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"I am not killing you only because I don't want that fucking war." His tone made her flinch. The look in his eyes made her stomach drop. "Just because I cannot harm you doesn't mean I won't."
Morana looked at him, stunned at the ferocity of his hatred. "You don't even know me!"
He stayed silent for a long minute, the hand on his stomach going lower, her heart pounding as panic set in. She struggled and his hand stopped, just below her navel, the gesture of a lover and not the foe, his eyes hard on her.
"I have people who are mine. Territory that's mine. Don’t ever invade it," his hand bent a little lower to her hipbone, the threat clear, making her pulse skitter, his eyes glued to her, his voice a whisper right against her skin. "Remember that."
The fucking audacity of him! Stunned, Morana struggled harder against him, kicking her legs out. "You asshole!"
He leaned closer, his lips almost at her ear. "Wildcat."
The sound of footsteps had him releasing her. He straightened, his face donning that blank mask like it had never left, like he'd not been on top of her threatening, like he wasn't the detestable human that he was. Morana stood on slightly shaky legs, her chest heaving, her eyes glaring daggers at him as her hands curled into fists, her body shaking with the rage she could barely co
ntain.
Dante stepped into the area, looking her up and down, frowning. "Are you okay?"
Morana felt her jaw tremble, her heart not even close to calm. The urge to pull her gun out and shoot him was so profound it almost knocked her to her knees. Shaking her head, she lifted her chin higher, steeling her spine and looked right at him, a snarl curving her mouth.
"The two of you can bleed to death for all I care."
Opening her car door, she looked back at the man who had turned her to this mess in seconds, her eyes locking with his.
"Stay the fuck away from me."
She saw something flicker in his eyes while nothing crossed his face, something he masked before she could see it, and she turned away, getting into her car, reversing out of the street. She never looked back in the rearview mirror. Never let herself focus on anything but the way she gripped the steering wheel. Never let herself feel anything but the blood pounding in her ears.
Everything had its time. She would have hers.
Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not the day after. But the day after that. Or the day after that.
One day, someday, she vowed, with all the rage pulsating in her body, making her shake till she couldn't feel her fingers from gripping the wheel so hard, the rage making her body heated like never before, the rage making her whimper for an outlet.
One day, she vowed, she would kill Tristan Caine.
She had to tell her father. There was no other way now.
Morana saw the metal gates of the mansion open up ahead, the house itself looming stark white against the cloudy, grey sky, hiding the layers of red that coated it. No matter how many times her father got the house painted, she knew of the blood that remained splattered underneath the coats, knew of the horrors the pristine white hid beneath them. She had grown up in this house, as had her father, and his father before him. The house had been in their family for three generations, every owner adding something more to the sprawling property.
Her family had been the first in the organized business. Shadow Port, back then, had been known as the city of docks. Located right on the West coast of the country, connected to international waters through the sea and locally through the river than bisected it, Shadow Port had been and still was one of the hotspots for trade. Her ancestors had seen the kind of profit that could be made, and made the city their own, slowly expanding over the years to the entire region.
This residential property that housed her had originally been only one building. Her deceased grandfather, and later her father, had expanded it to the sprawling mansion that set a knot in her gut. Especially the extra wing her father had added, where he handled ‘sensitive’ business matters. She never ventured into that wing, not unless absolutely necessary. Like it was today.
Swallowing, she slowly drove up the driveway, watching the lush green grass in the lawns roll by, watching her own bedroom window on the second floor. She had an entire suite to herself, with her own bedroom and a small study where she worked, her own walk-in closet, her own everything. She always had.
Morana had not grown up wanting for anything, not materially at least. If she'd wanted a new computer, she'd had one within hours. If she'd wanted a new dress, she'd had a whole selection of them. She used to think it was a sign of her father's affections - giving her whatever she'd wanted. She'd been corrected of that notion pretty early in life.
He'd kept her on the top floor above his own to keep an eye on her movements. Her wishes had been fulfilled so she wouldn't go out looking to fulfill them herself. She'd stopped wishing the moment she'd realized this, and taken her own choices into her own hands. At least as much as she could have.
Morana wondered, as she pulled up in front of the house manned by two guards, what it would have been like to have her mother while she'd grown up. Would the house have been home then?
Her mother had left her father and this life when a few years after Morana had been born. The marriage of Alice and Gabriel Vitalio had been made for the one reason older than love - business.
Alice's father had been a shady businessman working with Gabriel and they had sealed a lifelong deal with an arranged marriage. Her mother had tried to adapt to this life, this world. She really had. But in the end, after almost two years of trying, she'd decided to leave. From what Morana had heard, she'd tried to take her as well, but her father had put his foot down and given her an ultimatum - either leave alone or never leave at all. But Morana didn’t know how true these stories were.
She didn’t remember much from her childhood. Morana didn’t know where her mother was anymore. She had tried to track on more than one occasion, without the knowledge of her father. It had yielded no results. Her mother clearly didn’t want to be found, and after marriage to Gabriel Vitalio, she couldn’t really blame her.
Her father had never tried to shield her, protect her or cajole her into a false sense of security. Since she'd understood things, she'd known every gruesome and bloody thing there was to know about their world - things that fathers were supposed to hold back from their daughters.
