Page 96 of The Syndicater (Dark Verse 6)

The dark look on his face was wiped clean. "Let's hope it never comes to that."

Morana swallowed, finding her guts that had gotten her in trouble more times than she could count. "You know threats don't work in a family."

A smile slashed his face, again, not reaching his eyes. It was such a stark difference to her—Tristan, who didn't emote with anything but his eyes, and this man, who didn't emote with his eyes at all.

"I don't make threats, Miss Vitalio."

"Call me Morana. You're sort ofalmostmy brother-in-law."

He didn't respond to that, changing the topic smoothly. "Are your codes complete?"

Morana gave a swift nod. "Yes, but why do you need them?"

"I answer your questions, you give me the codes. Do we have a deal?"

Morana hesitated. The codes could be very dangerous in his hands without knowing his motives. "Answer my questions first," she negotiated.

He paused for a brief second before unzipping his jacket and taking out a file, handing it to her. Morana took it, seeing the snakes logo she'd seen a few times and a title on top.

"What's Project Ouroboros?" she questioned, flipping the file open.

"It was a rumor until a few days ago," he explained as her eyes scanned the words. "I found out about it during an interrogation and eventually discovered this."

The more Morana read, the sicker she got to her stomach. Electrocutions. Drugs. Mutilations. Perversions.

"They were experimenting on babies." Her words came out in a horrified whisper.

"In the fifties." His tone was direct, nonempathic. "Some very legal organizations wanted to conduct some illegal experimentations on young babies. The Syndicate stepped up to meet the demand."

Morana felt the acid from her stomach retch up to her throat, and she swallowed it back down, closing the file, unable to read another word. The fact that horrors like this existed in their world, that there were people who went through the things she was reading in black and white, sickened her. No one deserved this.No one. Especially not babies!

She turned to look at the man at her side who looked unfazed, and wondered what kind of horrors he had seen to remain so unmoved and neutral as he talked about it.

Finding some courage, she opened the file again and skimmed, only trying to focus on the data. "It says the project was shut down after ten years?"

"Maybe for the record," the Shadow Man remarked. "I believe it was restarted with the Alliance between your fathers, real and adoptive, and Lorenzo Maroni. The Reaper thought it was about sex trafficking but it wasn't, or at least not just that. For sex trafficking, they always abducted girls and boys not younger than six and placed them in homes. The toddlers? They were for experimentation. The Syndicate was involved in it, and the Alliance was as well."

The horror kept on unfolding after the other. "No," her denial was jittery. Her insides were jittery. If what he said was true, that meant she'd been kidnapped to become the subject of experimentation. If what he said was true, that meant Luna and Zenith and all the other girls were subjects ofexperiments?

The shock in her face and silence must have been too loud because he shook his head. "You weren't experimented on."

"How do you even know this?"

He pointed at the file. "It's all there. I just connected the dots. The girls for the experiments were always numbered. I actually found that out, thanks to Vin. Combinations of five, five, and seven."

"What's the significance of seventeen?" she asked, the question bothering her since she found out about it.

"Nothing," he told her, waiting for a beat. "The significance is of one and seven." He closed the file, tracing the symbol on top. "One and seven make—"

"Eight," she completed, a chill going down her spine. They had not only numbered the babies but also numbered them to announce their appalling project. The snakes, making an eight-figure, stared up at her.

"So, Zenith was an experiment subject?" she recalled, remembering the number.

"I believe so. Though I cannot say for certain," he mused. "I haven't heard of many kids with numbers working under The Syndicate, which makes me believe that only the ones who failed at experiments were sent out into the sex trafficking."

Morana let that sink in, absolutely nauseated at what she had learned. She stared down at the file in her hand as though the snakes on top were slithering across her skin, repelling her.

And then the biggest question she'd had for two years came to her mind. She looked up at the man who was sitting with his eyes closed, basking casually in the sun to any onlooker.

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