The Syndicater: A Dangerous Dark Romance (Dark Verse Book 6)

It was the double beep of her phone that made her eyes open wide.

The moon cast long shadows in the bedroom, the darkness beyond the full windows a clear indication it was still the middle of the night.

Morana blinked, orienting her mind to understand why she had come awake. Her phone was silenced for all notifications while she slept—something she’d started doing after her shooting to get proper rest—all messages but one.

Mind racing, she turned on her side, aware of the heavy, muscular arm wrapped around her waist as Tristan slept deeply beside her, snoring quietly. It was a testament to how exhausted he was and how low his guards were that he’d slept through the beeping. In the beginning, when they had just started sharing a bed, he had gotten up at the slightest of sounds and the lightest of movements from her. His life had trained him to be alert, and it had followed him even in slumber—she would tug the blanket, and he would wake up; she would get up to pee, and he would wake up; she would turn in his arms, and he would wake up. It took him just a few minutes to fall asleep again, but he woke up nonetheless.

But he was tired even though he didn’t say it. She knew. She could see it in his eyes. Every day that they spent without new information chipped little pieces of him away, and seeing a part of him wither like that terrified her, though she never told him. He had enough on his plate, and out of the two of them, she knew she was more well-equipped to handle emotional freak-outs than he was. If he even got the slightest inclination that this all was scaring her, she didn’t know how he would react. Though they were together and had been together for a while, they were still new to each other, still learning each other and themselves. Honestly, one day, she just wished they would achieve the level of understanding Dante and Amara shared. A part of her slightly envied the couple when she saw them together, envied the many years they’d had with each other, envied the easy way they could communicate without any holds barred.

Yet, she wouldn’t change a thing. Tristan, as broken and brutal and beautiful as he was, was hers. Their story, while bloodier and messier than any other, was theirs. And just as they had gone through all the tides, they would go through it all together.

Carefully moving in order to not disturb him, she got out of bed and went to her phone on the dresser. Why was her phone on the dresser? Because Tristan had broken her bedside table. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She had helped. It had happened on a particularly enthusiastic night when they had been going hard against the door, his jeans had been around his ankles, and her leg had cramped. So he had started toward the bed with her, tripped because his jeans had been around his ankles (and who could even walk like that with a wriggling horny woman in their arms?), and they’d both gone down, taking the poor table with them. It had cracked, and she had cracked up right there on the floor at the look on his face, her stomach hurting, but because she was still horny, she had straddled him. That was the first time she’d laughed while having sex, the first time his dimple had been permanently on his cheek while he’d been inside her.

Smiling at the memory, she put the code on her screen and opened the notification, her eyes scanning the message. Her smile dimmed, her heartbeat picking up pace.

‘You have 48 hours, Miss Vitalio. Do your thing or I’ll change my mind. (File attached).’

The Shadow Man.

As fascinated as Morana was with the mystery of him, he was really annoying for the same at times. What the fuck was he playing at this time? Forty-eight hours for what? To track him? What was the point even? She’d traced all his previous messages, originating from different IP addresses all over the world, sometimes bouncing even as she was tracking. He was smart, but moreover, he was too involved in the depths of this dark world for anyone to find him if he didn’t want to be found. She knew because she had tried, and he had irritatingly evaded her with ease that wasn’t regular, not for someone of her caliber.

But the message, this one, it felt a little different than the ones he’d sent before. They had been a lot more vague, a lot more cryptic. This one was direct, too direct. She would’ve suspected someone else pretending to be him but in the time she’d been a reluctant acquaintance of his, he didn’t seem like the type to let someone pretend to be him. So, what was with the message? Did he want her to find him? Morana stared at the screen, looking through their previous chats, and realized most of it had been him leading all of them chasing leads. Whatever the others thought of him, Morana was shrewd enough to not disregard him and his information.

‘I’ll change my mind.’

That was what was different. Whenever he’d sent her any message in the past, it had been coordinates or just a few words of information—plain, simple, direct. That last line in this message was putting her mental antennas on high alert. That last line? It was personal, more human than she’d seen him be in their textual exchanges before. He was personally invested in whatever he’d sent her, but what exactly?

She clicked on the file, seeing the error displayed. She needed her laptop to access the attachment.

The last vestiges of sleep disappeared as the wheels in her mind began to turn; she put on her glasses and quickly padded out of the bedroom and down the stairs as quietly as possible. It was deep in the night, and aside from the low humming of appliances, everything in the penthouse was silent. The vast array of windows showed a view of the city and the sea that never failed to take her breath away, making her pause for a second on the stairs to just admire the vista. She was honest enough to admit that she’d fallen in love with the property much before its owner, mainly because of those windows.

Shaking her head at herself, she descended again and stopped at what had once been the guest room she had stayed in, peeking in quickly. Xander, the boy who had become such a part of her heart, was asleep, his mouth slightly open, his blanket thrown to one side, a pillow hugged to the other. He had claimed this room and space as his own, his quiet presence one she loved having in the house and their lives. Morana had never really thought of herself as a maternal figure—she’d never really had any example to understand what that felt like, to be honest—but she felt something very strongly for Xander. Her first example of a good mother was Amara’s mother, who oozed maternal love not just for her own daughter but for anyone she took under her care, including Dante and Tristan, and now Morana and Xander. She had seen it better firsthand with Amara since Tempest had been born, but more than that, with all the boys she was helping in the rehabilitation center, especially Xander’s little friend Lex. Morana loved knowing that her baby had a friend like that, having never had one in childhood and knowing the kind of isolation it fostered in one’s soul. She was glad because it meant Xander not only had love from adults around him but also a companion his own age who already knew of his past, not like the new kids trying to befriend him at school and leaving him alone once they realized he was different from them.

Morana stared at the boy, as she did many times, trying to understand why she couldn’t find a thing about him. She had used all her resources and scoured the depths of the dark web, combing through countless records, but there was nothing about him. It was like he hadn’t existed before they had found him, and he didn’t talk about his past much, at least not with them. She didn’t really know if he told his psychologist about it either, but she’d never pried, wanting him to have full confidence to confide in the doctor if he needed it without feeling like someone was looking over his shoulder. She might not have had any maternal examples, but she’d be damned if she didn’t learn on the job.

Once assured that he was okay, she padded to the smaller second room behind the stairs, which had become her workspace. In the beginning when she’d been at the penthouse, she hadn’t really explored the entire vastness of it, limiting her time as a guest to the front areas and the guest room. Now that it was her home, she could appreciate the space in its entirety, and it was massive. Five bedrooms—one master on the upper level, one behind the kitchen that was now Xander’s, and three down the corridor that ran from there to the back of the building. There was also a home gym, an office space, a balcony in the back, and a cozy room with a lot of natural light and a direct view of the port in the distance. That room had been unfurnished and empty before she had fully moved in, and now was a playroom for Xander, filled with gadgets and toys and books he liked. She wouldn’t have thought the penthouse was conducive for a child, but Xander somehow fit in seamlessly into the space, making it more of a home than she would’ve thought possible.

Her workspace, tucked in a small room behind the stairs, was exactly her vibe—darkened, glowing with digital lights, and just monitors and devices mounted on a large desk and the wall and an ergonomic chair for her. There wasn’t any space for anyone else to sit in there, though Tristan did stand leaning against the doorway sometimes, just watching her work, which always made her feel a little self-conscious. It was hard to explain why. It wasn’t like he could understand whether what she was doing was correct or not, but she just felt a little fumbly in his presence in her domain. Xander sometimes liked to sit on the floor, tinkering with an old laptop she had given him. His natural inclination toward digital things was the way they connected. He liked learning from her, and she liked teaching him, his mind one that fascinated her. The boy was smart, so much smarter than she’d been around his age, and she couldn’t imagine the limits of his potential with how he could use that intelligence.

Entering the room, she powered on her systems and sat in her comfy chair—one of the first things she had ordered online for their new place right after moving in. It had shown up, and much to Tristan’s amusement, she hadn’t been able to get it out of the private elevator, much less roll it into the room. Much to her arousal, he had done one of those manly ‘I got this’ moves, rolled up his sleeves, and just picked it up and moved it in like it hadn’t been taking the full force of her body. The thing had been heavy, and he had plucked it up like a feather. To say she’d been turned on had been an understatement. And as a thank you, she had jumped him on the chair as soon as he’d put it down. He hadn’t complained at all.

Chuckling to herself, she pushed her glasses up and opened the chat screen on her main monitor.

‘You have 48 hours, Miss Vitalio. Do your thing or I’ll change my mind. (File attached).’

An hour had already passed. She had forty-seven left. Morana set up a timer on the monitor so she could keep track of the hours visibly. She hovered over the file attached, looking at its heavy size, wondering what he’d sent her, and did her pre-download scans for any viruses. Once it came back clean, she clicked on it.

It downloaded in a few seconds, and a folder titled ‘Fountainhead’ appeared on her screen. Fountainhead? A quick search told her the meaning: the original source of something.

What the hell?

She opened it and saw what was inside. Photographs. Not many, only a few photographs.

She tapped the first, and it opened up. Her screen was filled with the image of the ghost of her past—Zenith. Morana felt her stomach tightening, confronted with the fact yet again that her life wasn’t her own. She wasn’t the real Morana, Zenith was, or had been. Staring at the photograph of the young girl whose life had been snatched away too soon, she remembered—the unanswered questions, the unexpected death, the unstoppable bullet tearing through her body, all of it coming back to her. Heaviness sat in her gut, as it did whenever she was assaulted with the memories. She remembered lying on that concrete, wondering if she was finally going to die. She had almost believed she would, and it had terrified her. She hadn’t wanted to go, not like that, not leaving behind life when she’d just begun to live it, with a man she loved and a boy who had her heart and friends who had become family. For the first time in her life, she had people, and so much love and it had all been threatened by a shard of metal lodged in her body.

She remembered Tristan, frantic, furious, frozen in fear of losing her. She remembered Xander hugging her with tight affection that clogged her throat when she saw him again.

She rubbed her left shoulder, feeling the raised flesh and the scar of the gunshot, feeling the pain that had been peaking a lot more frequently than she wanted to admit. Though she had been through physical therapy and everything possible to restore herself to her former physical self, the fact was that she wasn’t the same. There were repercussions of her injury, as much as she didn’t want to accept it, and they seemed to be more permanent than temporary. The bullet that had hit her shoulder, thankfully missing her heart, had still done some severe nerve damage. It had injured one of the main nerves that went down to her hand, and though the doctors had repaired it well enough that her hand was still functional, it had become quite useless. She couldn’t do anything with it for more than ten minutes without it going numb and losing all sensation. It was jarring, trying to use it and suddenly realizing she couldn’t. It probably wasn’t a big deal to most people. In fact, everyone told her she was lucky to be alive and in good health, and she agreed. But a part of her mourned herself because they didn’t understand what her hands had been. They had always been the extensions of her brain to her, keeping up as she typed away without a second thought or drove into the night without worry. And though she still had her right hand, she was scared that her left was done. She couldn’t type with it the way she had before, she couldn’t lift anything heavy the way she had before, she couldn’t drive the way she had before. She couldn’t be the way she’d been before.

Morana hadn’t really said much about it to anyone. She knew she should. But everyone had so much on their plate already, and it didn’t seem like a big deal right then. She was taking medication—Tristan was so disciplined with making sure she did it on time. She was taking physical therapy, and Xander always accompanied her to her sessions. And except Amara, because her friend was too astute when it came to people’s brains, no one really suspected much. And to be honest, she didn’t want to say it out loud. She was scared that if she did, it would become more real, and she wasn’t ready to accept that yet.

Shaking herself out of the thoughts to focus on the task at hand, she moved on to the second picture, one she had already seen before. The old picture of the three toddlers—herself, Zenith, and Luna—before they were gone.

She clicked the next picture. It was an old, scanned digital copy of a physical photograph of two young girls, one brunette and one redhead. The brunette she recognized as a younger version of the Zenith she had met. But the redhead? Her heart began to pound as she analyzed the image for any special details. The background of the photo was simple, just a generic wall that could be anywhere. The girls were young, not older than eight, from her guess, and both looked scared.

Slightly shaky, she went to the next photograph, her heart skipping a beat as she took in the sight. A lone girl this time. A red-haired teen, the same girl in the previous photo but older, against another wall, this one more beige, contrasting with the long red hair.

The frantic beats of her heart drummed in her ears, terrified of what she was going to discover, knowing this was going to change everything forever whichever way it went.

There was just one more photograph, and taking a deep breath in for courage, Morana clicked on it.

It was the photograph of the same redhead, now a grown-up, mature adult with much shorter hair. The same girl without the baby fat in her cheeks, a slender curve to her features, now a fully grown woman, looking off in the distance, holding a mug in her hands, her face in profile.

There was no way…

It couldn’t be.

It had to be!

He couldn’t just be sending the photos and dropping this on them so casually, could he?

Yeah, he could.

Fuck.

Fuck.

It was her.

She was alive.

Luna was alive.

Tears welled in her eyes. Tristan’s baby sister was alive.

Fuck.

Pausing, Morana caught herself before getting swept up in the emotion. She needed to stay on track. There was a reason she had been sent this file, sent it now, and a timer she could feel ticking with each second passing.

Focus.

Morana inhaled, and squinted at the image, scanning the most recent picture carefully, trying to find some clues in the background. It looked like a balcony or deck of some kind; it was hard to tell precisely. The light was gray, as though it was cloudy or early morning somewhere with fog and mountains silhouetted in a sliver of a view before going out of frame. A dark gray wall behind the girl was rough, clearly a stone of some kind, bringing her short, jagged red hair in stark contrast. The hair was clearly chopped by someone who didn’t know how to cut it. The mug in her hands was plain black, nothing remarkable about it. What was remarkable, however, was what she was wearing—a man’s t-shirt too big for her. Just the t-shirt, nothing else from the way her breasts were silhouetted against the fabric, and her thighs were visible, going out of the frame.

It was an intimate picture, the kind one would take after spending a night together. A lover’s picture.

‘I’ll change my mind’.

Morana felt her jaw drop, her brain computing. The personal tone hit her all of a sudden, the picture becoming clear for what it was.

It wasn’t just an image. It was a statement.

The Shadow Man.

Luna.

Lovers.

He was her lover.

Holy shit.

The longer Morana stared at the photograph, the more she hoped he’d acquired it from somewhere, that he wasn’t the photographer. Because if he was… she didn’t know what to think of it. But the more she thought of it, the more things became clearer in her head, and yet more questions arose in her mind.

Fuck.

Morana sat stumped, trying to process, just hoping he wasn’t the photographer.

Taking a deep breath, calming her mind to focus on the matter at hand while her thoughts ran chaos, Morana began to do her thing. She had forty-six hours and thirty-two minutes left.