“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I’ll have to find the rest tomorrow.”
Morana looked up at him, her brain working. “Could it be Maroni?”
He shrugged. “He’s never done it before.”
“You’ve never lived with anyone before,” she pointed out.
“That’s true,” he squeezed her around the waist, pressing a small kiss to her ear lobe. “We’ll deal with that tomorrow.”
There was silence for a few minutes before she asked him, “Why did Dante do this?”
His chest moved as he inhaled deeply before responding, “He’s had to go underground.”
“But why? He’s Dante Maroni.”
“Precisely,” he muttered, his finger drawing some pattern on her shoulder. “He’s an excellent extractor of information but there’s some information he can get better without his name.”
Morana’s heart stopped and she leaned up on an elbow, looking down in his blue eyes, her hair falling over them. “Is this about the Syndicate? Is that the information he’s gone to get?”
She saw his lips twitch slightly as he pushed a lock of wet hair behind her ear, the gentle gesture surprising her.
“Yes,” he confirmed her suspicions. “He’s going to infiltrate the Syndicate.”
Morana felt her jaw drop. “Are you serious? How the hell will he even do that? Will he be safe? How will we know anything?”
“He’ll be fine,” Tristan pulled her down back to his chest. “And we have a signal to get in touch. But nobody can know. It is important that everyone, especially Maroni, believe that he’s dead. Or he could be in danger.”
Morana nodded, understanding the gravity of the situation. “Shouldn’t we tell Amara though?” She’d have wanted to know in her friend’s shoes.
Tristan shook his head. “Dante told me not to. She will have eyes on her, especially now. Nobody can suspect anything.”
As much as it pained her, Morana understood that. She just hoped her friend forgave her when things settled down again.
The dark room, his warm scent, his steady heartbeat slowly soothed her heart. The weight she’d been feeling the entire evening gradually dispersed from her chest as she snuggled deeper into the crook of his neck and shoulder, finding her happy spot. He pressed a kiss to the top of her lobe, squeezing her.
Long minutes passed and Morana was almost on the verge of drifting off when his voice broke through the hush.
“I was given this cottage since Maroni took me under his wing,” he began quietly and Morana got to attention, listening as he shared something so close to his chest with her. “When I was young, I used to lie here some nights after a training session, and I wanted to die.”
Morana felt her breathing stutter, her arms get tight around him but she didn’t dare move, didn’t dare do anything to break the moment.
He continued, his finger drawing loops on her back. “There was always a gun in the drawer, and I almost ended it some days. You know what stopped me every time?”
Morana shook her head.
“Thinking my sister would always wonder why her brother didn’t love her enough to live for her. I couldn’t leave her with that.”
She felt her eyes burn, her heart hurting for the ache she heard in his voice.
“But that day seemed so far away and I was so powerless. Every day felt like too much,” he spoke softly into the dark, his voice barely audible. “So, you know what I wondered about?”
Morana shook her head again, her throat tight, her chest heavy.
“You.”
Her heart stopped.
“Some days, I thought about how I would find you when I grew up and kill you, different ways I would kill you,” he went on, baring his mind to her, chuckling darkly. “Some days, I imagined someone else getting to you and how I would kill them. Oh, how I killed them. And some days, when it got really fucking sad and I wallowed in self-pity, I thought of how you’d smiled at me and I wondered if you’d smile at me like that after seeing the monster I was becoming.”