news clipping after news clipping, and finding nothing that could hint towards the end of the Alliance. This was surprising because usually when alliances broke, there was always a brief period of bloodshed that followed in the wake of the dissatisfaction. Twenty years ago though? Nothing. Spotless. Unreal.
Annoyed but intrigued, she changed the settings and started going through the reports on the missing girls. There were many, way too many, for it to be okay. Wild theories linking the disappearances to serial killers and pedophiles, to conspiracy theories about aliens with particular tastes in human girl babies ran rampant in the reports. The multiple cases, though well-investigated, were still open but sitting cold after so many years, rotting in the back of some shelf. The facts were mysterious – baby girls up to 3 years of age vanished. Some from parks, some from homes. One girl had disappeared from her pram in the split second her mother turned to check her bag on the street. Another had been playing outside with her sister while their mother kept an eye on them from the kitchen. One second they had been there, and the next both were gone. Cases after cases, stories after stories, unbelievable but true, went through her screen.
By the time Morana finished reading the last one, her gut was churning and eyes burning with rage. She knew for a fact two stories never made it in the reports. Two girls.
Luna Caine, disappeared from her bedroom in the middle of the night, a bedroom that had been impossible to get to without waking up her protective brother; and she, Morana Vitalio, disappeared and returned. While the media and police never connected the cases with the mob, Morana knew they were. There was no reason, other than the fact that she was the daughter of the Shadow Port Boss, why she was returned and others were not.
Morana opened up her systems and checked on her programs one by one. With facial recognition running on the man who had assaulted her at night and her older programs tweaked to find information about what was going on, she took a deep breath and opened up her tor window. It was called the darknet for a reason after all. What could not be found in the normal World Wide Web usually always existed in the shadow net.
Morana had specialized her tor window and cloaked it in layers with not one but multiple VPNs that bounced her signal to all over the world every second in real-time. This was what made tracking her or her footprints almost close to impossible. She didn’t engage in finding things through that part of the net though. Not just because it was dangerous but because the things she was forced to see while browsing made her sick to her stomach. The depravity ran unprecedented and unchecked.
It was one of the reasons she had waited so long to venture into the shadow net. But there was no other choice now. She was dead certain she’d find some clues, some answers there.
Opening up the cloaked window, Morana tuned out everything else around her and quietly fed in her keywords. Although she wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for, she knew the starting point was Tenebrae twenty years ago and the missing girls. She pressed enter.
Almost immediately, a stream of results flooded her screen rapidly, popping up one after the other. Morana kept her attention on the screen, her gaze flying back and forth over the words, saving and discarding data at a speed that marked her as a genius.
Suddenly, a dialogue box popped up on the side of her screen with a message.
imreaper00: you’re missing a keyword.
Morana froze, surprise at the message making her shake her head. This shouldn’t have been possible. Forget just finding her under the cloaks of her online identity, forget tracking her down at the speed at which her signal was flying all around the world, it should have been impossible for anyone to even discern what she was doing there. Absolutely impossible.
Yet, the message blinked at her, seemingly innocent.
She quickly clicked on the message to see the online id of the person who’d sent it, a grudging seed of admiration filling her because they flew through all her security. Her security was the shit.
A black and white skull made the icon, the negative space behind the skull making it pop on the screen. Still stunned over the fact that this reaper person had found her and made contact, Morana decided to play it by the ear and quickly typed back a response.
nerdytechgoddess00: which keyword?
She waited for a heartbeat and saw the reply pop up.
imreaper00: flesh trade
Morana felt her breath catch for a long second, the implication of those two words making her heart sink. No, god no.
nerdytechgoddess00: who are you?
The clock ticked on the wall behind her as she waited for the reply on the black screen.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick-
imreaper00: a friend.
Morana didn’t know what to do with that. Another message came through before she could decide how to proceed.
imreaper00: i have my reasons for helping you.
Morana typed quickly.
nerdytechgoddess00: what are they?
imreaper00: i want you to find the truth, morana
So, he knew who she was. Morana stared at the message, an unfamiliar feeling settling in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t understand it. A frown creased her forehead as her fingers moved.
nerdytechgoddess00: i already know the truth
There was a pause before the reply came.
imreaper00: there’s still much you don’t know
Goosebumps erupted on her arms at the last message. She rubbed her skin to settle it, her chest heaving without even realizing. Trusting her gut, she wrote out her message.
nerdytechgoddess00: i want to meet you
The cursor blinked five times before his – and she assumed it was a man – replied.
imreaper00: when the time comes
imreaper00: for now, use the keyword
nerdytechgoddess00: what will i find?
His reply was cryptic.
imreaper00: sources
Sources of what? Before he could disappear, there was one thing she absolutely needed to know.
nerdytechgoddess00: how did you bypass my security?
She waited and waited for his response but nothing came. Frustrated at not knowing that, she went back to the keywords and modified them – ‘tenebrae’ + ‘1990s’ + ‘missing girls’ + ‘mafia’ + ‘flesh trade’
It was with apprehension that she added the keyword, hoping against hope that this was a fluke and she wouldn’t find anything that pointed to anything like this. The families, to her knowledge, had never traded in the flesh. It didn’t make sense. This would access an entirely different part of the net, a darker part of the net that she’d never ventured to and it scared her slightly.
The search slowly loaded and a barrage of new information slammed her. Her eyes scanned through the data feverishly – girls gone missing, girls being auctioned, girls being sold, and so much more disturbing news that made her flesh crawl. However, none of the data talked about girls below the age of 10. The information, as disturbing as it was, didn’t have anything to do with the missing girls from Tenebrae.
Sighing, she pushed away from her laptop and got up from the couch, stretching out her muscles, giving herself distance to think about it. Walking to the window that overlooked the lake in the distance, Morana took in the house she would now be living in. It looked serene, almost peaceful. But the man who occupied it wasn’t. He wouldn’t be until the truth about his sister came to light.
There was a reason why the man online had wanted her to add ‘flesh trade’ on to the list of her keywords. If it wasn’t important, she doubted he would have gone to the trouble of tracking her down and getting in contact with her, whoever he was. He knew her name and he knew something about the girls.
A ping from her laptop made her take a quick look towards it. Going back to the couch, Morana sat down and saw all the results for the search she’d run. Fingers on the keypad, she browsed through the headlines, bylines, and any names at a breakneck pace, her sense of urgency increasing the deeper she went into it. Each piece of information had a certain username attached to it in the place of source.
The man had told her she would find sources.
Diligently getting to work, Morana filtered articles by the sources and allowed the system to accumulate it in sections. Ten seconds later, most of the articles sorted down under one source name – Distance Y.
What the hell was Distance Y?
Before she could follow that train of thought, a ping from one of her programs diverted her attention. Her customized facial recognition was complete. Pulling up the program, Morana didn’t find any hits on names but her software had found two other pictures of the man caught on public cameras, one in Shadow Port and one in South America. She sent the image to both Tristan and Dante’s numbers and waited for them to reply. They didn’t.
A low ache started to form right behind her eyebrows. Pulling off her glasses, Morana pressed the heel of her palms into her eyes, groaning in frustration at the way things were going. She had more questions than answers and every time she felt she was close to something substantial, it slipped through her fingers. Gritting her teeth in frustration, Morana stared at the ceiling for a long minute, contemplating her next course of action.
She made a call.
