Walking down the cemetery holding the hand of her man, while pretending to mourn for another man who was in her heart, wasn’t her idea of a great morning. However, given everything Tristan had told her, Morana had appropriately donned a simple black dress and put on some makeup to make her face appear paler. She kept her eyes down behind her glasses, her hand on the inside of Tristan’s arm, impressed with his performance.
He was stoic enough that had she not known him, she would have been convinced that he was hiding some deep sadness and just didn’t want to talk about it. As it was, being the outsider of the Outfit as he was, he hung back during the funeral.
They had done a closed casket ceremony, burying the burned body that was ‘Dante’. Tristan had told her in the car that the body had belonged to one of the traitors who had been close enough in the physique department to Dante to pass off as him.
Dante was completely underground in the meantime.
Morana had tried calling Amara again that morning, just to check up on the other woman and found her number disconnected. Zia had dropped by too, her eyes saddened, and asked Morana about her daughter. And it was really starting to worry Morana.
She stood back at the edge while Tristan went ahead to speak with someone, watching everyone.
Lorenzo Maroni was rigid, understandably, while people paid their respects and offered condolences. She recognized Lorenzo’s cousin, Leo, with Chiara on his arm, her face tear-stained. Whether they were genuine or fake, Morana didn’t know.
Amara’s half-sister Nerea stood in the back next to another soldier, dressed sharply, a lone woman in a man’s world. Morana wondered about her. Other members of the family, children included, stood with sad, confused faces. The rest of the Outfit slowly milled around, most of the men with expressions meant to resemble sadness. There were more people than she’d been expecting, the funeral much grander than she’d realized it would be. But then, Dante Maroni was a brand.
It made her realize she’d never asked Dante about any siblings. She knew through rumors that he had a younger brother but he’d been missing in action for many years. She made a mental note to ask him later.
In the cool breeze on the hill, Morana watched Lorenzo interact with everyone, trying to pinpoint what it was about the man that bugged her so much. It was an eerie thing, the way he looked at her sometimes like he had secrets about her.
The sound of a car door slamming shut brought her attention to the man sauntering down the hill to the gathering, surprise filling her.
Her father was there.
He paused for a second where she stood, his eyes moving over her with hidden disgust before he proceeded to where Maroni stood below. Morana, now removed enough from the man that he didn’t affect her as much, tried to analyze why he reacted to her like that. Tristan watched her father with focus while the older man ignored him and headed straight for the boss.
Morana was too far away to hear what was being said but the men shook hands and then walked a little ways off to talk. If her father was there to talk about her to take her back, he could think again. If he was there for business, it would be curious given the timing of it all. Maybe he was just there to pay his regards but she didn’t believe it.
Watching them both openly, Morana’s eyes did a scan of the area and came to a halt on a man on the opposite hill, behind a tree. From the vantage of the funeral procession, nobody would be able to see him, hidden as he was. But she, still standing on the hill, could make out his silhouette.
He is face was hidden under a beard, and he was leaning on some type of a cane, just hiding behind a tree and watching the two men she had been watching. Frowning, she quickly opened her texts.
Morana: There’s a strange guy at my 5’o’clock watching my father and Lorenzo.
Morana: You can’t see him from your spot. Come stand by me.
She saw Tristan look down at his phone before he casually walked up the hill to where she stood. Finding a spot beside her, he nonchalantly ran his eyes over the place she’d seen the man and Morana turned to see the man watching them now.
He was too far away for her to make out anything about him but she could feel his eyes on her, a shiver going down her spine.
“You know who he is?” she asked Tristan quietly.
“No,” he replied, his voice calm. “But he’s watching us.”
“I know.”
They stayed silent for a few minutes as the procession continued below. Dark clouds gathered in the sky, casting a doomed glow over the hills and though it was fall, the winds were cold. Standing there silently, Morana found her gaze drifting to the strange man over and over again.
“Anyone suspects anything?” she asked, her lips barely moving.
He stood stony beside her, his mask on, speaking equally quietly. “Everyone suspects something, they just don’t know what.”
Morana huffed a silent laugh at that, looking down at her father, who was talking to Lorenzo Maroni with his head bent.
“He might be trying to take me back,” she commented, studying the body language of both the men. “Not out of any love, but for his pride.”
“He has no pride,” Tristan noted beside her. “He won’t be able to take you, not even over my dead body. You’re too smart for him.”
Morana glanced up at him, her heart softening at how much respect he had for her intellect. It wasn’t something she’d expected but the more he told her little things like this, with no pretense or guile, the more she felt herself bloom on the inside.
“Thank you,” she murmured softly, squeezing his forearm.
He shrugged. “It’s a fact. You’re smarter than most of these men put together, and I don’t just mean with your tech stuff. Anyone who denies that is stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.”
He turned to look at her, his blues locking with her hazel. “I’m the smartest of them. I claimed you long before any of them had a chance.”
Heart fluttering, Morana looked back down with a slight smile on her lips. It slowly died. “You know we’ll have to talk about that day someday, right?”
He didn’t respond.
Morana stayed silent, letting it go. Pushing him when he was just starting to slowly open up would be irresponsible. He would talk when he was ready, if he was ever ready.
“I came across a very interesting theory the other day about the Alliance,” she started, changing the topic to more neutral ground. “It mentioned how the Alliance broke because there were, in fact, three parties involved and one of them got out. Have you heard anything about that?”
The silence from the man beside her stretched for long, long minutes, to the point that Morana had to look up at him, just to make sure he’d heard her. His eyes were staring into space, somewhere far away. She didn’t know where he’d gone but wherever it was, it was unpleasant.
Sliding her hand into his, she interlinked their fingers, hers smaller and softer sliding against his rough, abraded, longer digits. Squeezing tightly, she kept her eyes on him and waited for him to come back to her, “Tristan?”
He blinked, looking down at her, suddenly aware of his surroundings. He scanned the hills once and then took a deep breath in, showing her a flicker of vulnerability she would never have been aware of a few weeks ago. Not saying a word, he quietly retreated into his own mind and Morana let him, knowing this perhaps wasn’t the time or place to ask.
One of the men from the gathering called Tristan and, after giving her hand a small squeeze like a secret while his face remained completely expressionless, he walked down with the coiled grace of the predator he was notorious for, his body encased in a black suit and black shirt.
The more she got to know him, the more she realized how deeply he felt these little things and how expertly he pretended not to.
After a few minutes of observing everyone, Morana felt someone else come to stand beside her. She glanced up and saw Lorenzo Maroni there, alone, without her father.
“Walk with me, Morana,” he demanded and walked uphill towards the cars without giving her a chance to respond.
Cautious but curious, Morana sent Tristan a quick text and followed after the older man, finding him standing alone near his town car as he waited for her. Morana quietly moved to him.
He opened his jacket and brought out a cigar, sniffing it once before cutting it.
“The cigars were a gift from one of my associates,” he began without preamble. “That associate was, just the other day, telling me about someone looking deep into our business.”
Keeping his eyes on the casket far below, he lit up the smoke. “That wouldn’t be you, now, would it? After the way you threatened me, I’m inclined to believe that.”
Morana watched the large silver ring on his index finger that hadn’t been there before, the skull face polished and detailed and considering he was attending his son’s funeral, oddly jarring. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The older man watched her with eyes that saw too much. “Where’s Dante?”
Morana blinked in surprise and looked down at the casket pointedly.
He chuckled. “I’ve been doing this for far longer than you’ve been alive, little girl. I know that,” he indicated the wooden box, “isn’t my son.”
Morana stayed silent, not sure what he was playing at, and why he was asking her.
Lorenzo Maroni’s eyes crinkled, his handsome face creasing with lines of age as he looked at her with dark eyes that held stories beyond her imagination. She could feel the full force of his experience in that one pointed look and it took everything she had to keep her spine straight and head high as she regarded him back neutrally.
“I can see why Tristan is smitten,” he commented, his voice almost soothing. “You have fire. I respect fire. But there are greater powers at play here, little girl. Bigger than you or me. I don’t think you even realize the things you set in motion for your selfish needs.”
Morana bit the inside of her cheek to keep from asking him any questions.
“You tell me what my son is up to,” Maroni took a deep pull of the cigar, “and I’ll tell you why you were returned.”
Morana was tempted to find out why, but not that tempted. Blinking innocently, she played along. “So, you admit to having a hand in my return to my father?”
Maroni laughed, exhaling a cloud of smoke, his thick neck cording above his shirt. She could see where Dante got his looks from.
“You were a pawn to control your father,” Maroni took a deep inhale of his cigar and blew out a puff of smoke, the minted tobacco scent invading her lungs. “I never imagined you’d become a problem.”
Morana laughed without humor. “My father never loved me enough for you to control him.”
“Oh, he loved you,” Maroni smiled, the malice in his eyes evident. Morana stared at him, confused at his words.
“Why did you call me here?” she simply asked, shoving her hands in her coat pockets.
“To offer you the deal,” Maroni threw down his cigar, stubbing it with his toe. “You’re living in my city, on my compound, with my soldier. I’m not threatening you, just telling you. You don’t want to make an enemy of me.”
Morana stayed silent as she watched him get into the car and stepped back, not understanding half the shit he’d spewed. One thing was for certain though – Lorenzo Maroni was scared, of whom she didn’t know. Otherwise, there was absolutely no way he would stoop down low enough to offer someone like Morana any kind of deal.
She found that very, very interesting.
The beeping of her laptop as soon as she entered the cottage in the afternoon startled her. Quickly hurrying to the systems she’d left running, Morana took her laptop outside to the porch, taking a seat in the chair, with a beautiful view of the lake and the surrounding hills in front of her and the mansion on the right in the distance.
Sliding off her flats that she’d worn for the funeral, Morana curled up on the chair and logged into the system, trying to locate where the beeping was coming from.
And what she saw on her screen stunned her.
It was the codes.
Her codes.
What the hell?
Someone had sent her the codes, the original codes, that she had written and Jackson had stolen and Tristan had been framed for, the codes that began everything. Looking at the attached message, she clicked on it.
imreaper00: i believe these belong to you. impressive work.
What the fuck?
Who the hell was this guy? And how did he not only bypass her security but found her codes?
nerdytechgoddess00: where did you get these?
The screen remained blank for the next few minutes as Morana felt her heart pound. If she had the codes, that meant they hadn’t been copied or used. She’d encoded them with a self-destructive algorithm for that. But why would this strange guy, who was clearly extremely skilled with tech, return these to her? Why give her clues to the missing girls and Syndicate at all?
A message came in.
imreaper00: it’s time we meet.
He went offline.
Morana, first and foremost, checked through the codes that had taken her over two years to write. It was dangerous in the digital age, with the power to deface anyone and anything at any point of time. It was especially dangerous for mobsters with skeletons in their closets.
It took her a few hours to check and recheck every single line, trying to see if they had been tampered with at all. She found nothing. They were pristine, unused, exactly as they’d been when Jackson stole them.
Pushing her laptop to the side, Morana looked up at the cloudy sky as the hours passed and tried to make sense of everything.
One – someone had hired Jackson to steal the codes she’d been working on for two years, someone who knew they existed in the first place, and framed Tristan for them so she could be led to him.
Two – after she had been led to him, someone had started to send her anonymous messages and clues about their history, the Alliance, and her history that she hadn’t been aware of.
Three – she had gone down that rabbit hole and someone had led her towards the Syndicate and once she started looking into it, her codes were returned.
All of these things could have been done only by someone tech-savvy. And now she was thinking all of this was done so she could be led to the Syndicate in the first place. Stealing the codes was a fluke, this was the real target. Someone wanted her working on this.
Whoever this guy was, there was a reason he wanted her attention.
imreaper00. A username but who was he? The grave mystery man from the airport had thanked her for telling him he was alive. Was he supposed to be dead?
The questions were starting to give her a headache.
Dusk settled around the lake and Morana went back inside, feeling a little lost as to what to do now. After getting changed and settling down on the couch, she did what any self-respecting closet nerd did when she got bored. She watched Netflix.
After a few episodes of her newest obsession and countless snacks, Morana was happily vegged out on the couch in a Netflix-induced stupor she had sorely missed. She had needed the break, needed the space, needed the distance from her real-life shit. Her life had suddenly become too adventurous over the last few weeks and there was only so much a girl could take before breaking down hysterically. And she couldn’t break down hysterically because the man she lived with needed her to be emotionally stronger as he let go inch by inch. Maybe in a few years, she’d treat him to it.
That was how Tristan found her, lying down on the couch and watching shirtless Henry Cavill take a bath, her mouth slightly open.
He cleared his throat.
Morana paused on a very good shot and raised her eyebrows at the hot man behind her who could give Henry a run for his money.
“You think it will ever go away?” he asked, his voice deliberately low in that tone that made her belly flutter and clench.
Morana opened her mouth, about to reply but it went dry as he threw his jacket to the side and rolled up his sleeves, coming around to where she was.
She sat up, but before she could move more, he took a hold of her legs and tipped her back, pulling her to the edge, sinking to his knees before her. Heart thundering, her core pulsing with need, Morana watched as he pushed her t-shirt up over her breasts, her legs over his shoulders, his lips closing around her nipple.
A noise escaped her at the wet heat of his mouth, her back arching as she ground her growing wetness against him, trying to find the right friction. His teeth tugged at her nipple, pulling it deep into his mouth before giving the same attention to the other, his eyes on her.
“Not that I’m complaining, but wow, this is, oh fuck,” Morana babbled as he ripped the seam of her panties and threw away the scrap of fabric, a flood of heat invading between her legs. His hands went down under her ass, cupping them as he thrust his hips against her. Bending down, he trailed light kisses down her belly, making her suddenly conscious of her little folds of skin. He didn’t even pause, going south to inhale her, his teeth sinking into the side of her thigh.
“Please,” Morana begged, tugging his hair, pulling him closer.
“Tell me this isn’t temporary,” he demanded, his mouth an inch from her weeping folds.
Morana nodded. “It isn’t temporary.”
“Good,” he murmured, his words heating her flesh right before he pressed his mouth into her, tasting her for the time. Morana saw stars for a split second, her thighs jerking around his head as he held her down, his magnificent blue eyes holding her captive.
And she felt his tongue rapidly flick out over her clit.
Her back came off the couch, her breathing labored as he started to eat her out like a starved man seeing a feast for the first time.
He wreaked havoc on her pussy with his mouth.
She was never the same.
Long after her body was sated and limp and they were in bed, Morana traced the frown lines on his forehead and told him about the codes, asking him about his day. It was normal, so normal she’d never thought they would have something like that and she was half-scared it would be taken from them.
“You asked me about a third guy today,” Tristan muttered, his fingers drawing inane patterns on her shoulders. “It reminded me of a conversation I’d heard that day.”
Morana stopped at his eyebrows, looking into his eyes. “The day-”
He nodded wordlessly. Morana waited for him to go on, knowing anything about that day was thin ice. She didn’t know how he would react to something about it.
“Your father and Maroni had been sitting at the table,” he reminisced, that faraway look entering his eyes. “Your father threatened Maroni and he subdued your father by mentioning another guy. ‘Remember what happened to Reaper,’ or something like that, he said.”
Morana stilled.
Her heart stopped for a second.
She scrambled up and looked down at him, unable to believe if it could be that simple.
“Reaper,” she shook his arm urgently. “Are you absolutely sure that’s the name he mentioned?”
Catching on to her urgency, she saw him sit up as she hurried out of the bedroom and down the stairs to where she’d left her laptop.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he trailed after her, his voice slightly confused. “What’s going on?”
Morana quickly pulled up her chat window and turned the screen to him, her heart beating a mile per minute. “Could it be that easy?”
She saw him read the chat and see the username, saw his face harden as his eyes came to her. “You never mentioned him.”
Morana waved it off. “That’s not important. The point is, could this be the same guy? The guy I met on the pier said something about him being dead.”
Tristan stared at the screen longer, frowning. “It could be but I don’t know. I’ve never heard of any Reaper in the Outfit, even in passing.”
Silence ensued for a long minute while they considered it, their eyes clashing.
“Let me make a call,” Tristan told her. He went to a drawer and took out a burner phone she’d never seen, leaving the room to go outside, shirtless as he was. Morana followed, standing on the threshold, the chilly wind cutting against her bare legs and arms, the lake completely quiet in the night.
She saw him press some buttons as he turned to look at her, putting the device to his ear.
“I have something,” he said quietly, and Morana felt her breath catch. “Ever heard of Reaper?”
There was silence as he listened to whatever the guy on the other end was saying, his frame coiling tighter and tighter. Minutes passed, and unable to stand it any longer, Morana stepped off the porch and onto the grass, her bare feet feeling the cold, wet dew, and walked to stand in front of him.
“When?” Tristan asked, looking at her. “Fine,” he said and disconnected, breaking the phone in half and throwing it into the lake.
“Who was it?” Morana asked, curiosity killing her.
Tristan looked at her for a long second before staring out to the lake. “An informant. He wants to meet.”
“What are you not telling me?” she asked, pulling him to face her.
He took a deep breath, his eyebrows slashed over his forehead. “There was one Reaper, a long time ago, but he and his family died in a fire.”
Morana winced, her lips pursing. “You think it’s him?”
“I don’t know,” he stared off into the distance, his hands fisting beside him. “I’m more interested in why, whoever he is, wants your attention. Bad enough to get the codes and return them to you.”
She pondered on that for a second. “Maybe because of the same reason I was unique to you twenty years ago. I’m the only girl who came back.”
Tristan shook his head, his eyes distant. “I never understood that you know. I’m glad you came back safe but why? It wasn’t because your father loved you, that I know for sure.”
‘Oh, he loved you.’
Maroni’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Maroni said something to me today,” she informed him. “About there being a reason why I am the only one who came back. Maybe he was playing with my head.”
“Maybe,” Tristan mused.
They both stood at the edge of the lake, lost in their own thoughts, with more questions than before.
