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Straightening her spine, she stepped back, removing his hand from her skin, ignoring the tingling sensation as she felt the muscle of his forearms, and grit her teeth. "So, for now, you understand one thing. This is my territory, my city, my house. And you've overstayed your welcome. Leave before you are thrown out with broken bones."
Tristan Caine pinned her with his eyes once again, just as the wind picked up, swirling her dress around her legs.
"One day, Ms. Vitalio," he spoke quietly, "I am going to enjoy collecting that debt very much."
He leaned in, lining his mouth with her ear, his scruff rasping against her skin as her hands fisted to keep another shiver down. "And you know what? You're going to enjoy repaying it."
Of all the...
Before she could utter a single word, he was striding away from her towards the car where the entourage waited, leaving her standing alone in the alley, the hard lines of his body moving quickly over to the car, as he addressed his people.
"We are done here."
Oh, they were not done. They were so not done.
But why had they intercepted her in the alley? If it h
ad been about codes, why leave before talking about them? And if not, then why meet her at all?
What the hell did this man want?
Morana didn't know what he wanted from her, why he seemed intent on collecting a debt she didn't even consider one at all. He was still that book of invisible ink she couldn't decipher. A book she absolutely did not want to read. No. She wanted to burn the book and blow the ashes in the wind. She wanted to tear the pages and melt them in the rain.
But as everyone got in the car and she stood in the alley, as lightning lit the sky once again just as he opened the car door, he turned one last time to see her. She locked eyes with him one last time and saw that same something simmer in that intense gaze.
As her heart beat like a bird frantically flapping its wings against the cage to get free, Morana saw him for what he was.
A predator in the skin of a man.
And she knew one thing undeniably, deep in her bones.
They were not done.
Morana groaned at the laptop screen, ignoring the crick in her neck from staring at it for too long. She was trying every possible combination and permutation of ideas to track the codes, and hitting a wall every single time. Biting her lips, her fingers flying over the keyboards, Morana typed the latest codes and pressed the escape button, checking to see if the failsafe would work, and saw the screen go blank.
Again.
Damn it!
Frustrated beyond belief, she hit her palms down on the table and shoved away, pacing towards her bedroom window, pulling her glasses down, a small throb starting to pound right under her temples. It was past midnight and she was nowhere close to working any kind of solution out. Though that wasn't her only source of frustration. She'd wanted to speak to her father after dinner two nights ago, and the moment she had returned back to the mansion after being held up by Tristan Caine, she'd been told by her father's man that he'd had to go out of town on something extremely urgent, and it was unclear when he would return. Though a part of Morana had been relieved at the delay in that inevitable conversation, another had tensed, wanting to face whatever wrath and just be done with it.
For two days Morana had tried and failed, only fuelling her frustration higher.
What had added gasoline to that fire, though, had been stray thoughts of Tristan Caine, popping completely out of the blue at the most random of times. Not his rugged looks or his reputation. No. His intensity. For some reason, he had caught her off guard, his burning hatred for her, his constant aura of threat something she had never experienced before, and something that only fed her own loathing of the man.
She grit her teeth, turning her face towards the window, looking out into the dark garden below. A huge elm tree shadowed her suite from the driveway, enough to give her a view of the visitors but not let them see her.
The property was sleeping, only a slight breeze blowing in the gentle night, the moon an incomplete oval shape in the dark sky littered with stars.
And she was tired. So tired. The constant responsibility of her actions had been chipping away at her slowly from the inside, her own failed desperate efforts only aiding in that. She just wanted to disclose the entire thing to her father and face whatever punishment he deemed necessary. She just wanted to be done with it, one way or another, so she could focus on getting the codes before they fell into wrong hands. That is assuming she would be alive to do so. Haunting the thief from beyond the grave was really not her style.
She also needed to come clean for another reason. For whatever intents and purposes, the Outfit sons had knowledge and interest in the codes. What she didn't know was whether Tristan Caine did have the codes and was pretending not to have them, or if he was genuinely searching for them. Nothing about the man was genuine. Layers buried beneath layers. He kept her from being discovered and killed one instant and threatened her life the next. What was his game? A man who could lie to his own blood brother as easily as he had, could he be honest about anything? And even if he was, she had no reason to believe him.
But intent on playing the devil's advocate, her brain came up with the other very glaring, very dangerous possibility. If, for some reason, Tristan Caine was indeed being truthful, then that implied someone else had hired Jackson to shadow her and gather intel, someone who could be in the Outfit but not likely, since Dante Maroni and Tristan Caine would be in the clear. And unless Bloodhound Maroni himself had an interest in her, which was highly doubtful, she couldn't think of another person in the Outfit who even knew about her skills.
Which meant there could be a possible third party involved. A mysterious third party, which was never a good thing. Who were they and how could they know about her work?
And staring at the moon, another possibility knocked her brain. Could it be someone from her own side? Someone looking to start a war, using her as the pawn? There was no shortage of people this side who would love to see the Outfit fall, but could anyone really be brazen enough to go after her?
