Page 46 of The Syndicater (Dark Verse 6)

Ok. Love you ??

Love you, my queen ??

Cute. But also interesting.

Dante clearly had some thoughts he wasn't comfortable sharing over text. Was it because of the suspicion she'd sharedwith him about Luna's possible, rather probable, connection to the Shadow Man?

She texted Dante, not wanting to break the silence and disturb the siblings, even though they weren't saying a word, just sitting together, occasionally looking at each other and holding each other. It was a sight that filled Morana's heart.

Any update on Vin?

Dante read her text and slid her a glance. He just shook his head once.

That was very off. Unless the man was genuinely doing some solid work undercover, in which case she would have heard something, he was either dead or he had never been who they'd thought. With the way betrayals were playing musical chairs, she wouldn't be surprised if someone unexpectedly took a seat next.

Since they had a few minutes before they got to the plane, and there wasn't anything else for her to do, Morana opened her encrypted texts with the Shadow Man again, ready to weasel out whatever she could unless he blocked the thread like he had many times before.

Do you know anything about Vin?

A few minutes went by, and nothing came.

Ugh.

The frustration mounted in her, and she put her phone down and got her tablet out from her tote bag, a tablet she used solely for her programs and nothing else. She logged into the special browser she had customized for herself, scrolling through any public and private databases. She added a filter of the age and set the program running to grab her a list. Parallelly, shepulled up one of Vin's photos she'd taken from Amara and ran the program to run facial recognition in the background, cross-referencing with the age-filtered database. If Vin had appeared in any camera in any part of the world, her programs would find him. She just hoped it was sooner rather than later.

That done, she went into the dark web. Rotating the cuff of her shoulders, she pulled out the data she had found for one of the many questions they'd had—how had Alpha's real name been on the lease of the property near Tenebrae that Tristan and Dante had found an initiation for The Syndicate in? Alpha had told them that his real name was known to his closest circle, but with the new knowledge that one of his closest people had been a henchman for the organization, sure enough, Hector had been the one to lease the property under Alessandro Villanova. Idiot had written it in his handwriting, that Morana had matched to his other work.

She checked everything to make sure she didn't miss anything. Morana had started trying to find tracks of his activity, retracing Hector's steps. Hector, who, as Alpha had told them, died brutally right here in Gladestone.

Morana pulled the coroner's report his brother, Victor, had shared with her—long-term torture and burned alive. It had either been an interrogation or been personal. And the thought of the burning, she looked up fire reports in orphanages. Even though she was certain there would be many, she added a filter for '20-30' years and hit search. A few results came up, and she began to scroll through them.

Wiring malfunction.

Next.

Gas tank explosion.

Next.

Forest fire.

Next.

Suspected arson.

She paused and clicked on the link. An old, black-and-white photo of a dilapidated, blackened building loaded with a headline under it.

Suspected arson at the Morning Star Home for Lost Boys

She looked under the headline, but the page didn't load, nothing but whiteness under the main text. She frowned, refreshing the page a few times and getting the same result over and over. Leaving the page, she typed the keywords'arson' + 'morning star home for lost boys'and hit search.

Only three results popped up. One the page that was broken. One a small fire fifteen years ago at a completely different location—it seemed the orphanage had multiple homes. And a last one, again a broken link.

And it only gave her a hunch—it had been deliberately wiped clean. Someone hadn't wanted anyone to find anything about that fire, and the lack of information with the broken links only convinced her that it was about the Shadow Man.

Demon eyes.

She shuddered again.

"You okay?" Dante whispered from her side, looking at her with mild concern. She nodded.

There were still so many questions she had, and the deeper she dug, the more intense they became. And the one man she knew in her gut could answer all of them had refused to give them anything straight until two days ago. She glanced up, looking at the girl with such a pretty face and soft countenance, who was leaning on Tristan with her eyes closed.

Morana had a feeling they had opened a pandora's box, something that was old and powerful, and the demons were now out, hunting to get them all.

She just hoped they all made it out to the other side unscathed.

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