Page 13 of The Syndicater (Dark Verse 6)

Chapter 5

Zephyr, Los Fortis

Something was wrong withher.

Zephyr didn't think it was just grief anymore. She was sick, sicker than she'd ever been, and somehow, it had gotten worse in the last week. It was times like this that she would have picked up the phone and called her sister. Zenith, level-headed and relaxed as she'd been, would have calmed her down. Zen had always been able to do that.

Zephyr rubbed Bear's soft fur as the canine lay by her side, his head on her stomach, rumbling like a motor in a way that felt soothing. Ever since the funeral, Bear had almost been inseparable from her. He had always loved her, but her sadness had just made him want to heal her. It wasn't just him either. The other two dogs had also begun lingering around her, though Baron still didn't care much for her; at least he sat close to where she was whenever she was in the house. Even the men at AV had somehow taken it upon themselves to help her. She knew of theirbullshit excuse of needing paperwork done to get her out and about, and in a way, it was endearing that they cared so much.

The fact was, Zephyr didn't want to wallow in her grief either. She didn't want to spend her life being sad, especially when she knew the kind of toll it was taking on her husband and their relationship, too. Alpha, the love of her life, the giant, growly beast of a man, had been nothing but so gentle, so caring with her. It had reminded her of how he'd been a decade ago, with a gentleness inside him he rarely let anyone see. But he'd always had it even without his memories, and one of the biggest proofs of that were the three dogs around her, who had been abandoned, discarded in the trash as puppies, and he'd just picked them up and brought them home and raised them himself.

He was showing her that gentleness now, and she loved him all the more for it, but she knew she needed to snap out of this. Zen would have hated her like this. Her sister would have wanted her to move on with joy and not live in grief. But that was the thing about grief. It wasn't really in her control. As someone who'd always had a predisposition to depression, she couldn't decide how to control the grief. Some days, she woke up feeling like it was a better day, that she would be okay, that things were looking up. She would build sandcastles of hope and optimism, and out of nowhere, like an unpredicted wave, the grief would come and crumble it back to nothing but sand, leaving her to rebuild it all over again. Those were the good days. On the bad days, she woke up but wished she didn't. She loved her life, but she didn't want to move from the bed.

And that was exactly why, when the men had come up with the idea to get her out, she had let them.

She couldn't go back to her old life, her old way of being with the way she was anymore. Everything would remind her of things she needed to take some space from to heal. But the AVoffices felt like home. There were no bad memories for her there, just a man who had loved her as a girl and loved her again as a woman, and a dysfunctional set of older brothers who had all adopted her into their foray.

Getting ready every day, going to the office to actually do something productive, it helped. And knowing that her help was needed, that added to it. Her husband couldn't do paperwork and was too mistrustful to ask anyone else to do it after Hector, so it felt completely natural for her to step in and take that part over. No one outside of her knew that he had issues reading, and she would keep it that way as long as he wanted.

Her phone vibrated beside her, and she looked at it to see it was her father.

Zephyr closed her eyes for a second before answering. "Papa?"

"Have you talked to your mother yet?"

Zephyr wished she could say she was surprised at the question, but she wasn't. She wanted nothing more than to pick up her phone and call her mother, but it was clear why she wouldn't. Every time she had, her mother had accused Alpha of Zenith's death, a blame that was never his, but he let her parents blame him because he didn't want to ruin their memory of who Zenith had actually been. Zephyr had never given thought to her sister's past before she had come into the family, the issue non-existent for her because, as far as she'd been concerned, she'd gotten a best friend, and that was that. But Zen had never told her, and that hurt Zephyr more than she was willing to admit. Zen had never confided in her about where she had run from, who she had left behind, why she was so passionate about working with survivors. Nothing. A part of her was so pissed at her for not telling. Zephyr would never have judged her. But she also understood why she hadn't. She'd been trying to forget it.

"Zephyr?" her father's prompt broke through her thoughts.

"I will when she can accept that my husband is not responsible for what happened," Zephyr stated clearly, making her stance clear for the hundredth time. Her father was the only one who called her and talked to her anymore. Since the funeral, her mother had done so a few times, but given up after believing that Zephyr was too blinded or brainwashed by Alpha to see the truth—that he was a monster and he had destroyed their family. A part of Zephyr was itching to tell her the truth, but that would just drag them into this dark world that she herself didn't understand fully yet. She couldn't do that to her parents.

Fact was, with or without Alpha, The Syndicate would have caught up to Zenith. They had been searching for her for years. And the outcome would probably have been the same when they found her. Alpha being in their lives had nothing to do with that. In fact, she was alive because of his involvement, because someone called the Shadow Man had known that she was Alpha's wife and had gotten her to the hospital in time. She didn't want to think about what could've happened if she had been left alone with Zen in the isolated area that night. Hector might have killed her too. She would've been nothing but collateral damage. It was a sobering realization.

Her father sighed, the sound weary. "You're our only child left, Zephyr. Your mother might be harsh right now, but she's grieving. She loves you. You know that."

Zephyr felt a ball of lump in her throat, one that seemed to be perpetually lodged there these days. "So am I, papa. I'm grieving too. Mama needs to let go of her imagined vendetta and accept that whatever happened happened. I was there. She wasn't."

"I know," he spoke softly, the pain evident in his voice. "Well, I just wanted to check in on you and make sure you were fine." She loved her father. He had always been such a gentle, wonderful father to both his daughters, loving them and helping them grow into independent, strong women they had become. She couldn'tremember a time she'd ever questioned his love, and even the fact that he still talked to her every other day while her mother was in a standoff with her spoke volumes. She knew that her mother loved her too, but her way of loving was much different, and sometimes, it hurt her.

"Are you fine, papa?" she asked, rubbing Bear's head as he made a sound at her side.

"As fine as I can be given things," her told her. "Just taking it one day at a time."

That was the way to go forward. One day at a time.

She bid him goodbye and looked out at the lush green view in the setting sun, relaxing into the lounge chair by the pool, the details of that last day playing in her mind as they always did.

In her head, she saw Morana getting shot, a spray of red seeping into her white top as she fell to the ground with a scream, urging her to run and get help. She felt the hands grabbing her and dragging her into a van, seeing her sister there. She saw the chairs, felt the ties binding them, heard the words leave Hector's lips. She saw her sister struggle, get free, run. And then the gunshot and her life leaving her body.

It was a fuzz after that. She remembered the Shadow Man there, checking Zen's pulse and saying sorry, picking her up and carrying her to some kind of vehicle. She'd thought she'd blacked out, but as the days went by, memories came in. She hadn't blacked out, not entirely, but she'd mentally checked out. But she'd been conscious for a bit.

***

The ceiling was moving with lights. No, that couldn't be.

"You have to stay awake. You might have a concussion."

The man driving was telling her, his voice sounding far off, but it couldn't be. She recognized his voice from before, but she didn't know him. He was right in front of her. How was he in front? She was lying in the back. That made sense.

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