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

To say things had been emotional would be putting it mildly.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried or seen Tristan cry so much, not even the fateful night he had broken down in his arms. And it hadn’t just been them. Zephyr and Amara had been sobbing along with them, and though Dante and Alpha hadn’t cried, they had been suspiciously misty-eyed. Anyone with a beating heart would have been after heating Luna’s talk. She had always been quiet, spending more time listening than talking in people’s company, but last night, she had gone off, and Morana felt proud of her, not just for surviving but for standing strong.

As much as she loved and understood Tristan, he had been trying to intimidate her into talking, and she had stood her ground and tackled him head-on. Their stubbornness seemed to be a sibling trait, one she was delighted about. Tristan was scary enough for other people; the women in his life didn’t need to fall into that category at all.

It had been one hell of an intense night, and everyone seemed to be sleeping it off.

But Morana couldn’t. Her brain was working overtime with the information overload she’d had, and she felt like she was so close to an answer, like it was almost in her grasp, and it kept slipping.

Tristan was in an exhausted slumber by her side, snoring in the way he did when he was extra tired. Yes, he had different snores, and yes, Morana already knew them.

Pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, she slipped out of the bed and powered on her tablet, checking in on her codes.

They were done, a digital weapon ready to find data from every corner of the dark web and deface anyone.

She put a USB stick in a lipstick bullet, transferred the codes, and freshened up while they did. Getting dressed casually, shrugging on a jacket to ward off the chill in the early morning air, she checked everything. All done. She left a note for Tristan, so he didn’t worry if she got a bit late, munched on a banana as she pulled her tote bag over her right shoulder, carrying all her essentials, and walked outside the cottage, fog low to the ground in the little dawn light as she made her way to the parked vehicles. They were heading back home in the evening, but there was something she needed to check before, something she had to see.

A guard nodded to her as she chose an automatic so she didn’t have to worry too much about manual gear and got in. Plopping down, she rotated her shoulders, knowing she really needed to see a specialist for her left side and couldn’t ignore it any longer. Powering on her tablet, she logged into her Dark Web account and went in.

With everything that had happened, especially knowing how the Shadow Man was now connected to Luna, information was blasting in her brain, tidbits that had been mentioned previously all combining together.

She opened the image the Shadow Man had sent her of Luna from a few weeks ago, looking carefully at the wall and a sliver of the view on the side.

One time, Zephyr had asked around to share the best place they had ever visited, and Luna had said a name, with a soft whisper and a whimsical smile.

On a hunch, Morana typed in:

Bayford.

‘Did you mean Bayfjord instead?’

She clicked on it.

Images splattered across her screen, and she almost gasped at how fucking gorgeous it was. Tall gray mountains and vast gray seas with dark beaches. It wasn’t a city, more like a small town, and the only way Luna could have talked about it so wistfully was if she’d lived there with good memories.

That meant the home she’d mentioned was in Bayfjord, the home the Shadow Man had given her. Morana looked up real estate listings in the region, her eyebrows going up at the prices. It was expensive, which meant the Shadow Man had money. So what did she know about him—1. He loved Luna. 2. He was rich. 3. He was in his thirties, most likely. 4. He had property in Bayfjord.

She narrowed down her search and filtered through the directory of properties registered in the last ten years, then remembering Luna’s current estimated age of twenty-four, narrowed it down to six for as long as she’d been a legal adult.

‘He gave me his name, everything he had.’

Words from last night, so passionately said, came back to Morana. She scrolled through the listings, and then, following a hunch, added another filter.

‘Bayfjord + last six years + current properties registered in woman’s name’.

Only three results came out.

One was a seventy-year-old grandmother of five children.

Another was a thirty-seven-year-old single model.

And the last one was a twenty-four-year-old married woman.

Lyla Blackthorne.

The name rang a bell in Morana’s head but she couldn’t remember where she’d heard it. At the party maybe? She tried to remember but she’d been so horny for Tristan that night, everything else was a giant blob of blur.

Shaking her head at herself, she opened another browser and pasted the name in, looking up public records. Only a few hits came back and one of them made her breath catch.

Lyla Blackthorne, COO, Blackthorne Group.

Blackthorne Group.

Mr. Blackthorne.

The face suddenly came to her, a tall, intense man with heterochromatic eyes dressed in a black suit.

Dante introducing him as an associate. Amara mentioning she had met him before. Tristan greeting him curtly.

And his mismatched eyes, trained right on Luna, or Lyla, as he kissed her hand, took a seat by her side.

Her husband.

The Shadow Man.

And they’d all met him before. He’d been right in plain sight, right in front of them, literally consuming Luna, or Lyla, right in front of them.

Damn.

Morana was impressed.

She had already been impressed by him before, but she was even more impressed now, especially after learning everything he’d done for her. Even without Luna telling them all, it was right in her face. The luxury one-of-a-kind property in her name, the position at the company giving her power to control all his assets, the gold necklace that was an emotional talisman, and so much more they didn’t even know about.

Out of more curiosity, she looked up the company to see what they did and couldn’t find much except vague summaries and financial records. Her eyebrows hit her hairline.

Damn, the man was loaded. And the fact that he’d given all of it to Luna… damn.

Deciding it was time to get all the cards on the table, she looked up property in Tenebrae under his name. Nothing came up. She checked with the company name. Nada. She was pretty sure he had some, but maybe through shell companies, which would take longer to hack and find.

Or maybe he didn’t and just preferred to stay in a hotel during business trips? She hacked into the top five hotels in the city and looked for a reservation under his name. Struck gold in the third hit, coincidentally the same hotel she and Tristan had stayed at once.

She dialed the hotel line, and the receptionist picked up.

‘Hi,’ Morana said sweetly. Could you please connect me to penthouse suite 1403? My friend Mr. Blackthorne is staying there, but I can’t reach his number.’

‘One moment, please, ma’am.’ The front desk lady must have checked the records. ‘Whom should I say is calling?’

Morana thought for a quick second, a name he would recognize. ‘Miss Reaper.’

‘Of course.’

The line went on hold, generic music playing in her ear as he put her thumb in her mouth out of anxiety, almost biting her nail before stopping herself. She just hoped he answered.

And then, the music stopped, and a deep voice came on.

‘I was wondering how long it would take you to figure out who I was after last night, Miss Vitalio.’

Holy shit, he knew. He knew what had happened. Of course, he did. How?

‘Whose phone did you hack?’ she asked, so she would unhack and protect it for her friends.

He chuckled, and Morana was happy for Luna. Because while she loved her whiskey and sin voice, she could admit with pure feminine appreciation that this man had a hot voice too.

‘I’ll let you figure that out.’

Morana took a deep breath in. ‘Can we meet?’ It was the same question she’d texted him but never got a reply to.

‘I think it’s time,’ he agreed. ‘Meet me at the same place we met here.’

The public pier. ‘When?’

‘An hour.’

‘Should I come alone?’

‘If you want us to work together, yes.’

Morana hesitated.

‘Don’t worry, Miss Vitalio. You’ll be safe. You’re my almost sister-in-law after all.’

With that, the dial tone came. Morana stared at her phone, wondering what she should do. She could go alone, but that would be stupid, especially after being shot. But she couldn’t take security because he’d told her to come alone. She took a deep breath because he’d told her she would be safe, and she was going to take his word for it. For a smart person, she was highly stupid sometimes.

She sent out a text in the girl’s group chat, knowing they were going to rally and get shit done in case they didn’t hear from her within the next hour.

And with that, she pulled out of the compound.

***

It was deja-vu standing on the pier with a coffee in her hand. Though last time, it had been the middle of the afternoon and crowded, this time, it was early morning and pretty abandoned, with shops closed except for one tiny cafe and only local workers cleaning up the area. Morana sat on a bench facing the river, taking a breather and enjoying the balanced weather.

Awareness of being watched prickled the hair on her neck. She kept her right hand on the gun in her pocket, not knowing how much of a shot she would be with one hand and her left pretty useless for balancing, but it would be better than nothing, just in case.

A body sat on the bench next to her, leaving some space in between.

For the first time, he didn’t tell her not to look, so she did, and for the first time, she saw him.

Damn, Luna.

He was hot, in a very dark, very intense type of way, his stare direct and focused, his eyes almost hypnotic. He didn’t do anything to her, though, but she could appreciate his form like she appreciated Dante’s extraordinary looks or Alpha’s massive size—with feminine appreciation and a cheer for her girls for bagging such hotties. If she had to associate one word with them, if Tristan was intense and Dante was handsome and Alpha was huge, this man was dark.

‘Good to finally see you, Mr. Blackthorne.’ She greeted him. ‘Or should I say the Shadow Man?’

His lips turned up in a way that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Have you told anyone else yet?’

She shook her head. ‘I will. We don’t keep secrets.’

He chuckled. ‘Everyone keeps some secrets, but very well.’

‘They already know you,’ she pointed out. ‘Dante and Tristan from before. Tristan will come after you.’ She remembered how pissed he’d been.

Ducks quacked on the waves in the river. The sun got a bit warmer. More people went into the cafe behind them.

The man looked out at the river, his body language relaxed. But she knew a hunter when she saw one, and knowing who he was, it was evident he was the most dangerous kind.

‘He can,’ the Shadow Man permitted. ‘I might even let him get a hit in so he can get it out of his system and make my wife happy.’

He called her his wife.

‘But if he ever tries to intimidate her again—’ something hard entered his voice ‘—brother or not, I will end him.’ He turned to spear her with a look, the closest thing to death she had seen on a face, and it hit her that this man had killed more terrible, powerful people than she could count. He actually meant what he said.

Morana felt her heart begin to pound with a little fear, realizing that this wasn’t a man she had any control over, who could actually threaten her and her family.

‘You wouldn’t do that to Luna,’ she told him, her voice coming out shakier than she’d wanted.

The dark look on his face was wiped clean. ‘Let’s hope it never comes to that.’

Morana swallowed, finding her guts that had gotten her in trouble more times than she could count. ‘You know threats don’t work in a family.’

A smile slashed his face, again, not reaching his eyes. It was such a stark difference to her—Tristan, who didn’t emote with anything but his eyes, and this man, who didn’t emote with his eyes at all.

‘I don’t make threats, Miss Vitalio.’

‘Call me Morana. You’re sort of almost my brother-in-law.’

He didn’t respond to that, changing the topic smoothly. ‘Are your codes complete?’

Morana gave a swift nod. ‘Yes, but why do you need them?’

‘I answer your questions, you give me the codes. Do we have a deal?’

Morana hesitated. The codes could be very dangerous in his hands without knowing his motives. ‘Answer my questions first,’ she negotiated.

He paused for a brief second before unzipping his jacket and taking out a file, handing it to her. Morana took it, seeing the snakes logo she’d seen a few times and a title on top.

‘What’s Project Ouroboros?’ she questioned, flipping the file open.

‘It was a rumor until a few days ago,’ he explained as her eyes scanned the words. ‘I found out about it during an interrogation and eventually discovered this.’

The more Morana read, the sicker she got to her stomach. Electrocutions. Drugs. Mutilations. Perversions.

‘They were experimenting on babies.’ Her words came out in a horrified whisper.

‘In the fifties.’ His tone was direct, nonempathic. ‘Some very legal organizations wanted to conduct some illegal experimentations on young babies. The Syndicate stepped up to meet the demand.’

Morana felt the acid from her stomach retch up to her throat, and she swallowed it back down, closing the file, unable to read another word. The fact that horrors like this existed in their world, that there were people who went through the things she was reading in black and white, sickened her. No one deserved this. No one. Especially not babies!

She turned to look at the man at her side who looked unfazed, and wondered what kind of horrors he had seen to remain so unmoved and neutral as he talked about it.

Finding some courage, she opened the file again and skimmed, only trying to focus on the data. ‘It says the project was shut down after ten years?’

‘Maybe for the record,’ the Shadow Man remarked. ‘I believe it was restarted with the Alliance between your fathers, real and adoptive, and Lorenzo Maroni. The Reaper thought it was about sex trafficking but it wasn’t, or at least not just that. For sex trafficking, they always abducted girls and boys not younger than six and placed them in homes. The toddlers? They were for experimentation. The Syndicate was involved in it, and the Alliance was as well.’

The horror kept on unfolding after the other. ‘No,’ her denial was jittery. Her insides were jittery. If what he said was true, that meant she’d been kidnapped to become the subject of experimentation. If what he said was true, that meant Luna and Zenith and all the other girls were subjects of experiments?

The shock in her face and silence must have been too loud because he shook his head. ‘You weren’t experimented on.’

‘How do you even know this?’

He pointed at the file. ‘It’s all there. I just connected the dots. The girls for the experiments were always numbered. I actually found that out, thanks to Vin. Combinations of five, five, and seven.’

‘What’s the significance of seventeen?’ she asked, the question bothering her since she found out about it.

‘Nothing,’ he told her, waiting for a beat. ‘The significance is of one and seven.’ He closed the file, tracing the symbol on top. ‘One and seven make—’

‘Eight,’ she completed, a chill going down her spine. They had not only numbered the babies but also numbered them to announce their appalling project. The snakes, making an eight-figure, stared up at her.

‘So, Zenith was an experiment subject?’ she recalled, remembering the number.

‘I believe so. Though I cannot say for certain,’ he mused. ‘I haven’t heard of many kids with numbers working under The Syndicate, which makes me believe that only the ones who failed at experiments were sent out into the sex trafficking.’

Morana let that sink in, absolutely nauseated at what she had learned. She stared down at the file in her hand as though the snakes on top were slithering across her skin, repelling her.

And then the biggest question she’d had for two years came to her mind. She looked up at the man who was sitting with his eyes closed, basking casually in the sun to any onlooker.

‘Why was I returned?’

He didn’t move, but he took his time, as if figuring the answer out, putting together a puzzle only he knew all the pieces of, keeping her on the edge. Then, he opened his eyes and tilted his head toward the file in her hand. ‘Because of that.’

She put the file down on the bench between them. ‘Please explain.’ It was a request. She would have begged if need be, her desperation for this one answer stronger than her pride.

‘Lorenzo Maroni was a puppet for The Syndicate,’ he started, pushing his gloved hands into his pockets. ‘Maybe he wanted to get out, maybe he didn’t. We won’t ever know. But he was the main power-hungry party in the Alliance, and hence the one who restarted the experiments by supplying the kids to The Syndicate.’

‘Okay,’ she nodded, following so far. ‘So, what does that have to do with me?’

‘So,’ he drawled out, almost lazily in his deep voice. ‘Lorenzo Maroni took Gabriel’s daughter, Zenith, and the Reaper’s daughter, you, as collateral to keep them quiet. Except your father, the Reaper, made a deal with him. He had this file on the project and in exchange for your safe return, he would hand it over to Lorenzo. And Lorenzo, bastard that he was, brought you back but used you as a tool to keep Vitalio in line.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Because my interrogation told me your father had the file, and I found it in Maroni’s office the other night.’

Morana sat in stunned disbelief, her heart hurting all over again for a father she’d never met but for a brief moment, but who had loved her and protected her for as long as he lived. A sob caught in her throat, her emotions all over the place as she stared at the file, the same file her father had touched and exchanged to bring her back from a fate so horrible it made her shudder.

And something occured to her. ‘Do you know his real name? My birth name?’

The Shadow Man gave her a look. ‘Yes.’

She stared him in the eyes before looking away, not forgetting that he wasn’t a man she wanted to piss off. She opened her mouth to ask, closed it, opened it again, and closed it again.

‘If someday you’re ready to know, just ask,’ he said quietly.

‘And you’ll just share it?’

He shrugged. ‘Keeping it doesn’t mean a thing to me, but it does to you. You’ve been helpful in my quest so yes, for that alone, I will.’

Morana nodded. She wasn’t ready, not for an identity crisis, not now when there was already so much to deal with. Maybe she never would be. She had always been Morana, grew up owning the name, fitting into it like a tailored dress. It was the name her lover, her friends, her almost son called her. She didn’t need anything else, her birth name a part of her past she had to let go of and move forward without.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Morana mulling everything she’d learned over, and him thinking whatever he was. The silence, though heavy, wasn’t uncomfortable.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, a call from Amara, checking in since her hour was up. She picked up. ‘I’m okay.’

‘Where are you?’ Amara asked, her voice low, letting Morana know that Dante was sleeping.

Morana looked at her side, at the man who was considering her. ‘Meeting the Shadow Man.’

‘Morana!’ Amara exclaimed in a hushed voice. ‘Alone? Are you out of your mind?’

‘He won’t hurt me.’ She hoped. The man just smiled, the threat he’d leveled out earlier still in her mind. He would hurt her only if she hurt Luna. His track record said the same.

‘I’ll come get you,’ Amara was already moving.

‘No,’ Morana rushed. She still had some questions. ‘I’ll be back in an hour. If I’m not, let others know.’

Amara hesitated. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. I have my phone with me.’

Morana nodded and hung up, the call making her think of another question. ‘Why did you lead us to Xander? You told him about us, why? And you still call him sometimes. Why?’

His one light eye darkened at the question, the dark one already deep. He looked back out over the river.

‘You said you don’t keep secrets from your family,’ he leveled her words back at her. ‘Are you sure you want to know? Because this secret isn’t yours to tell and it isn’t yours to keep. You will be left conflicted.’

‘And you’re not?’ Morana wondered how his brain worked. He might have seemed cold and aloof to others, but there was more there: a deeply intelligent mind and a heart exclusive to one woman.

‘No.’

Morana considered his profile for a long minute. ‘Who is Xander?’

His lip twitched in a smile. ‘He’s the reason his mother didn’t give up on her life for many years. He’s the leverage I’ve used for years to keep her alive. He’s the one answer she’s been waiting for.’

Morana’s jaw dropped, shock infiltrating her system, and everything suddenly clicked into place.

‘He’s Luna’s son?’ Her voice was a strangled whisper. Memories flitted through her mind—Luna watching Xander from afar, her looks at baby Tempest, her face at Zephyr’s pregnancy announcement. Morana stared at the man beside her, rendered speechless, as other memories came in. Xander making her a sandwich, Xander learning tech from her, Xander pushing up his glasses, Xander letting him hug her. A kaleidoscope of memories she had with him, that Tristan had with him, never knowing he was his biological uncle. But he felt like a father. She felt like a mother to him. They had almost adopted him. They were going to get a dog for him next month, foregoing the cat she’d wanted for their first pet because Xander had responded better to dogs than cats. Did they have to let him go now? Could they? When he’d become such an important part of their immediate family?

‘Are you his…?’ she stopped. If he was, then why would he lead Xander to them?

‘His guardian,’ he corrected her assumption. ‘I’ve raised him since he was a baby with the help of a lovely nanny. The plan was always to lead him back to his maternal family if and when I found them.’

‘And you led Tristan to him.’

‘Yes,’ he affirmed. ‘With his help and a friend of his who used to live in the same neighborhood.’

‘Lex,’ Morana guessed.

‘Yes. After his family passed, both Xander and the nanny made a good case for him. He stayed with us for a year before I sent them your way.’

Everything was making crystal clear sense. ‘How old is Xander?’

‘Six.’

Another shock. They had all believed he had advanced intelligence and was around eight years old. This was more like gifted.

The Shadow Man extended a gloved palm. ‘The codes.’

Morana swallowed, taking the lipstick tube out of her bag and haltingly placing it in his upturned hand. ‘What are you going to do with them?’

‘What do you think?’

‘End The Syndicate?’ she threw out a guess.

‘The Syndicate can never end,’ he stated plainly. ‘It needs to exist to dissuade any chaos in the vacuum.’

He was right, but chaos had and would still exist. Could there be something worse than The Syndicate?

‘Then what will you do?’

The Shadow Man smiled. ‘I’m going to reboot it.’

And with that, he was up and gone.