Page 104 of The Syndicater (Dark Verse 6)

Tristan sat, stunned in silence. He didn't utter a word, just took in what she said, and Morana could feel his heartbreak across the basement.

"What do you meanto keep?" Morana asked her, distracting her from Tristan.

"The Syndicate gave me to him."

Holy shit. His father had been in The Syndicate too? Morana remembered he had been Lorenzo's bodyguard, It made sense that he would be, given Lorenzo's proclivities.

"And me?" Luna asked, her voice quiet.

The woman turned to her. "You're mine."

They weren't related by blood. The sister Tristan had loved and looked for all his life had never biologically been his. Morana felt her eyes tear up as she looked at the anguish on his face, the realization hurting him more than the knife in his side. He looked down at the floor for a few minutes, breathing in steadily, until his face cleared and the mask locked back in place tight.

"You took her, didn't you?" he asked the woman, a woman he had thought had been his mother, his voice void of all emotion. "There was no other way."

The older woman nodded. "I gave you a sleeping pill. Took her out and gave her to Lorenzo."

"Why?"

"Becauseheloved her," she grit out. "Your father. Raped her into my body and loved her like she'd been a gift."

"So you let sent her to hell?" Morana asked, aghast. Did their world have no good mothers? No good fathers? What was this poisonous cycle their parents had begun? They would break it.

The woman shrugged. "David lost his mind, went after Vitalio. We hadn't thought you'd kill him though." She turned to Tristan. "Bravo."

Morana looked at Luna, to see how she was receiving the news her brother had killed their father. There was no flinch on her expressive face. She already knew. The Shadow Man. Of course.

And suddenly, Morana focused on Luna, her brain whirring.

"Do you have your phone?" she asked softly so as not to be heard.

Luna gave her a look, a look she took as affirmative. Good. There was no way a man like him would let her go without tracking her, and if she still had it on him, that meant they just had to buy time. With that goal in mind, hoping she wasn't wrong about him, she engaged the woman in conversation again. "So, how did you end up doing his bidding?" She nodded at the phone.

The woman looked at her master almost adoringly. It was sickening. "He found me. Gave me purpose. Serving The Syndicate has been my honor."

Ew. "And the lives you destroyed?"

"It was just business."

A business of lives. Fuck them.

"So why the family reunion?" Tristan asked, his voice almost robotic.

The woman grinned. "Things have to come full circle, you know? That's our motto. It ends where it begins." It would.

Morana felt her gut tighten as she heard the words. A bad, bad feeling settled in. This wasn't good, whatever shit these psychos had planned.

The woman walked around Tristan's chair, behind him, leaning forward so her mouth was close to his ear. "All of this started with a choice," she began. "It will end in one too. You had to choose between your family and this girl. Twenty years, and same choice."

Morana felt her body go numb at the words. Tristan's face betrayed nothing but his eyes did—eyes she knew to read because of all the time she had spent learning their language.

He was scared.

Her big, beautiful man was scared back into a small, simple boy.

Tears fell over her eyelids as they looked at each other. He looked at his sister, a sister he had known just for a few days, but loved so deeply, then back at her, a woman he had hated but loved so intensely.

"Whoever you choose will go home with you, safe," the woman continued and god, Morana had never hated anymore more than she hated her. Fuck her for traumatizing him, for retraumatizing her flesh and blood daughter, for possibly disabling her for life.

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