Page 93 of The Syndicater (Dark Verse 6)

Chapter 32

Morana, Tenebrae City

To say things hadbeen emotional would be putting it mildly.

She couldn't remember the last time she had cried or seen Tristan cry so much, not even the fateful night he had broken down in his arms. And it hadn't just been them. Zephyr and Amara had been sobbing along with them, and though Dante and Alpha hadn't cried, they had been suspiciously misty-eyed. Anyone with a beating heart would have been after heating Luna's talk. She had always been quiet, spending more time listening than talking in people's company, but last night, she had gone off, and Morana felt proud of her, not just for surviving but for standing strong.

As much as she loved and understood Tristan, he had been trying to intimidate her into talking, and she had stood her ground and tackled him head-on. Their stubbornness seemed to be a sibling trait, one she was delighted about. Tristan was scaryenough for other people; the women in his life didn't need to fall into that category at all.

It had been one hell of an intense night, and everyone seemed to be sleeping it off.

But Morana couldn't. Her brain was working overtime with the information overload she'd had, and she felt like she was so close to an answer, like it was almost in her grasp, and it kept slipping.

Tristan was in an exhausted slumber by her side, snoring in the way he did when he was extra tired. Yes, he had different snores, and yes, Morana already knew them.

Pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, she slipped out of the bed and powered on her tablet, checking in on her codes.

They were done, a digital weapon ready to find data from every corner of the dark web and deface anyone.

She put a USB stick in a lipstick bullet, transferred the codes, and freshened up while they did. Getting dressed casually, shrugging on a jacket to ward off the chill in the early morning air, she checked everything.All done.She left a note for Tristan, so he didn't worry if she got a bit late, munched on a banana as she pulled her tote bag over her right shoulder, carrying all her essentials, and walked outside the cottage, fog low to the ground in the little dawn light as she made her way to the parked vehicles. They were heading back home in the evening, but there was something she needed to check before, something she had to see.

A guard nodded to her as she chose an automatic so she didn't have to worry too much about manual gear and got in. Plopping down, she rotated her shoulders, knowing she really needed to see a specialist for her left side and couldn't ignore it any longer. Powering on her tablet, she logged into her Dark Web account and went in.

With everything that had happened, especially knowing how the Shadow Man was now connected to Luna, information was blasting in her brain, tidbits that had been mentioned previously all combining together.

She opened the image the Shadow Man had sent her of Luna from a few weeks ago, looking carefully at the wall and a sliver of the view on the side.

One time, Zephyr had asked around to share the best place they had ever visited, and Luna had said a name, with a soft whisper and a whimsical smile.

On a hunch, Morana typed in:

Bayford.

'Did you mean Bayfjord instead?'

She clicked on it.

Images splattered across her screen, and she almost gasped at how fucking gorgeous it was. Tall gray mountains and vast gray seas with dark beaches. It wasn't a city, more like a small town, and the only way Luna could have talked about it so wistfully was if she'd lived there with good memories.

That meant the home she'd mentioned was in Bayfjord, the home the Shadow Man had given her. Morana looked up real estate listings in the region, her eyebrows going up at the prices. It was expensive, which meant the Shadow Man had money. So what did she know about him—1. He loved Luna. 2. He was rich. 3. He was in his thirties, most likely. 4. He had property in Bayfjord.

She narrowed down her search and filtered through the directory of properties registered in the last ten years, then remembering Luna's current estimated age of twenty-four, narrowed it down to six for as long as she'd been a legal adult.

'He gave me his name, everything he had.'

Words from last night, so passionately said, came back to Morana. She scrolled through the listings, and then, following a hunch, added another filter.

'Bayfjord + last six years + current properties registered in woman's name'.

Only three results came out.

One was a seventy-year-old grandmother of five children.

Another was a thirty-seven-year-old single model.

And the last one was a twenty-four-year-old married woman.

Lyla Blackthorne.

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