The Syndicater (Dark Verse #6)

34. Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Morana, Near Tenebrae City

Something was awfully, terribly wrong.

Morana was driving back to the compound when suddenly, the numbness that had been perpetual in her left arm began to spread to her right. She tried to move her limbs and steer the wheel to the side of the road but her muscles were slowly going lax, the numbness spreading from her fingers to her wrists to her elbows to her shoulders and up her neck to her face. Her feet didn't move to push the brakes she already had them on, her mouth didn't move to even breathe.

The sensation reminded her of the time she'd been drugged in the club back when she'd first met Tristan.

Somehow, someway, she'd been drugged again.

The Shadow Man couldn't have done it. He'd been at a distance, his hands in his pockets, giving her the file. She had touched the file but he'd been wearing gloves. Could it have been laced with some neurotoxin that was absorbed through the skin? But she didn't believe he'd done that. Unless, he'd just wanted the codes and wanted to eliminate her.

The car sped down the road, heading to a curve as the hill began, and Morana braced herself. Thankfully, her speed wasn't too fast and she was still in the plain valley so she might get injured, again, but the possibility of a fatal crash was minimal. And thankfully, she was wearing a seatbelt.

As the car went off road and straight into a tree, Morana closed her eyes and tried to lessen the impact. The seatbelt jerked against her already injured shoulder, making her scream with the pain that broke through the numbness, the force of the impact snapping her neck forward harshly. Her bag and gadgets fell on the floor. Steam blew out of the crushed front. She sent up a silent prayer that she hadn't been driving faster, thanks to her injury, or she would have been dead around the car.

Processing the last few seconds, glad that her mind was still a bit alert somehow, she tried to move, just as her door was pulled out, her seatbelt cut off, and her body yanked out so brutally she screamed again. Masked men put her in the back of another car, her vision blurring because of the smudge on her glasses.

Whoever they were, they drove off quickly and sped away from the hill, back toward the city. Morana lay immobile, conscious until they crossed the city and sped to the other side, heading west out of the borders. By the time they hit the long stretch on a flyover, the drug took her under completely.

***

It was the pain in her left shoulder that brought her out of unconsciousness.

Morana looked around, trying to gather her wits about her, slowly coming out of the fog in her mind.

Her arms hurt. She realized she was hanging from the ceiling, chained around her wrists, her feet barely touching the ground. In that one second of self-analysis, she knew whatever hope she'd had for the left side of her arm was gone. The pain she felt was coming from the right side. The left was completely desensitized, the nerve damage too intense possibly to withstand any more trauma. Unless a miracle happened and she managed to escape, she'd never use her left hand again.

The thought made her want to cry but she shook it off, focusing on trying to get out, though she had no idea how.

She looked around the place, a basement, maybe dungeon of some kind, with gray concrete walls and barren interior. There was nothing except one chair, and another set of chains hanging ominously from the ceiling to her right.

"Ah, you're awake."

A woman's voice came from the darkness before the sound of heels clacking on tiled stairs. Yes, a basement.

The woman slowly stepped into the light, an older woman with grays in her styled darker red, and wrinkles around her face, dressed in polished red suitpants.

Morana stayed silent, observing her. She didn't have her glasses on her face anymore but thankfully, her vision was perfect for far objects and the woman stayed in the line.

"Don't you want to know why you're here?" the woman asked, a smile on her face that looked almost maternal except she was oozing manipulative.

"I don't think it's for a kitty party," Morana quipped, keeping her cool as she watched the older lady's smile fall off her face.

"I told you she was vile," another female voice spoke and Morana shuddered as Chiara came to stand next to the older woman, the resembelance between them uncanny. They were mother and daughter. What the fuck? Was it because Chiara was actually a crazy bitch and after her life for being with Tristan? Could she really be that insane?

The older woman looked at her phone, as if waiting for something, while Chiara sneered at her. A text came through.

"Now the kitty party starts," the woman gave a smile, and Morana watched in horror as Luna walked into the room, held at gunpoint by a fat man in a mask, similar to the one who had kidnapped her.

Luna looked at her with tears in her eyes.

Morana watched in horror as the fat man tied her to the chains hanging next to her, her cry of pain loud as her feet didn't even touch the ground properly. A surge of fury filled her veins. This was Tristan's sister.

"Who are you?" Morana turned to the woman, finally breaking her silence on questions.

"I'm glad you asked." The old lady walked around in those power heels. "I'm the one who's been assigned to eliminate you."

"By who?"

"The Syndicate of course," she tutted. "You've been a disruptor of our plans since the moment you were taken. First your father bargaining with Maroni, then Maroni giving you to Vitalio, and then you ending up with Caine, digging your nose in places it doesn't belong."

"Is this about Project Ouroboros?" Morana ventured.

The older woman turned suddenly, her eyes widening as she walked closer to her. "What do you know about it?"

Morana stayed silent and the woman backhanded her. A burst of pain flared across her cheek, making her eyes water.

"Stop it!" Luna screamed from her side, her voice shaking with the same anger Morana was feeling.

A phone rang. The woman picked up the call and a man's voice came through the speakers. "Is everything ready?"

Luna whimpered at the voice and Morana turned to see her paling. Whoever this was, the girl clearly knew the voice.

"Who is he?" Morana asked Luna, and the man chuckled, the sound so evil it sent a shiver down her spine.

"Yes, pretty girl," he goaded. "Tell her who I am. Tell her how you blossomed for me."

Vile nausea climbed up her throat, her mind reeling as she realized the kind of trauma this must be inflicting on the poor girl.

"Hey asshole," Morana goaded him back. "If you're such a hotshot, why don't you unchain me and stand here, huh? Or are you too much of a coward?"

The silence was so thick it could be cut with a knife. Morana grit her teeth, her right shoulder pinching, waiting for retaliation. Whatever, she wasn't going to let this dick take her friend to ugly places.

"Begin," the man finally spoke the command.

"Yes, sir," the woman informed the man who was her master. Morana saw nothing but an icon in place of his face but the phone camera pointed at the two hanging girls showed them to him clearly, she assumed. The older women went back in the dark.

And then, to her absolute horror, Chiara pressed a button and a man walked in with Tristan.

Tristan clocked them both immediately, his nostrils flaring as he saw the two women he loved hanging there, his hands tied behind his back. She knew he could get out of a simple hold, but what scared her was the knife in his side, dug deep and held in place in a way that the more he pulled his muscles to try and disarm himself, the deeper it would dig.

"What are you doing?" she whispered to him, her eyes tearing up as they sat him down in the chair.

"Oh, I called him here," Chiara supplied gleefully, running a finger over his shoulder. "Sent him a little photo of you here. Told him to come alone or you die."

Morana was going to break the bitch.

Tristan stared at her, his blue eyes flared with pain but his gaze steady, reassuring her. He had been through worse before and he needed her to stay strong as they got through this. She gave him a little nod. His eyes moved to his sister, such deep agony flaring in them. Morana could feel the despair he felt at his inability to protect her again, feel the failure he felt seeing her strung up like that.

"Now that we're all here." The man's face came on the screen, the phone becoming a projector and his image becoming large.

He wasn't anyone Morana had seen before, but he looked sophisticated. His background was a simple dark wall and his eyes were dark.

Luna began to panic at her side, her eyes losing focus, her whole body shaking so hard it was rattling the chains.

"Look at me," Tristan's calm, composed voice, the same tone he'd used with her whenever she'd panicked, made his sister turn to him. He breathed in deeply, wincing as the knife went a little deeper into him but doing the motion he wanted her to imitate. Thankfully, Luna kept her eyes on him, taking a deep breath in, calming herself down.

The older woman, who had disappeared, showed up again.

Tristan whipped his neck so fast she was surprised. Shock and pain crossed his face, so visible he had forgotten to mask it.

"Mom?" the one word, so innocent, broke her.

The older woman was his mother. Luna's mother. What the actual fuck?

"Not your mom, sweetheart," she stated. "I was given to David to keep when you were a baby. Your mother died in childbirth."

Tristan sat, stunned in silence. He didn't utter a word, just took in what she said, and Morana could feel his heartbreak across the basement.

"What do you mean to keep ?" Morana asked her, distracting her from Tristan.

"The Syndicate gave me to him."

Holy shit. His father had been in The Syndicate too? Morana remembered he had been Lorenzo's bodyguard, It made sense that he would be, given Lorenzo's proclivities.

"And me?" Luna asked, her voice quiet.

The woman turned to her. "You're mine."

They weren't related by blood. The sister Tristan had loved and looked for all his life had never biologically been his. Morana felt her eyes tear up as she looked at the anguish on his face, the realization hurting him more than the knife in his side. He looked down at the floor for a few minutes, breathing in steadily, until his face cleared and the mask locked back in place tight.

"You took her, didn't you?" he asked the woman, a woman he had thought had been his mother, his voice void of all emotion. "There was no other way."

The older woman nodded. "I gave you a sleeping pill. Took her out and gave her to Lorenzo."

"Why?"

"Because he loved her," she grit out. "Your father. Raped her into my body and loved her like she'd been a gift."

"So you let sent her to hell?" Morana asked, aghast. Did their world have no good mothers? No good fathers? What was this poisonous cycle their parents had begun? They would break it.

The woman shrugged. "David lost his mind, went after Vitalio. We hadn't thought you'd kill him though." She turned to Tristan. "Bravo."

Morana looked at Luna, to see how she was receiving the news her brother had killed their father. There was no flinch on her expressive face. She already knew. The Shadow Man. Of course.

And suddenly, Morana focused on Luna, her brain whirring.

"Do you have your phone?" she asked softly so as not to be heard.

Luna gave her a look, a look she took as affirmative. Good. There was no way a man like him would let her go without tracking her, and if she still had it on him, that meant they just had to buy time. With that goal in mind, hoping she wasn't wrong about him, she engaged the woman in conversation again. "So, how did you end up doing his bidding?" She nodded at the phone.

The woman looked at her master almost adoringly. It was sickening. "He found me. Gave me purpose. Serving The Syndicate has been my honor."

Ew. "And the lives you destroyed?"

"It was just business."

A business of lives. Fuck them.

"So why the family reunion?" Tristan asked, his voice almost robotic.

The woman grinned. "Things have to come full circle, you know? That's our motto. It ends where it begins." It would.

Morana felt her gut tighten as she heard the words. A bad, bad feeling settled in. This wasn't good, whatever shit these psychos had planned.

The woman walked around Tristan's chair, behind him, leaning forward so her mouth was close to his ear. "All of this started with a choice," she began. "It will end in one too. You had to choose between your family and this girl. Twenty years, and same choice."

Morana felt her body go numb at the words. Tristan's face betrayed nothing but his eyes did—eyes she knew to read because of all the time she had spent learning their language.

He was scared.

Her big, beautiful man was scared back into a small, simple boy.

Tears fell over her eyelids as they looked at each other. He looked at his sister, a sister he had known just for a few days, but loved so deeply, then back at her, a woman he had hated but loved so intensely.

"Whoever you choose will go home with you, safe," the woman continued and god, Morana had never hated anymore more than she hated her. Fuck her for traumatizing him, for retraumatizing her flesh and blood daughter, for possibly disabling her for life.

"I won't choose," he stated. "Not this time."

The woman laughed, like she'd expected that answer from him.

"In that case, dear boy." Her hand hovered over the hilt of the knife. "You will die and they will both be put into the trade. So, what's it going to be?"

Morana looked to the man on screen in desperation. "Don't do this," she bargained. "I will help you if you let us go." She wouldn't. She would hunt them down and murder themmn bloody. But she needed to get free, needed for Tristan to get free so he could break bones.

"I'm just giving a loyalist what they want," the man told her. How could people be so apathetic? So evil?

"Why?"

"Because some people just like to watch the world burn," it was a chilling statement because it was true. Some people didn't have motives, didn't have reasons, just chaos inside them they unleased on the innocent.

Silence descended for a few moments. Her heart drummed her in her ears.

Tristan looked at her, kept looking at her, until a tinny voice said from her right. "Make the same choice, brother."

Both his and Morana's eyes went to Luna, who was looking at him with the same fire in her eyes she'd had the night before.

"Lun—" Tristan started but she shook her head.

"No. Not Luna," she told him, and Morana blinked at her disuse of the name. "I'm both the lost innocent girl and the broken healed woman. I am a phoenix who rose from her own ashes, and I will claim my own name, not a name given to me by a bitch of a mother or a bastard of a man."

Her biological mother clapped. "Well done. Great speech."

Luna looked at the woman with disgust. "You're shameful. So what if you were raped? You brought an innocent child into the world and gave it to monsters. A mother loves. A mother protects. A mother sacrifices. I have seen good mothers, and for a moment in time, I have been a good mother."

Tristan gaped at his sister, the revelation of her words hitting him hard. Luna looked at him. "I gave birth to Xander."

Tristan started to struggle. Morana could see all the emotions overwhelming him as the epiphany, the connection that had shocked her a few hours ago, sank into him.

The older woman stared hard at her daughter before turning to Tristan. "Make your choice."

"Choose her," Luna urged him. "Get out of here. For Xander. He needs you both."

"We won't leave you alone," Morana struggled inside, not knowing how they would get out of this.

She turned to her. "I won't be alone. He'll come for me."

"Who?" Chiara asked, speaking for the first time in a while.

And then, a voice came from the screen, a voice she'd heard just hours ago, deadly and dangerous, and hope surged in her heart.

"Me."