The Syndicater (Dark Verse #6)

Chapter 36

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 clicking on tiled stairs. Yes, a basement like some kind of b-garde horror movie. Could they have been a little more original?

The woman slowly stepped into the light. She was an older woman, maybe in her late fifties, with grays in her darker red hair styled in a chic bob and wrinkles around her face, dressed in polished red suit pants. Not at all a woman Morana would have put in a basement with chains if she'd seen her out on the streets. The woman looked more social clubs and luncheons than underworld crime. But looks could be deceptive.

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 of sight. There was something familiar about her, like she'd seen her before, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

"Don't you want to know why you're here?" the woman asked, her smile looking almost maternal, but 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 resemblance between them uncanny. They were mother and daughter. That was the resemblance? What the fuck? Did Chiara rope her mother into kidnapping her? Was it because Chiara was actually a crazy bitch and after Morana's life for being with Tristan? Could she really be that insane?

"I should've known it would be Tristan's lizard ex," Morana drawled out with more humor than she was feeling, like she wasn't strung up and feeling an ache the size of a continent in her shoulder.

"Shut up, bitch," Chiara hissed. "That boy is the least of the reasons you're here."

"Then what?"

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

"Now the kitty party starts." The woman gave a smile, and the door to the basement opened.

Morana watched in horror as Luna walked down the stairs and into the room, held at gunpoint by a fat man in a mask, similar to the one who had kidnapped her. What the hell was she doing there?

Luna looked up at where she was hanging out—literally—and her eyes filled up.

Horrified, Morana watched as the fat man brought the girl right next to her, under the chains on the other side. The man raised her arms and tied her to the chains hanging, her cry of pain loud as her feet didn't even touch the ground properly because of her shorter height. A surge of fury filled her veins. This was Tristan's sister. How dare he?

"Who are you?" Morana turned to the woman, finally breaking her silence on questions, sobering the fuck out because there was no way she was playing with Tristan's sister in danger. She'd never forgive herself if something happened to the girl. She had to protect her—for Tristan, for herself, and now that she'd met the Shadow Man, for all of them because the man would kill them if something happened to her. She'd felt his crazy.

"I'm glad you asked." The old lady walked around in those power heels impressively smoothly, almost like an older model doing a catwalk. She had a very odd vibe. "I'm the one who's been assigned to eliminate you."

"By who?"

"The Syndicate, of course," she tutted. "You've disrupted our plans since the moment you were taken. First, your father bargained with Maroni, then Maroni gave you to Vitalio, and then you ended up with Caine, digging your nose in places it doesn't belong. So many places and plans gone bad all because of you."

Morana would have felt proud any other time. "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?"

She said not a word, just gave the woman the most smug look she could manage.

"What do you know, stupid girl?" the woman demanded.

Morana was offended by the word' stupid,' but she let it go because traveling alone had been stupid. She 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, projecting that same protectiveness that was coursing through her body. Morana turned her neck and locked eyes with the girl, both of them sharing a glance of understanding and companionship in that fucked up moment.

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

A whimper left Luna at the voice, and Morana turned to see her paling. Whoever this was, the girl clearly knew the voice and didn't have good association with it.

"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 Morana's throat as she realized this was one of the monsters from his beautiful girl's horrid past. Her mind reeled as she realized the kind of trauma this must be inflicting on the poor girl. She couldn't even imagine it, but she could stand by her side and not let her suffer alone.

"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 gritted 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 she assumed the phone camera pointed at the two hanging girls and showed them to him clearly. The older women went back in the dark.

And then, to her absolute shock, Chiara pressed a button, and a man walked in with Tristan. Her Tristan and not some random Tristan off the street. What the fuck?

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 in a familiar way that made Morana want to cut the bitch. That was her shoulder on her man's body, and the bitch better hope she was nowhere near her when Morana got free because that finger was going. "Sent a little photo of you here. Told them 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 finally, the phone becoming a projector and his image becoming large. Salt-and-pepper hair and a well-groomed beard, dark eyes, olive skin, and a thick neck that looked more muscular than fat. He wasn't anyone Morana had seen before, but he looked sophisticated. Not a man she would have put in the basement either, more in corporate dinners. His background was a simple dark wall that could be practically anywhere.

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, fighting whatever demons were calling in her head.

The older woman, who had disappeared, showed up again. Tristan whipped his neck so fast that Morana was surprised.

Shock and pain crossed his face, so visible he had forgotten to mask it.

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

This was his mother? The older woman was his mother. Luna's mother. Chiara's mother? Had Chiara seduced her own blood brother? What the actual fuck?

"Not your mom, sweetheart," she stated, running a hand through his short hair almost with maternal affection, a gesture that made Tristan shudder.

"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. She could also feel her own relief at the fact that he hadn't slept with his blood sister unknowingly. That would've messed up with his head really, really badly. She focused on the words the woman had said, knowing her lover was in no mental position to lead an interrogation at the moment as he tried to come to terms and process. Fuck, last night and then this, it had to be overwhelming him so much with emotional overload. And to a man who didn't know how to process emotions properly, she could understand how rough this must be for him.

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

"The Syndicate gave me to David."

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 from the side, her voice quiet as she learned the news too. Morana couldn't imagine what a fuck up must be in her head at the moment with everything. She hoped the girl she'd glimpsed at last night, the one with quiet strength, could get through all this.

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

It hit Morana.

The siblings 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. Her eyes began to burn, watching him come to terms with the fact that the sister he had spent his whole life making his anchor wasn't even his own by blood. 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 pushed out through clenched teeth. "Your father. Raped her into my body when I didn't even want it and loved her like she'd been a gift."

"So you sent her to hell?" Morana asked, aghast. Did their world have no good mothers? No good fathers? No good parents at all? What was this poisonous cycle their parents had begun? This couldn't go on. This vicious cycle had to stop and they had to break it, for their kids and their kids and all the kids after that so they didn't suffer the trauma her generation had.

The woman shrugged. "David lost his mind and went after Vitalio. We hadn't thought you'd kill him, though." She turned to Tristan, clapping. "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. Either she already knew or she didn't care. Morana didn't know which. Maybe the Shadow Man had already told her. And suddenly, it hit her. 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 her, 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 screen where the sophisticated monster watched the scene unfold silently.

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. Morana tried to see if there was anything on his face, but it was his stone-cold mask, the mask of the predator they called him.

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

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. They needed to get out of there, but how?

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 the 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 him, and for everything she did to her own flesh and blood daughter. Her eyes went to Chiara, watching the scene with a little smile. Chiara saw her looking and smiled wider.

"I won't choose," he stated, bringing her eyes back to him. "Not this time."

The woman laughed like she'd expected that answer from him. "I'd thought you might say that. 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 at 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 them bloody. But she needed to get free, and Tristan needed to get free so he could break bones. "Please."

The man considered her. "I would have taken your offer, girl, but I gave my word to my loyalist, and I'm a man of my word," the man told her without a shred of remorse. How could people be so apathetic? So evil? How could humans have devolved into this?

"Why?" The question slipped from her in the atrocity.

The man smiled, and it was frightening. "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 or reasons; they had chaos inside them that they unleashed on the innocent. Some people, like this man evidently, just wanted to watch the world dance to their strings.

Silence descended for a few moments. Her heart drummed 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'm not the girl you lost or the one monsters broke. I'm done being the consequence of my circumstances. 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 slowly clapped. "Well done. Great speech."

Luna looked at the woman with disgust. "You're shameful. A disgusting disgrace in the name of motherhood. 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. You're not a mother, you're a monster. 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 in the same headspace she had been in last night, dropping truth after truth with a searing honesty.

"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. It still rattled her and sent a chill down her spine when she thought about how the Shadow Man had found them and led them straight to Xander, a boy she loved and had become a mother to, who was Luna's actual son that she had protected somehow.

After the tirade, 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, straightening.

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."