Walking to her room on the eighteenth floor, Morana wondered about how it had only been weeks since her life had been thrown into chaos, since everything she had known had crumbled. She was in a strange city with no anchor except the one man who had once hated her, the one man who was slowly beginning to trust her now. That was big for him. She knew, because to him, the fact that she was staying with him mattered. He’d been abandoned and left behind all his life by those he’d loved. It made sense why he would be wary of opening up but damn if she wasn’t determined to sneak her way there.
Lost in her thoughts, Morana reached her room and called up room service. Setting up her laptop and router, she ate her noodles while surfing the darknet. Searching for information on the Syndicate was like looking for a specific needle in a needle-stack. Now that she had the codes, she was more relaxed and less burdened about the information. She still had questions but the urgency had left her and honestly, it made her much more productive.
She browsed through conspiracy theories and articles about both the Alliance and the Syndicate, spent hours poring over them and finding quite a bit to make her own theories. She knew enough to theorize that the Syndicate was involved in flesh trade and the end of the Alliance had been connected to it. Was it because the parties hadn’t wanted to partake in the trade? Given everything she knew, she surmised there was a high chance that the girls who had gone missing had somehow been masterminded by the Syndicate. It would make sense.
Over the next two days, Morana spent her time checking her phone for a message from Tristan (which didn’t come and that really worried her), trying to call Amara and not getting through (which worried her even more), and trying to find more clues. She mostly stayed in her room, going down to the hotel restaurant in the evening to have dinner and people watch, making sure nobody could recognize her even if she saw someone familiar.
On the third night sitting at the table and eating her chocolate fondue, a waiter brought her a note.
Morana opened it.
Come to the empty warehouse on the Riviera on Tuesday at midnight. It’s time we meet. Come alone. You won’t be harmed.
– The Reaper
Morana whirled around in her seat, trying to locate who sent it. The lavish restaurant was half-empty. Locating the waiter who had delivered the note, she questioned him about it.
“A man left it at the counter for you, ma’am,” the young man informed her.
“What did he look like?” she asked him, her heart racing.
“Well-dressed, ma’am,” the waiter tried to remember. “He had a dark beard and wore glasses. Oh, and he had a cane.”
A cane. Was it the same man from the funeral? What were the odds?
Morana gave the waiter a small smile, thanking him, and quickly paid the bill, hurrying to her room. Once inside, she sat down on her laptop and hacked into the hotel security system, zooming into the footage at the restaurant in the last hour and watching closely near the counter, adrenaline fueling her.
She saw, on the black and white grainy feed, as a lean man limped over to the counter, leaning heavily on his cane. He handed over the note to the woman behind the counter and watched Morana for a few minutes, before he turned to leave, his face wincing with every step.
Morana zoomed in on his face, trying to remember if she’d ever seen him before, but unable to place him. Something on his hand caught her eye and she zoomed in there, zooming in. It was a ring. A skull ring? She watched the footage multiple times, before finally giving up and getting ready for bed. Wearing her new pajamas, the checkered shorts and ‘nerdy is the new sexy’ t-shirt that was extra soft, she slid under the covers and thought about this man and why, if he had found her with her disguise and her anonymous name, hadn’t he come and talked to her tonight. She’d been just a few feet away, eating and she’d been alone. He had considered it but hadn’t. Why? That was what confused her.
Things were getting very interesting.
It was a body sitting down beside her hip that woke Morana. She turned in bed, a scream leaving her throat at the large form looming over her.
“It’s me,” the voice of whiskey-and-sin poured over her, immediately calming her racing heart. Without another thought, Morana launched up at him and wrapped her arms around his neck, her relief at finding him okay overpowering anything else.
“I missed you something fierce,” she murmured against his neck, her nose nuzzling into that happy spot, inhaling the musky scent of his skin. Her first indication that something wasn’t right came when his arms didn’t come around her. Over the last couple of weeks, he’d gotten good with her surprise hugs, always a little taken aback but tentatively returning them.
Turning on the lamp beside her, she pulled back slightly, looking up into his face.
That was the second indication.
His face was haunted.
She’d never seen him like that.
Morana’s heart slammed in her chest, her eyes searching his. “Tristan?”
“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t ask me anything right now.”
As much as she wanted to, Morana listened. She had to get him out of whatever dark place he was in. Nodding, she slowly unbuttoned his shirt, only to have his hands come up to stop hers. She looked at him in question.
“You shouldn’t touch me right now,” he told her, his blue eyes so dark and so pained she felt her throat tighten.
“Trust me,” she whispered back to him in the same voice, asking him for the entirety of everything she had given him. He waited for a beat, his
eyes on the pulse in her neck. Letting her hands go, he gave her assent to continue.