The Syndicater (Dark Verse #6)

13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Dante, Gladestone

She was real.

After searching for her for so long, she had almost become a legend to him. Though he'd never doubted they would find the truth of what happened to her one day, for the sake of Tristan, he'd hoped they would find her, but he'd never expected it to actually happen out of the blue. As grateful as he was, there was a suddenness to it all that raised his hackles. Why now? Why not earlier or later? There had to be a reason for it because if there was one thing he knew about the Shadow Man, it was that he didn't do things without his own agenda, whatever it may be.

He took her in, only having seen her photos as a baby. She had grown up into a beautiful woman. Petite, with an air so fragile about her she looked like she would splinter any second., but he doubted that was true. Appearances could be deceptive, and anyone who survived whatever the hell she had had to have an inner strength bigger than any of them could imagine. And anyone who was with the Shadow Man, if what Morana suspected was true, had to have balls to steel or the feminine equivalent, he didn't know.

Dante remembered getting the call in the middle of a very hot makeout session with his wife. He had told her everything Morana had shared with him, and Amara had been stunned, to say the least. But when the call had come that the trace had been complete, triangulating the location to a warehouse in Gladestone, a city closer to Tenebrae than it was to Shadow Port, Dante had immediately called for the jet to be ready and been in the air within fifteen minutes.

That was the reason he had arrived before the others. Two of his men were scouting the area outside, though he doubted they would find anything unsecured. The Shadow Man wouldn't have left her alone unless she was a pawn in his plan or a trap for The Syndicate.

The girl—Tristan's baby sister, he had to remind himself—looked terrified, and he felt something tug at his chest at the look on her face. He gave her a smile, one that he knew had a soothing effect on other people, and thankfully, her body relaxed a fraction.

But Dante noticed something else. Along with the deer-in-the-headlights expression, as she kept her eyes on him, there was a flare of recognition on her face.

That surprised him.

She knew who he was.

How? Was it The Syndicate or the Shadow Man? What the hell were they playing at?

Maybe it was nothing noteworthy at all. Maybe it wasn't recognition at all, and he'd misread her. That was possible.

He looked her over again.

Damn. He couldn't believe it was her.

Dante was happy, fucking ecstatic for his brother. He was moved for himself too, having witnessed firsthand and even initiated ways to find her over the years. He'd always thought that if and when they found her, everything would just fit in perfectly. But back then, he'd been more naive. He hadn't known about the depths of degradation in their world, the levels of hell going much deeper than any of them had known. She had been in those depths, and somehow, she was spit back out. And Dante couldn't afford to be as naive now.

Back then, he hadn't had a wife, a child, a family to protect, and a city to lead. Now, as he had taken up the mantle, the rational part of him, the one that had led his father to his own execution, was a little skeptical. He didn't take things at face value, and as much as he wanted to open his arms and accept her completely and let her into his family, the fact was that he didn't know who she was as a person yet. She had lived her entire life under or with The Syndicate, was somehow involved in some capacity with the Shadow Man, and had suddenly been dropped into their laps out of nowhere. He had seen the kind of ways trauma changed people. Amara had barely escaped with her life and their daughter's after her half-sister who had betrayed them. And more recently, he had seen firsthand the kind of scars it had left on Alpha and his family when his long-time friend and right-hand man had betrayed him.

Dante Maroni, over the last year after becoming a father and seeing the shitshow happening around them, was comparatively lower on trust than he had been. Until she proved that she wasn't a pawn or, worse, a perpetrator coming for them, Dante was going to keep a very keen eye on her. But he was going to welcome her, comfort her, and be family to her just in case she was innocent and just a victim of her life. If she was, he would lay his life for her if need be.

But until he knew either way for sure, he was also going to keep his logical reasonings to himself, only sharing them with Amara. In fact, he was eager to listen to what she had to say, her intuition and experience being something he trusted with closed eyes. There was not a soul more astute about people's personalities than his queen. She had known and trusted Morana way before he or Tristan had. She had told him to trust Alpha and it wasn't a decision he regretted, his relationship with his half-brother getting better with time, filling the void that Damian's absence had left in his life. And despite all indications to the contrary, she was telling him to keep trusting Vin, and he was going to until he saw proof otherwise.

Fuck, he missed Damian, and he knew exactly how he was doing. Dante respected his decision to stay completely out of the world that had never accepted him. His brother had made a beautiful life for himself, with a woman who loved him, and Dante did have the occasional security checking in to make sure everything was okay; he had accepted that Damian would never return home, that their relationship was going to be limited to phone calls through burner phones. Though it wasn't the same, he knew the pain of losing a beloved sibling, feeling like he'd failed to protect him as an older brother, and there, he could understand Tristan's pain, though it was much more intense and deeper for the other man.

Dante kept the reassuring smile on his face, taking in her beautiful form, but beyond that, taking in other things. She was well-groomed and looked polished in a brown oversized blazer, dark jeans, and leather boots, all simple but all expensive. Dante knew good clothes, and he could tell by looking they were a top-of-the-line luxury. There was minimal jewelry on her—just dainty hoops in her ears, a ring on her index finger. The main eye-catcher was the gold necklace close to her skin, a choker-type with a swirly pattern that immediately gave away the fact that it was custom-made.

And it reminded him of some of the things he'd seen in his time going undercover—one of them being owned sex slaves who had worn collars around their necks at some of the parties. They had been forced to wear them, to chain themselves to their perverted, vile masters. Dante had sat at such a party, around naked boys and girls who were collared and leashed like animals, the people controlling them the monsters of the worst kind.

At the memory, Dante looked closely at the gold on her long neck. It didn't look like any of the collars he had seen, and the fact that she was wearing it comfortably while sitting free indicated that perhaps it was not. He hoped it wasn't. Because if it was a custom-made expensive collar on an invisible leash? That could be a problem for all of them.

His mind swirled with questions as he waited for Tristan to arrive. Dante had arrived earlier, both to secure the location and to get to her as soon as possible to verify that it wasn't a false lead. Tristan and Morana, not having a private jet, had waited for one of Alpha's planes to pick them up and bring them over. Dante had called the man and let him know the update, asking about Gladestone since it wasn't a city they had much idea about, but Alpha had connections here. His brother's contacts had been ready to receive him at the airport and take him straight to the location.

The last time they had been in Gladstone had been for a lead, too. It had been months ago and the last time he'd heard from Vin before he had gone deep underground, and they'd all ended up at one of the nightclubs. The tip had been about the number, a number they had tried to track but hadn't been able to. The last time Vin had tipped them off about a number, Zenith had ended up dying. This time, they had been on top of the game, heading together to the new city to get a change of scenery—though there wasn't much scenery there anyway—and find out what the fuck was up with the numbers 5 and 7. They had seen it a few times now for it to be a mere coincidence.

Morana had uncovered a file in the dark web after months of looking, and during recovery, the numbers 5057 and 5507 had popped up again, a number they had thought belonged to Zenith and another girl they had never found. But Dante didn't think it did, or if it did, he didn't believe that was all there was to it. There was more, a lot more they hadn't discovered, and hopefully, today would be a good step to unraveling things a lot more.

Dante didn't want their world to be as ugly as it was when Tempest grew up. He wanted to leave it even a little better for her, and for that, they needed answers that could give them leverage over The Syndicate.

The screeching of tires had him turning his neck and the gun in his hand going up immediately.

He let it fall as he saw Tristan jump out of a limo while it wasn't even fully stopped, jogging over to where Dante stood, looking like he hadn't shaved or changed clothes in a day, his eyes wilder than Dante had ever seen them, asking him a silent question, begging for an answer Dante was so fucking happy to finally give him.

Dante gave him a nod, and Tristan stopped, as though that one nod had rendered him immobile, knocking the breath out of him for a split second.

Seeing the vivid reaction on the face of the boy he had befriended, the man he considered a brother, moved Dante. Tristan had always been a blank slate, one of the reasons Dante truly enjoyed provoking a reaction out of him. But the Tristan who stood before him then wasn't the man who didn't give a fuck about the world; it was the boy who had made a mistake and paid the unreasonable price for it. And seeing him like that made Dante's own eyes burn.

There was no one in the world who deserved this more than Tristan.

Fuck, pawn or not, the fact that she'd come back and filled the huge, gaping hole that had always been in his friend's life alone had his gratitude.

He watched as Tristan stepped inside, scanning the room and Dante almost told him to look left, but stopped. This was his moment. Nothing else needed to exist.

He saw the exact moment Tristan's eyes landed on her. To anyone else, it would look like he froze out of shock, but to Dante, who had worked and learned his body language for years, it wasn't freezing. Tristan was moving on the inside, his body locked into place so his emotions didn't scatter everywhere all around him.

Dante almost stepped outside, wanting to give them both privacy in the moment, but his protectiveness of the younger man didn't let him move. He didn't think she would harm Tristan—he had seen assassins, and she was the farthest thing from one he could find—and he didn't want to not trust her, but until he knew her better, it was better to be safe than sorry.

Tristan walked to her and sank down on his knees.

"Is she…?" Morana's words drowned out as she came to stand next to Dante, a phone in her hand with the navigation screen still lit, her eyes immediately finding Tristan and his sister on the side.

A gasp left Morana as she looked at the scene, her eyes tearing up and her hand coming up to her mouth. Dante pulled her into his side, rubbing her shoulder.

Alpha came to stand with them silently, exchanging a nod with Dante, taking in the scene.

No words were spoken by any of them.

They stood there like that, siblings of the heart, watching siblings of the blood be reunited after twenty years.