Morana watched, mesmerized and shocked, as Tristan Caine - no, The Predator - took a seat in one of the chairs opposite her father’s, his entire form vibrating with a kind of rage she had never, ever witnessed. Heart pounding, she didn’t dare move a muscle as she watched the tension in the room climb higher and higher.
“I remember you, boy,” her father stated, leaning back in his chair, his eyes on Tristan. “You shot your father point-blank between the head. A boy your age. That’s a hard thing to forget. I didn’t place you when we met recently. Now I can.”
The Predator simply stared him down. “Where is she?”
Her father smiled the Maroni kind of smile. “And I remember the way you walked to her, wiped the blood off her face.”
Morana felt her pulse race, no memory of the incident in her mind but just the thought, the idea of that boy wiping the blood off a baby’s face, of him doing that to her, made her heart clench.
"Where is she?"
“And the way you stared at her in the restaurant,” her father continued, pretending to be unperturbed by the gaze of a lethal, lethal man on himself. But Morana could tell he was worried. He had a tick at the side of his cheek. “Surprising, no? The women who can attract you? I wanted to get her married to the son of one of my partners. I even had everything planned. But that little whore spread herself good for you, didn’t she?”
Before she could blink, Tristan Caine was out of his chair and around the table, his one hand twisting her father’s arm behind his back and the other hand holding his face down to the table by the neck.
“Her name,” Tristan leaned down to whisper, “is Morana.”
Chills.
Morana paused, trying to catch her breath and her stomach dropped. She observed the man she had let inside herself in more ways than one, watched his form frozen on the screen, bent over her father, his lips poised open at the last syllable of her name.
Swallowing hard, she pressed 'play' again. Guns trained on him. Her father whimpered. A thrill shot down her spine as she heard him speak her name for the first time, felt the syllables wrapping around his tongue, heard her name infused with whiskey and sin. Letting out a shaky breath, she watched enraptured.
“Call her a whore one more time,” Tristan continued, “and what I did to my father will look like a child’s play compared to what I’ll do to you.”
He twisted her father’s arm harder, making Gabriel Vitalio yelp out in pain. He didn’t even spare a glance at the multiple guns on him. “Now, I’ll ask you one more time. Where is she?”
Her father’s words got jumbled because of his
cheek pressed flat against the wood. Tristan eased his head a bit.
“She’s dead.”
Still.
The stillness that took over the room made goosebumps erupt over her flesh, and she wasn’t even in the room. She waited with bated breath, her heart in her throat, her eyes glued to the black and white screen.
“You’re lying,” Tristan spoke, his voice clear.
“I’m not,” her father replied. “I gave the order myself.”
Tristan slammed her father’s head into the table, harshly pulling on his thumb, the crack loud in the room. Her father yelled, one of the men fired. Tristan ducked, took out his own gun, and stared the men down while keeping her father immobilized.
“I don’t have any problems with you,” he told the men. “Leave now, leave alive. Or die.”
She watched as the men hesitated, two of them leaving, evidently aware of his reputation. The third one, trying to be brave, held his gun up. Tristan shrugged, shot him in the shoulder, and pointed to the door with his gun. The man escaped, leaving him behind with her father alone.
Tristan eased up on him and tucked his gun back in his waistband.
Her father looked at him with venom in his eyes. Tristan sat down on the edge of the desk and leaned forward.
“Where is she?”
“Dead.”
Tristan smiled, a cold, hard smile without the dimples she now knew he had. “You have nine more fingers for me to break. Then two wrists. Two elbows. Two shoulders. Six ribs I can break without damaging you internally and don’t even get me started below the waist. And it doesn't heal well in your age, old man.”
He tilted his head to the side, holding her father’s hand in his almost casually. “I have the time and patience to make you feel pain the likes of which you’ve never felt before. Pain that will make you wish you were dead. So, I’ll ask again. Where is she?” His fingers poised over the other thumb.