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

It felt surreal.

She felt surreal.

He had been touching her constantly since he’d found her, and yet it felt like she would disappear into the ether, slip through his fingers like smoke, never to be found again.

Tristan sat on the edge of the lake, in a spot he had sat in countless times alone during his teens. If someone had told him that one day, he would be sitting in the exact spot with his sister by his side, he would’ve done anything for them.

The night descended around them, the skies still lighter with the last rays of the sun. A gentle wind blew through the hills, causing the water on the lake to ripple on the surface. Aside from the sounds from the lawns of the mansion in the distance—where the preparations for Tempest’s birthday party were going steady—it was quiet. Tristan wouldn’t have noticed so many things in detail at a time like this when he felt so emotionally raw, but it was like his senses were extra sharp, extra alive.

‘It’s so beautiful here,’ her gentle voice said from his side. She had a voice he imagined windchimes would sound like in the breeze, soft, sweet, melodic.

She was sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, her eyes looking over the lake and fleeting coming to him before gazing out again, like she was nervous.

Tristan looked at the view through her eyes and admitted that, objectively, it was beautiful if it didn’t have so much of his trauma associated with it. He opened his mouth, realizing how difficult it was for him to communicate even when he had so much he wanted to tell her, so many things he wanted to ask, so many stories he wanted to share. But a lifetime spent training his brain to stop the access to his vocal chords interfered, not letting him speak.

‘Do you remember me at all?’ he finally gave in, asking the one question that had been on the forefront of his mind since he saw the recognition in her eyes. She had known him when he kneeled before her, and a part of him hoped that, by some miracle, she had even a single memory of him. Otherwise, it would be too cruel of fate that he’d spent twenty years thinking of her and she hadn’t.

She shook her head, and something in his heart cracked. He took a breath, telling himself it was okay. She had been too young, and at least she was here now. They could make new memories together.

‘Your eyes,’ she started, then bit her lip.

‘Yes?’ Tristan encouraged her, needing to know, grasping at any straws.

‘I don’t remember, but your eyes feel so familiar.’

Emotion clogged his throat. He had already broken down once, spilling so many tears, like it had been building and storing within him all this time. Tears were never something Tristan had let escape in front of people. He had cried silently on nights alone many times. But the only time he had cried in someone’s company had been Morana’s and, now, his sister’s.

He stared into her eyes, realizing that they had changed the shade as she’d grown up, becoming more green. There was silence for a bit, not awkward but teeming with so many unsaid words.

He heard her inhale before she started again. ‘I like your friends. I’m glad you had… have… people who love you.’

Tristan turned his neck to look at her. ‘What about you? Do you have friends?’

Her body stiffened slightly, her shoulders tensing. ‘No.’

A wave of sadness washed over him at that, at how much was left unsaid in that one word. For all the pain in his life, he’d had good people even in the periphery, a closed circle that had expanded slowly but surely.

She hadn’t.

He extended his arm and wrapped it wordlessly around her shoulder, pressing his nose into her hair. She trembled slightly against his side, before heaving in a breath as if to control herself. ‘I’m okay.’

‘Yes, you are,’ he said, his words a promise in his heart. ‘You always will be.’

She gave him a small smile, her eyes drifting to his hand. The smile grew bigger. ‘I like your tattoo.’

He looked down at the tattoo on his ring finger, the dark ink swirling to spell Morana, and something warmed his cheeks. He’d never felt this… bashful. How strange.

‘How did you get together?’ she asked, curious, and Tristan blinked. How the fuck was he supposed to explain his and Morana’s twisted story to her? Their enmity, their history, their relationship. How was he to tell her that she’d been the only constant in his life that he could see, how he’d vowed to kill her but it had become something else, something so permanent he didn’t know how he would exist without it?

And then something else occurred to him on the heel of that thought. What was he supposed to tell her about their parents? That they didn’t have a father because he had killed him? That they didn’t have a mother because he had driven her away?

Fuck.

Fuck.

She looked at him hopefully, waiting for a response, and he cleared his throat, his heart racing. Something akin to panic shook his bones at the idea that she might hate him if she found out the truth.

‘We met at a party,’ he told her their story’s bare bones. It was the truth but too simplified. ‘Kept meeting after that. One thing led to another.’

‘That’s nice,’ she rested her head on his shoulder for a second, as a gesture, as she said it. ‘I’m happy for you, to see her with you. She’s nice.’

‘She’s perfect,’ he said before he could stop himself, and his sister smiled at him.

‘You love her.’

He looked out at the lake, not correcting her. Love wasn’t the word for what he felt for Morana. It was too simple, too basic, like the answer he had just given. His emotions when it came to her were complex, they always had been, and too intense, which they always had been too. To someone on the outside, it could look like love, but it was so much more nuanced, so much more intense, so much more. Saying that he loved her was as basic as saying that he was living because his heart beat in his chest. Living was so much more than that, life was so much more than just that, and it was something he had learned just by being with her. Waking with her every morning, sleeping with her every night, being with her every day.

It had taken almost losing her to a fucking bullet for him to understand the difference so completely. Without her, he would be a meatsuit with a beating organ.

‘How did you know me?’ he asked her, the question another in a line of too many that he needed her to answer.

‘I saw your photos and some articles. It had your name.’ Her answer mirrored his, basic, simplistic. There was more to it but he didn’t press her like she didn’t press him, both of them too new at navigating this.

‘And how did you find out? That I am your brother?’

She hesitated. ‘A dying man told me.’

His gaze sharpened on her at her words. ‘Who?’

She looked straight ahead, her jaw tight. ‘A monster,’ she whispered, her voice trembling.

The word felt like a dagger to his heart. Someone had hurt her. Someone had hurt her deeply enough for that edge of pain and vengeance to come forward. His blood simmered with the need to hunt, to find who it had been and may them pay. He rubbed her shoulder, his jaw tight, and focused on what she’d said. A dying man. Good thing the asshole was already dead or Tristan would have made him feel what real pain was.

‘When did you find out?’ He moved on, changing the topic from whoever the monster had been.

‘Two days ago.’

Right when the Shadow Man had sent Morana the message. Could it have been because he found out somehow that Luna had learned the truth, and he’d wanted to control the narrative and the situation so they would owe him rather than her finding them on her own? To have control over them? Could the Shadow Man have been the dying man? He fucking hoped so. He couldn’t stand the thought of the bastard, especially with how he interacted with Morana like it was his right. Tristan wished he knew his face so he could at least have the satisfaction of mentally beating it to a pulp. Morana was right. He was a fucking caveman where she was concerned.

‘Do we have any family left?’ Her question fell between them, silencing his thoughts of murder and bringing back his earlier panic.

He grit his teeth. ‘No.’

Just one word, with so much history she had no idea about, no context for. She gave a nod as if she understood that it was a touchy subject and let it go for now. For now, because it was their first time talking to each other. What would happen when they were comfortable, after weeks or months or years, when she asked him where their parents were? Or worse, if someone else told her and she found out what he’d done through them? He watched her, trying to take a measure of her and gauge if it would break their bond, nascent as it was. Because he hadn’t been the only one emotional in the last few hours, she had been too. She had clung to him and gripped his hand so tight he was surprised his bones weren’t crushed. He wouldn’t have cared if they did. For the joy, the relief, the emotion of holding her hand for the first time when he thought he never would, he would have crushed every bone in his body if that was what she’d needed.

His little Luna, all grown up.

Fuck, he had to wrap his head around that and stop seeing the baby his parents had come home with, put into his arms, a baby who had scrunched her face and cried so loudly it had made his ears hurt. Yet, he’d loved her with all the love his little body could have felt, right from the moment he had felt her weight in his arms, feeling like the biggest brother who would protect her at all costs. And yet, he had spent more than two decades failing.

‘You were born as Luna,’ he told her, memories washing over him. ‘Is that the name you have?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’ For some reason, she didn’t share the new name with him. ‘I want to be Luna for a bit, see if I feel like her, if she’s who I can be.’

Tristan got it. It was a conflict Morana was going through as well, not wanting to know her birth name and not wanting to feel an imposter in hers. ‘This is your trial period then.’

‘Something like that.’

‘And if you decide you’re not Luna? Will you go back to your other name?’

She stayed silent for a moment, contemplative. ‘I don’t know.’

He gave her shoulder another squeeze. ‘There’s no rush.’

It was the most he’d talked in a conversation in a long time. Tristan didn’t like talking and didn’t talk much, but he sensed she was like him in that regard. If they both stayed silent and didn’t make the effort, they would rarely ever get any words out.

He tilted his head to indicate the cottage at their back. ‘I grew up here,’ he shared with her. There were days I didn’t know if I could make it. But I knew you were out there somewhere, and I had to make it for you.’ He looked to see her watching him, her eyes misting over again. ‘I’m so glad I didn’t give up.’

‘Me too.’ Her tear fell, and his eyes burned. She looked away. ‘I almost gave up too.’

‘What kept you going?’ If she hadn’t known about him, about her past, there had to have been something that had driven her to get up every morning and survive.

She swallowed and shrugged her dainty shoulders but stayed silent. Tristan didn’t pry. One day, he would, but not right then.

‘Are you happy?’ he asked.

She looked at him, her eyes sincere. ‘I’m trying to be.’

That was enough, more than enough.

Right then, he just reveled in the fact that he was sitting in the same spot he had all his life, with his baby sister finally by his side.