by RuNyx .
Viper chortled. “You poor bastard, you have no idea what’s going on, do you?”
Tristan wanted to punch the man in his face. Forget his bleeding wound, he wanted to hit the man and break his nose. His sister had disappeared and the man was laughing? When his own daughter had just returned?
Tristan hadn’t known men like this. He never wanted to know men like this. Men who could laugh with such evil.
He shuddered.
His father shoved the gun deeper into the man’s face. “Tell me! What do you know?”
The man chortled. “You want me to tell him, Bloodhound? Want me to tell him why you want to break the Alliance so bad?”
Tristan looked at the Boss, who’d stilled.
“Remember Reaper every time you think of opening your mouth, Viper.”
The other man bared his teeth but stayed silent.
Tristan’s father snapped his fingers. “What does that have to with my daughter?”
Viper shrugged.
And then Tristan’s father moved.
Before Tristan could blink, his father pulled his hand and shifted the gun, pointing it right at a small, chubby face and bright hazel eyes studying the gun in fascination.
Tristan couldn’t breathe.
His father’s shaking hand steadied, his eyes becoming completely black.
“You don’t tell me what I want to know,” his father said quietly, “she dies. Your daughter for my daughter.”
Tristan could only watch the scene in horror but stopped himself from thinking bad thoughts. His father was just bluffing. He was trying to find everything about Luna and playing the other man. Yes. That was it.
Maybe, Tristan could help him if Viper did something.
Swallowing down his nerves, stepping out from behind the pillar, Tristan stayed in the shadow, looking around.
His eyes landed on the gun lying towards his right on the small table against the wall. Without any thought, Tristan placed the knife gripped in his bleeding hand quietly on the wooden surface and picked up the gun. He didn’t know what kind it was, or how many bullets it had. But it was heavy in his small, shaking hands. It was heavy.
Yet, Tristan raised up his thin arms, pointing the gun at Viper, unlocking it like his father had taught him to do. He was ready to shoot the bad man who didn’t realize what a miracle he’d received when his daughter had come back to him. He would do anything, give anything away to have his sister back with him.
He wanted his sister back so much.
His father missed her too. That was why he was bluffing. That was why he was trying to get information in any way he could. Tristan understood that.
He just kept his hands steady even as they started aching, the bleeding gash on his palm throbbing.
Gritting his teeth so he wouldn’t make any noise, Tristan kept his eyes on the scene from the shadows. He saw the Viper’s eyes move to the Boss, saw the Boss shake his head ever so slightly, saw the man lean back again.
“I can’t tell you anything,” he said aloud, his voice controlled. “Do what you want to do.”
Blood rushed through his ears. The Boss’ men kept their guns on Viper’s men while his father kept his own gun pointed to the head of the little girl. Tristan understood his father’s motivation but he was unable to understand how these other men could do what they were doing, and why nobody else standing there did a thing to stop them.
How could a man do that to his own daughter?
Tristan swallowed, waiting for his father to lower his weapon and do something else.
He didn’t.
His heart started thudding, the gun shaking in his trembling hands.
Why wasn’t he putting his gun down?
Why wasn’t he moving away from the baby?
Why wasn’t anyone else doing something?
“Last chance, Vitalio,” his father said softly.
Viper shook his head.
The Boss spoke. “Leave it be, David.”
Move the gun, dad, Tristan urged in his head, his lips trembling.
His father shook his head. “His daughter for my daughter.”
Move away, dad.
He shouldn’t have been here.
He shouldn’t have sneaked in to see this.
He couldn’t understand.
He didn’t understand.
Oh god, why wasn’t his father moving away?
He was so scared. He was so, so scared.
He wanted to leave.
But his feet wouldn’t move. They wouldn’t move.
He tried to swallow his whimpers as his heart started to hurt. He just wanted to go home. He just wanted to sleep in his bed. He just wanted his sister back. He wanted to go home.
But his shoes were stuck to the ground.
He shouldn’t be here.
Oh god, he was so scared.
His heart pounded so hard he could hear it in his ears, his stomach heavy.
His entire body started shaking, his arms trembling, bleeding, hurt.
His father cocked the gun, unlocking it.
Tristan started to cry, unable to stop his tears anymore. He loved his dad so much. But why was he doing this? He didn’t understand. This wouldn’t bring Luna back.
His breathing became heavy.
Tristan watched his father’s finger hold the trigger and saw his muscles move, and he knew with sudden certainty that his dad was going to pull the trigger.
This wasn't a bluff. This wasn’t a game. It was life and death.
Tristan looked at his father’s face and saw nothing. No hint of the face he had when he looked at Luna. No hint of any softness.
Tristan waited.
Inhale.
Exhale.
In.
Out.
His father’s finger flexed.
In.
Out.
The finger started to pull.
Tristan whimpered, terrified.
And before he even understood, he pulled the trigger.
The force of the hit pushed Tristan down to the ground, the gun still gripped in his arms as the loud sound of the bullet broke through the hall, accompanied by curse words and screams, and the crying of the girl.
Oh god.
The sudden onslaught of noise became white as Tristan looked back at the table, only to see the little girl with splattered blood on her face.
Without a thought, his mind silent, completely silent, Tristan walked out into the fore, straight to the girl who was getting red in the face from her cries. Hands trembling, Tristan wiped the blood off her soft face, forgetting his own bleeding palm.
Instead of cleaning her skin, he marred it even more with his own blood.
His dad was going to punish him so badly for this.
Ready to apologize for hitting him, to accept whatever punishment he gave out, Tristan turned to the side.
His heart stopped.
No. No. No. No. No.
The gun dropped from his hand, clattering loudly in the suddenly silent hall.
Tristan shook his head.
No. No. No. No. No.
His father lay there on the floor, his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling, his body motionless.
With a hole right in the center of his head.
The hole from a bullet.
Something lodged in his chest.
“You killed your own father?”
Tristan heard the Boss’ voice. He heard him ask, heard the words, but kept looking at his dad, denying it in his heart.
No. No. No. No. No.
“That’s his father?” someone else asked.
“How could he aim from there?”
“How did no one know he was here?”
“He’s ruthless for a kid. Can you imagine what he’d be like?”
Words.
About him.
Rushing all around.
Over him.
One word.
On repeat.
No. No. No. No. No.
�
�The next course is ready when–”
It was the sound of his mother’s voice that pulled Tristan’s head up.
Oh god, what had he done?
Tristan saw as she came to a stop in the doorway, her eyes on him.
“Tristan, what are you doing here?” she asked, her eyes angry as she came towards him. Turning to the Boss, she started speaking, “I apologize for him, Mr. Maroni. He’s just a kid. He doesn’t know what he’s doin–”
Her voice cut off abruptly as her eyes fell on his father, the words choking in her mouth.
Tristan saw as her hands came up to her lips, tears streaking down her cheeks as a sound escaped her chest. His jaw started to hurt from the way he'd clenched it.
"Who?" her mother's voice wavered on the word.
The Boss stepped forward towards Tristan. “Your son.”
His mother’s eyes snapped up to his, disbelief etched on her face. Tristan let her watch him silently, watched the disbelief change in horror as she saw the truth on his face. The horror he saw in her eyes killed something inside him. His jaw trembled as he stepped towards her, wanting to rush into her arms and have her tell him everything would be okay.
She jerked back from him, her mouth agape in terror. “Get away from me.”
Tristan stilled.
His mother looked at him for a long time, shaking her head. “Why?”
"I.. it..." the words stuck in his throat, lodging there, unable to escape.
She took a step back. "You lost your sister. Now, you've killed your father. My husband. My daughter."
Tristan clenched his hands to keep from reaching out to her, not uttering a word. There wasn’t anything he could say.
"My son was a sweet boy," his mother whispered almost to the door now. "You're not him. You're like them. Monsters."
Something broke – damaged beyond repair in his chest.
“I don’t want to see you again,” her voice cracked as she stepped through the door from whence she’d entered. “You’re dead to me.”
She left.
Tristan stood there.
Alone.
Without his baby sister.
Without his father.
Without his mother.
Only with men who looked at him like they would eat him alive.
And a baby who had stopped crying.
A baby who, a few minutes ago, had been nothing to him. A baby for whom he’d murdered the father he’d loved so much.
Tristan looked at her – her eyes swollen from crying, the colors in them shining and twinkling; her little mouth rosy and soft; her chubby face smeared with his and his father’s blood.
The flutter he had felt in his chest minutes ago was gone. In its place was something else instead. Something he’d never felt before. Something he didn’t understand. Something twisted and ugly and alive, taking root inside his chest as he watched her breathe, because of him. Something poisonous bleeding its way into his heart, paralyzing it, deadening it, until he couldn’t feel it anymore.
Until he could feel nothing but the poison. Until he could see nothing but her face with his blood.
He had spilled his father’s blood to protect her.
His mother had called him a monster. She'd been right. He’d become a monster, more evil than all the men in the room, in one second.
All because of her.
Because she’d made him choose.
And he had nothing.
No one.
Nothing.
Nothing except this feeling in his chest. He latched on to it, looking at her face, etching it to memory. He looked at her eyes, seeing her soul forever tainted with his blood.
As of tonight, her life was his. He’d given up everything so she could live.
Her life was his.
He didn't know what he would do with it. But it was his.
“Come with me, boy.”
The Boss’s voice reached him. No. Not the Boss. He’d been the Boss to his father. And his father was dead.
Tristan Caine was dead too. In his place, someone else was born. Someone who looked up at Lorenzo Maroni and the gleam in his dark eyes dispassionately.
He kept quiet, everything inside him detached except for the strange, bitter sensation he felt when he looked at the girl. The men around him were considering him, all bigger than he was, with heavy weapons and the power to scare him.
He wasn’t scared anymore.
This was the last time, he vowed to himself, that he'd be scared.
Never again.
He was going to become the scariest of them all.
Saving her had destroyed him. One day, he vowed as he watched a man pick up the little girl and take her away, his blue eyes on her, he would collect his debt.
Morana.
Present Day.
She didn’t know this, this coiled knot of emotions in her chest.
It just hurt.
Everything hurt. Every-fucking-thing.
Her trembling hands, her trembling lips, her trembling heart. All of it.
She couldn’t breathe. The air was trapped somewhere in her chest, close to her bleeding heart. Her throat was tight, locked down; a weight settling low in her stomach as the noise from the airplane flying overhead filled the death in the graveyard.
The airplane came and went.
And it still hurt.
She hurt.
In a way she’d not thought herself capable of hurting. In a manner she’d never known a person could hurt.
Eyes stinging, Morana blinked rapidly, years of training herself not to shed a tear in front of anyone not allowing her the liberty to let a single drop fall. But would it have stopped at a single drop? Would it have stopped at all when the weight on her chest seemed to get heavier and heavier with each passing breath?
She wanted to screech until her throat pained as her heart did. She wanted to become hoarse until the sound faded away into the nothingness inside. She wanted to scream but couldn’t find her voice.
She was innocent.
Completely innocent.
She had done nothing wrong except exist.
Yet, her very existence made her want to weep. Her very existence made her want to break bones.
She existed because of him. She was innocent but he had been innocent too. She was innocent, and yet she was stained with blood.
His blood.
The blood of his father.
The blood he had shed to save her; the blood he had marked her with trying to clean her.
People who knew the story thought he’d made a claim in that gesture. But she knew, she knew he’d just been a sweet boy trying to wipe the blood off the face of an innocent baby.
Pain and rage, hate and turmoil, compassion and heartbreak, amalgamated inside her in a knot she could feel in her throat, transfused in her blood that beat in every inch of her body, came together in a way she couldn’t distinguish one from another, didn’t understand which was directed at whom.
She closed her eyes, her body starting to shake, unable to bear the conflict inside her very soul.
“Morana.”
Amara’s broken voice made her eyes flutter open. Unlike herself, the other woman was crying openly, the pain in her eyes reflective of her own. Morana owed the other woman so much, so much she couldn’t even begin to comprehend it, for simply telling her the truth that had been stymied from her at every turn, for breaking her vow and putting her faith in her.
“Do you want me to stop?”
Morana shook her head immediately, her voice lost within her, tangled in the mass of emotions assaulting her, her jaw hurting from how hard she kept clenching it. She needed to know. She needed to know everything there was to know about him, her soul hungry for the knowledge that it had been denied. She needed to know, to understand him. She’d been locked for years from the truth and he had always been the key.
She needed to know.
Wiping her cheeks with small hands, her nails painted a green that matched her
unusual eyes, Amara continued, her voice trembling like a leaf in the wind.
“I met Tristan when Mr. Maroni brought him to the house that day…” her beautiful, swollen eyes glazed over, lost in the memory she was speaking of, making Morana grit her teeth harder at the image of the aftermath.
“He was wearing this white long-sleeved t-shirt, splattered with drops of blood, one entire hand completely bloodied, his hair a mess. He was just two years older than I was but he seemed so much older. His eyes… god, his eyes, Morana… they were so dead,” Amara shuddered, looking into space, goosebumps erupting over her arms.
She rubbed them slowly. “Mr. Maroni told everyone he would be staying at the compound. He talked about Tristan but Tristan just stood there, not moving, not reacting, his eyes moving over everyone. But he didn’t look at anyone, he looked right through them… as though he was seeing nothing... It was so terrifying coming from such a young boy.”
Morana tried to find the congruence in what Amara was telling her what she’d seen for herself. She’d seen him look that way at other people – at the men in the casino, at the people in the barn, at the crowd in the restaurant. She’d even remembered him looking that way at her that first night in Tenebrae when he hadn’t known who she’d been, and her own knife had been pressed against her neck by his hands.
Now that she knew, she realized he’d evidently never, not since then, looked at her with nothing. There had always, always been something in those blue eyes of his. He’d always looked at her, in that intense way that seared her.
Amara’s voice broke through her thoughts, a gust of cool breeze lifting a strand of her dark hair, chilling Morana.
“I remember asking mama about him that night. Nobody in our world knew why an outsider had been brought into the family, more so to live on the compound. That had never happened before. But a few days later, there were rumors.”
Morana wrapped her arms around herself, a chill settling in her bones as she waited for Amara to continue.
“My mama told me she’d heard whispers among the servants about him. The servants always knew what happened at the compound, but they never spoke of it because of fear – for their families, for themselves, some even from loyalty. But they did talk among themselves, and Tristan had created quite a stir. Mama told me about those whispers, about how he’d murdered his own father in cold blood in a room full of men, about how dangerous he was, about how they said he was going to be the most feared of all men when he grew up. She told me to keep my distance from him. Everyone did. And I’m ashamed to admit, I kept my distance, shunned him like everyone else because of course, I was a little scared.”