Morana looked at the man sleeping beside her in the hotel bed in the soft morning light, soft snores coming out of his mouth, his entire frame so relaxed no one could imagine the turmoil that lived under his skin. She knew their journey forward wasn’t going to be easy. He was never going to be completely emotionally okay. The trauma he had gone through, most of which she didn’t even know about, would manifest itself in different ways through their lives.
But she also knew he loved her.
He wouldn’t have come to her last night otherwise. He wouldn’t have sought her out over and over as he had. He wouldn’t have felt the need to keep her safe with himself as he did.
He loved her, and he would probably never be able to tell her so.
And she was surprisingly okay with that.
She’d rather he look at her the way he did for the rest of their lives. She’d rather he cook for her the way he did every morning. She’d rather he hold her neck like he did when she was old and grey.
He had given her a home, somewhere she belonged, just as she was. Be it his penthouse or the cottage or this hotel room, he was her anchor. She was never going to be alone again.
Dropping a little kiss on his bicep, she frowned at the tattoo, seeing the skull closely. It was the exact same skull, with the same design, as she’d seen on Maroni’s ring.
“Tristan,” she mumbled, patting his abs absently.
“Hmm,” he hummed, his voice roughened from sleep.
“What does this skull mean?” she asked, pointing to his arm.
She saw him blink his blue eyes open, slowly getting alert. “It’s an Outfit thing. Most soldiers get this when they’re taken into the fold. Why?”
Morana traced it with her finger, her mind racing. “And who in the outfit will have this on a ring?”
Tristan paused for a second, considering. “Maroni has one. Anyone else would have to be someone in one of the high positions.”
“I think that’s who the Reaper was,” Morana scrambled out of bed, rushing to her clutch where she’d stuffed the note.
She returned to bed, seeing Tristan leaning back on his elbows as he watched her curiously, his eyes lingering on her t-shirt for a split second before he asked for the note. Morana handed it to him, waiting to see what he said.
“You’re not going alone.”
That was predictable enough. “I know. It’s Saturday today. I was thinking maybe we should stake out the place tonight, just prep work. He could actually be there beforehand and we don’t-”
He cut off her words, swallowed the rest of her plan, and asked her to prove that nerdy, indeed, was the new sexy.
Tristan decided to walk them to the location that evening, wearing a casual black t-shirt and jeans he’d paid one of the hotel attendants to buy from across the street. Morana, although pleasantly sore between the legs, walked happily beside him towards the pier, watching all the people and the buzz, listening to all the chatter of children, street vendors, and excited tourists. Were it not for the gun she could feel under his t-shirt, she would believe he was just a guy strolling through the tourist spot with his lover on a weekend.
Morana enjoyed every second of it, spending time with him in a way she’d never thought she would. She asked him if it was okay to walk around like that without any security, and he’d just given her a look that shut her up. She forgot sometimes, knowing him as she did now, that to the outside world, he was still the feared Predator.
Looping her arm around his waist, tucked into his side, Morana thanked god she’d packed her comfortable flats as they crossed the busy pier.
“You know we should do a picnic one day,” she mused out loud, going where he was leading. “And maybe actually go to a restaurant.”
“We’ve been to a restaurant,” he reminded her.
Morana flushed, remembering that time in Crimson. Fuck, that had been hot. “I meant to eat.”
His lips didn’t even twitch but she sensed his amusement as he glanced at her. “I wouldn’t mind going to a restaurant for exactly what we did.”
“Me neither,” Morana admitted, feeling her face heat. “Maybe we could actually eat this time too.”
“You know we already live together, right?” he pointed out.
Morana sighed. “I’ve just never been on a date, okay? All I had was dinners with my father at the table and at least one guy trying to grope me.”
She felt him tuck her in closer to his side, pressing his lips to the top of her ear lobe. Morana felt a little smile tip her lips and continued asking him questions as they turned from the pier, following the river, but the crowd started to thin.
After a few minutes, Morana felt his body snap to attention as the location came into view. She looked around, seeing the secluded, old warehouse building made of wood and cement. It looked almost dilapidated in the falling night.
Tristan bent down and took out a spare gun from his boots, handing it to her silently. Morana nodded, appreciating the gesture and the fact that he trusted her ability to watch both their backs, and indicated the building.
She watched him switch to his predatory mode, and shook off her appreciation, focusing on the task at hand – scoping the place out.
Sliding into the building through an opening in the door, Morana entered after Tristan into the cavernous, dim space.
It was empty save for a chair to the side and some boxes stacked together. A very odd, unusual place for a meeting.
“I see your curiosity got the better of you,” the words came from behind her.
Morana whirled around, her gun pointed at the man limping out from the shadows. She felt Tristan come up behind her, his own weapon aimed at the stranger.
“Put those down, kids,” the man waved the gun away, his voice raspy from disuse or smoking. He stepped out into the light, his eyes coming to her. “I’m not going to hurt you, little doe.”
Morana tilted her head to the side, frowning. “Do I know you?”
His eyes crinkled, taking her in. His face was weathered and creased, half-covered in a thick dark beard, his eyes behind round, wire-framed glasses.
“You were at the funeral,” Morana thought out loud, lowering her weapon. An eerie feeling settled in the pit of her stomach.
He simply turned and headed towards the single chair, “Your timing isn’t the best, I admit. We might get interrupted. I have a meeting here soon.”
“Who are you?”
He didn’t answer, just limped to the chair. Morana turned to Tristan, eyes alert, and found him frowning at the man as well, his gun still up.
“I saw you,” Tristan spoke, his eyes narrowing in recognition. “You were there. A few years ago at-” He stopped.
The man chuckled, collapsing into the chair with a groan. “Do go on.”
Morana looked between them, confused. The cool draft in the warehouse raised goosebumps on her arms.
The man smiled, his hazel eyes alight with humor. “He’s talking about your graduation, Morana. He was there. That’s where he saw me.”
Surprise flooded her as she looked at Tristan, to find him staring straight at the man.
“Why were you there?” Morana asked the older man.
“To see you,” the man went rubbed his knee with his right hand, the silver skull ring glinting on his finger, a replica of the one she’d seen on Lorenzo Maroni’s hand.
“Are you Outfit?” she asked him, pointing to his hand.
The man twisted the ring and gazed up at her, something akin to reverence in his eyes. “I was once, a long time ago.”
Morana slowly lowered her gun to the side, her heart bursting. “Are you the Reaper?”
The man smiled, the lines on his cheeks creasing in a way that wasn’t bad. His hair, a shock of salt and pepper, was shabby. “I am the Reaper.”
“Why did you call me here? Why not talk to me at the hotel?” she asked him, taking a step closer to where he was seated. She felt Tristan move behind her.
“Because I had to meet you,” he told her. “Someplace we can talk alone.” He gave a pointed look to her lover. “Please put your gun down. I’m not going to harm either of you.”
For some odd reason, Morana believed him. Lowering her gun completely to the side, Morana perched down on a wooden box in front of the man and considered him steadily. “I have questions that I feel only you have the answers to.”
She felt Tristan come to stand behind her silently, present but letting her lead.
“Let me tell you a story first,” the man began, clearing his throat to get his voice working. “I’m afraid we don’t have much time.”
Morana nodded.
“About twenty-three years ago, I was a soldier of the Outfit and a happily married man,” he started, his brown eyes flecked with green on her. “It was a rarity, believe it or not. My wife, she didn’t know much about this business or what I did.”
He took a deep breath, twisting the ring on his finger. “This ring was a gift from Lorenzo. It was only for the three members of the Alliance – Lorenzo, Gabriel, and I. While they were the leaders of both the families, I was the one who collected all the data on businesses and operations. I had all the information about the enemies. I dealt in secrets and that made my friends powerful people.”
“I know that,” Morana nodded, interested in finally getting some answers.
He tilted his head to the side, blinking at her. “Of course,” he shook his head. “Everything was going well. I was happy. My wife was pregnant with our second child. That’s when I stumbled upon a secret one of my friends had hidden.”
Morana leaned forward, intrigued.
“Lorenzo had become a member of a global Syndicate,” the man told her quietly. “The Syndicate traded in children.”
Her throat tightened as she turned to look at the man behind her. “You don’t have to be here.”
Tristan looked down at her, the hunger for answers in his blue eyes matching hers, and prompted the man to go on. “The missing children.”
Morana put her hand on his thigh and turned back around to the older man, finding him watching both of them with something close to contentment in his eyes. He shook it off, focusing on the story.
“The children were taken from different cities at too young an age, and groomed to become slaves, those that survived anyway. Many died.”
She felt Tristan’s thigh muscles bunch under her palm at that, and gave it a squeeze. Her skin crawled, knowing she’d been one of those children. “Maroni was supplying children?”
“He’s the reason my sister went missing?” Tristan asked over her question.
The older man looked at Tristan with his eyes full of regret. “No. Your sister was all Gabriel. I’m sorry.”
Tristan inhaled sharply. Morana felt shame and pain coil in her belly. God, what evil monsters preyed upon children? Her father was one of them.
The man continued. “I didn’t know how long it had been going on, but I didn’t want to be a part of that. Although Gabriel was involved in only a few operations, Lorenzo had his hands in many. He was the real danger. I called both of them and threatened to expose him if he didn’t stop. I was a fool, thinking they’d been my friends.”
Morana felt something heavy settle in her gut. “What happened then?”
The man studied her, staying silent for a long, long moment. “The Alliance was broken. I stepped down and Gabriel got scared and decided to go his own way. All businesses split. But Lorenzo never trusted anyone. He took Gabriel’s daughter as insurance for him to keep his mouth shut.”
Morana breathed through her nose and stayed quiet.
He continued, his voice bleak. “He then attacked my wife in our home and murdered her and our baby.”
Hand flying to her mouth, Morana gasped at the horror the man before her had suffered. “I’m so sorry,” she spoke, her heart aching for him.
The man chuckled, “Oh, I wish that was all he’d done.”
Morana was half-afraid of hearing more.
“He took my other daughter too,” the man spoke, her eyes sharp on her. “At first, he put her in with the other missing children, but then he got another idea to ensure Gabriel stayed quiet.”
Morana’s heart started to thunder in her chest, her breathing uneven. She felt Tristan’s hand come down on her shoulder.
“He gave her to Gabriel to raise,” the man told her quietly, “so he could look at her and remember the extent of Lorenzo’s wrath to those who go against him. In exchange for his silence, his own daughter would live. His wife never accepted it was her own child who came back and left him, poor thing.”
Her hands started to shake, tears gathering in her eyes as her entire life flashed before her eyes, everything suddenly falling in place. Her father’s disdain of her, her mother’s absence, every callous word she had heard in that house, how her father had enjoyed seeing her suffer – it started to make an eerie kind of sense.
Morana swallowed, “I… don’t… I” she stammered.
“You’re her father,” Tristan put into words what she wasn’t able to.
The man smiled softly at her. “You’re my daughter, Morana.”
She stared at him in disbelief, knowing in her heart that he wasn’t lying but unable to accept it. “Is that even my real name? Or was it her name? Gabriel’s daughter?” she asked, her voice climbing.
She felt the hand on her shoulder give her a squeeze, and the older man, her real father, shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You’re Morana.”
Morana exhaled, tears streaming down her face. “Do you know if she’s alive?”
He shook his head and the pain inside Morana deepened. How?
Morana wiped her tears and asked the question she knew was on the forefront of Tristan’s mind. “Is Luna alive?”
They held their breath as her father said ruefully. “I truly don’t know.”
Gathering up her courage, Morana straightened her spine. “Why didn’t you take me back?”
“I was too injured when all of this was happening,” he told her, rubbing his knee. “I didn’t know what had happened to you until after a few months, and by then, it was too late. For all intents and purposes, you were a Vitalio.”
Morana felt her lips tremble. “Why didn’t you try to contact me before?”
He shook his head. “As long as they thought I was dead, it was safer for you. I kept my eyes on you though, giving you what little protection I could from afar.”
Her heart clenched.
“I know I don’t have any right to be, but I was very proud when you went on to study technology,” he told her, the smile on his face a ghost of who he must have been. “You get it from me. You’re so much better than I was at your age.”
The pride in his voice, the pride she had never been on the receiving end of in her entire life, twisted something inside her chest. Morana searched his face and found the resemblance to her, in the hazel of his eyes, in the way his nose tilted slightly upwards. She felt her eyes fill up again and shook it off, asking the question that had been burning inside her for days. “Why steal the codes? You were never going to use them. Why frame Tristan?”
He straightened his leg, a slight wince crossing his face. “I needed to make you and Tristan cross paths.”
Morana blinked, surprised. “Excuse me?”
Tristan’s hand tightened on her shoulder.
Her father chuckled, the sound genuine. “Oh, you think I was the only one keeping an eye on you? The boy was always there. He caught me a few times, didn’t you, Tristan?” her father directed it at the man behind her, looking at him over his glasses in a gesture Morana recognized in herself.
Heart stuttering at this new piece of information, Morana tried to remember any moment in her past when she’d felt watched. She knew he had a picture of her. But was that all he had? Did he have more? How long had she been watched? She had been watched, not by one but by two people and she didn’t remember a single incident?
“I knew what he’d done to protect you once,” the man deliberated. “And I knew, with the way he kept his eye on you through the years, that he would protect you again when the time came.”
“The time for what?” she croaked out, her mind barely hanging on to everything.
“Justice.”
A shiver going down her spine, Morana clenched and unclenched her fists, considering this man before her. The hollow warehouse echoed the emptiness in her stomach as everything she had known about her life crashed down.
“So, let me get this straight,” she leaned forward, watching him with an even gaze. “You had Jackson steal my codes and frame Tristan all so I could find him? You were matchmaking?”
The man, huffed a laugh. “It sounds a little silly when you put it like that, but it worked didn’t it?”
“He wanted to kill me,” she told him.
“I did,” Tristan confirmed from behind her.
The older man shook his head. “I think you didn’t recognize it, Tristan, and I don’t blame you.”
He remarked to Morana, “The men in this world don’t love like normal men, little doe. Their love is more intense than any other. He fell in love with you as a boy and as a man. And watching it happen has been the only peace I have found in years, knowing you will be loved and cherished and protected after I’m gone. I needed to give you that.”
Pulse throbbing with his words, her throat tight with unfamiliar emotions, Morana shuddered, shaking off the severity of his voice.
“Who has been trying to kill me?” she asked him, trying to understand everything.
“The Syndicate.”
“Why did you send me towards the Alliance and the Syndicate then? Shouldn’t I have stayed away?”
“You can’t stay away. You’re involved already because of who you are, and I had to prepare you for the truth,” he stated simply. “If you weren’t prepared, your mind wouldn’t have been able to cope. And I wanted your relationship to be successful.”
Morana shook her head. “And what am I going to do with all this truth? What is the point?”
The man, her father, smiled indulgently, looking from Tristan and back to her. “You’ll do what you want to do, Morana. This world needs people like you to stand up for those who can’t do it for themselves. There are so many lost children who cannot find their way home, so many parents who grieve for their babies. The pain of that is unfathomable, my little doe. You don’t know the agony that goes through a father when he loses his child, never to find her. Help them.”
A throb started in her temples. “How? I don’t know.”
The man leaned forward, about to say something, when the sound of a vehicle stopping outside made him straighten. He looked at both of them and uttered one word, “Hide.”
Uncertain, Morana picked up her gun and felt Tristan pull her up, guiding her to the side, hiding behind one of the pillars. Putting her back to the pillar and shielding his body with hers, she saw him lean to the side and watch the door. Morana twisted her neck and watched the scene herself.
Lorenzo Maroni and her father – no, Gabriel Vitalio – walked into the space, both dressed in suits. Morana saw her father, her actual father, simply smile at them and greet them like old friends. She realized she didn’t even know his actual name, or hers. She didn’t know about her mother or her unborn baby sister.
Breathing through the pain invading her heart, Morana simply took strength from the man standing pressed into her, took courage from his presence, and kept her eyes on the scene and focused on it. She could break down later.
“Well, well,” Lorenzo Maroni guffawed. “Look who turned up from the grave. I thought I’d buried you, old friend.”
“Always the theatrics, Lorenzo,” her father commented, sounding amused.
Lorenzo chortled. “You should’ve left the sleeping skeletons alone.”
“Why did you call us?” Gabriel cut through the bullshit.
Her father shook his head. “I wanted to ask about the trade. Weapons and children these days, isn’t that right, Lorenzo?”
“Not this old tune, Reaper,” Lorenzo looked down at his friend’s cane. “You remember the last time you threatened to expose me?”
“Very clearly,” her father stated. “You’re not the only ones I called for this meeting.”
Morana watched, surprised, as Dante stepped into the warehouse and leaned against one of the pillars, casually smoking a cigarette. “Hello, father.”
Tristan inhaled above her, his heart still steady against her ear. Morana felt her own start to palpitate. She had a bad feeling about this.
Lorenzo Maroni looked slightly startled for a second before he recovered. “Good to see you, son.”
Dante gave an empty smile, one like she’d never seen on his handsome face. “I wish I could say the same, especially after seeing the results of your depravity the last few days, father.”
Lorenzo stilled before turning to the Reaper. “Why call us here?”
Her father leaned on his cane and stood him, his body lean in front of Lorenzo’s stock. “To tell you that for the last few years, I have dismantled your business. To tell you that I have been planning this for over twenty years. You are true evil, Lorenzo. And you don’t deserve to live.”
Before anyone could move, her father twisted the top of his cane off, bringing out a hidden blade, and sliced it across Lorenzo Maroni’s throat. Morana barely contained a gasp, her fingers fisting in Tristan’s t-shirt as he took aim and steadied his gun on the scene, watchful.
“That’s for Elaina,” her father stated, his voice cold. “That’s for killing my love and my baby, for taking away my little girl, Lorenzo.”
Dante simply smoked in the corner, seeing his father gurgling, seeing his knees shaking, seeing his crisp white shirt turning an ugly red.
Maroni fell forward on her father, taking out something from his own pocket. It was a blade that he stabbed him with as he went down.
“No!” Morana whispered before she could control it, her eyes widening.
Maroni clutched his neck, trying to talk, his eyes popping out. Her father held the gaping wound on chest and continued talking through labored breaths. “This is your justice,” her father went on, bleeding out. “You bleed to death while your son watches without remorse. That’s what you’ve created.”
Gabriel, who had been staring at his old partner in shock, suddenly bent down and shook the dying man. “Where is my daughter?” he demanded, shaking him. “Is she alive? Damn you, Lorenzo, tell me where is she?!”
Maroni gurgled, choked, his eyes bulging, and fell limp to the ground. At a few minutes after midnight, Bloodhound Maroni died in a pool of in his own blood.
Morana observed all of this in stunned shock. All of this happened not ten feet from where she stood.
Tristan twitched against her. “Stay here,” he whispered into her hair before stepping out into the melee. She saw as Dante glanced up to see Tristan come out, his eyebrows raised but otherwise silent. He threw his cigarette away. Both men stepped up to her real father in sync, bending down to see his body.
Dante patted his chest clinically and took out an envelope, exchanging a look with Tristan.
Her father croaked out something that Tristan bent to listen to, before he and Dante stood up and walked to the warehouse door, talking quietly. Morana didn’t know what was in the envelope and at the moment, she didn’t really care.
Gabriel continued to shake a dead Lorenzo, asking about his daughter’s whereabouts.
“We both know the pain of losing a daughter,” Gabriel muttered on his knees in Lorenzo’s blood. “Except you know your daughter is safe and I don’t. Now I never will.”
Her father didn’t answer.
Gabriel started to laugh, the sound gaining volume, becoming more and more hysterical.
Morana stepped out from behind the pillar, watching him, aware of both Dante and Tristan turning around to watch him as well.
Tristan looked at her, and shook his head. “Let’s leave, Morana.”
Gabriel’s eyes fell on her and he laughed. “Morana, the little whore in his bed.”
He stayed on his knees in the blood, grinning like a madman. “You aren’t my Morana! I don’t even know who the fuck you are!”
Morana raised her gun and pointed it to his head, her heart hurting. “Did you kidnap girls and trade them twenty years ago?” she asked, her voice shaking.
But Gabriel was too far gone to answer her.
“My Morana is lost. My Morana is gone. My Morana doesn’t even exist! And me? I would kill you every day I could. I want you to feel the pain my girl was feeling somewhere; I want you to bleed as she bleeds. I want you to question why Daddy didn’t love you like my baby must have wondered.”
Morana stepped forward, her heart bleeding, hurting, for a girl she had never met, for herself, and for all the other girls who had been brutalized by these men. “Did you kidnap girls twenty years ago?”
She was aware of Tristan’s eyes on her, of Dante watching the scene alert, but she couldn’t look away from the eyes of the man she had loved as her father for so many years.
Those eyes darkened as they came to her and his laughter got worse.
“You fucking whore,” he spit at her feet. “You don’t deserve to be happy, not when my baby isn’t.”
“I was a child,” Morana told him, her eyes burning. “An innocent child.”
“And I was a father!” he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. “I was a father to a beautiful baby girl who was replaced overnight! Gone! And you took her place. You’re not her! You’ll never be her!”
“Did you kidnap girls twenty years ago?” she continued asking relentlessly, her arms shaking with the strain on her mind and her muscles.
He stood up, taking a step towards her, the hatred in his eyes burning her, not answering her question. “Every time I looked at you, it reminded me of my baby. How she must have suffered. How she must have cried for me. You didn’t deserve her life.”
Morana felt each word assault her like a bullet, finding its mark, digging into her skin.
In the second that it took her to process his words, Gabriel took out his gun and pointed it at her head, his dark eyes unhinged on her. “Oh, he has a gun on me. He might kill me but I’d get my shot in. And I’d hit right between the eyes.”
Morana stared at the dark hateful eyes, unmoving. “Did you kidnap Luna Caine?”
“I’ve been crazy for a long time but I had to pretend, for the sake of my daughter, for the hope that one day Lorenzo would tell me where she was.”
Morana elevated her own arm, pointing it to his forehead.
Tristan’s calm voice came from her right. “Don’t do it, Morana.”
“Oh, do it, Morana,” Gabriel’s voice mocked her name. “Your father is dead. Your mother is dead. I will kill your lover too. And your children-”
“Don’t let him get to you,” Tristan’s voice came from the periphery, cool and collected. “I’ve got him. You don’t want to do this.”
“Oh you want to do this, don’t you, Morana,” Gabriel cajoled, his eyes feral like she’d never seen before. “You know if you have daughters, I will steal them-”
“Morana, don’t listen to him-”
“-and put them in the trade. Just like I did twenty years ago-”
“I’ve got him, don’t do it.”
“Stop it!” Morana screamed at both the voices coming at her, her hands shaking, her entire form trembling with pain and rage that just kept accumulating inside her body. She felt the ice and fire battle inside her, taking her from cold-blooded detachment to burning fury in moments.
“Did you take Luna Caine?” she bellowed at Gabriel, her voice breaking.
Gabriel laughed. “Yes, I did!”
It happened in a split second.
Before she had even realized it, her fingers had pulled the trigger, the recoil hitting her hard, the sight of a gaping hole in the head of the man who had been the only father she had known all her life.
A tormented howl left her throat even as her knees collapsed.
“Fuck!”
Arms came around her, pulling her up even as her eyes looked at all the death around them. Lorenzo Maroni lying in a pool of his blood, his throat slit. Her biological father, a man she had known only for ten minutes but one who had protected her all her life, dead with a slight smile on his face, his shirt soaked in blood. Gabriel Vitalio, a man who had gone mad after losing his daughter, a monster, her father, killed by her.
Morana took it all in, and blacked out.
