The Emperor (Dark Verse Book 3)

by RuNyx

  “I appreciate that,” Amara told her in her soft voice that she still hated on certain occasions like this one. People like Chiara heard her speak and immediately thought her weak. Soft did not equal strong in their vocabulary. Soft meant malleable, gullible, vulnerable. Only that was strong which was in-their-face. Morana was strong in her eyes probably, with her devil-may-care attitude and the spine of steel she wore in her eyes. Amara, with her flowery dress and furry cat and soft voice and scars, was a passing fancy, a poor little innocent, an easy target.

  Maybe, her voice and her demeanor was a good thing. It let them underestimate her.

  Keeping her expression deliberately pleasant, Amara thanked her. “It’s nice of you to look out for him.”

  Chiara fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. “Someone has to. Hopefully, he’ll marry one of the prospects soon.”

  “Prospects?” Amara asked, mildly curious, rocking Lulu in her arms.

  “Oh, women he’s been vetting for years,” Chiara told her helpfully. “All girls from prominent families with good connections. He needs someone who adds to his power.”

  Amara felt her lips turn up at the not-so-subtle attack at herself. Amara of a week ago might even have agreed with Chiara, might have felt the doubts about her suitability. But the woman who had been tied up in her nightmare had struggled against her ropes, escaped them, and shot a man dead to protect the father of her child. This Amara had woken up into her nightmare and walked out, not unscathed but stronger. This Amara didn’t let a dig get to her simply because if Dante had wanted to marry one of the more suitable girls, he would have. He didn’t. He had given his crown to her.

  Before Amara could give a response, she heard Morana’s voice.

  “Oh, look Tristan, it’s your lizard ex,” Morana exclaimed from the door, rolling her eyes behind the glasses. She was in such contrast to Chiara, in black jeans and a blue printed t-shirt with ‘Nerd Life = Thug Life’. Amara felt her lips twitch at the quote and the way Morana openly glared at Chiara, coming to stand beside Amara in a clear show of support.

  Tristan’s lips twitched too.

  Damn, Morana was good for him.

  Chiara glared at them, before going to the windows, leaving them alone.

  “Is this Lulu?” Morana whispered, looking down at the slumbering cat in awe.

  Amara nodded. “You wanna hold her? She’s very friendly.”

  “Oh, I can?” Morana grinned at her, slowly taking Lulu’s soft body in her arms. The cat woke up in the transfer, turning to look at Amara.

  “It’s okay, baby,” Amara cajoled her, rubbing between her eyes. “She’s a friend. You like new people, remember?”

  Lulu meowed and turned to stare at Morana.

  “She’s so soft,” Morana uttered, amazed. Tristan came to stand behind her and Lulu, the little attention seeker that she was, tried to climb over Morana’s shoulder to sniff him. Morana struggled to contain her.

  “Traitor, I know he smells nice, but stay with me for a second!”

  Lulu stretched towards Tristan. Tristan stared at the cat, before shaking his head and taking a step back.

  “Get that thing away from me, please.”

  Amara felt Dante enter the room, her eyes immediately seeking him out, and smiled as he came towards them. He scooped Lulu up in his arms and turned to Tristan.

  “This thing is a fucking cat, dude,” he told the other man, rubbing Lulu behind the ear, so naturally Amara wondered if he’d ever had pets before. “She’s a cute little thing.”

  “Can we get one, caveman?” Morana blinked up at him, putting a hand on his arm. “We’ll adopt a stray.”

  Tristan sighed, sending a glare at Amara, and she burst out laughing.

  It felt good. Life felt good.

  Dinner had gone as well as one could hope, she supposed. Chiara had pretty much given her looks and her husband, Leo, had gazed off into the distance, clearly distracted by something. Another couple their age – she didn’t know their names – had given her polite smiles, while their three kids had been quiet but stealing looks at her and Lulu napping at the base of a sitting man’s statue. Dante had taken a seat at the head of the table – where his father had once sat – and had her seated on his left side. Tristan took the seat on his right, opposite Amara, with Morana beside him. It was strategic, a silent message to everyone watching that this was how he was rolling the ball.

  Amara had enjoyed the dinner after a long time and observed her man talking in quiet tones with Tristan, or turning to ask one of the kids a question. In between, he had just touched her foot with his shoe, giving her a bit more of that affection she craved from him. With his stubble that darkened his jaw, contrasting with his impeccably-dressed body, Dante Maroni was a vision of masculine beauty and primitive badassery, with a dark gaze that missed nothing and a light smile that hid everything. He was contradictions and balances complimenting each other in one specimen; a slow, deceptive, undetectable poison to everyone except the people close to his heart. Small doses of him over the years had made her stronger, a resilient survivor.

  Now, standing in his study, the same study where Lorenzo Maroni had changed her life, Amara watched the king of the underworld on his throne, a glass of scotch in his hand, watching the two other people he trusted talk.

  “The airport guy gave me an address,” Morana spoke, sipping from her glass of scotch, sitting cross-legged on the couch, her eyes on Dante. “But when we got there, the house was empty. And just yesterday, I got an alert that it had burned down. Faulty wiring, they said.”

  Dante leaned back on the table, swirling the scotch in his glass, his eyes on Tristan. “We’ll find her, Tristan.”

  Luna.

  Tristan’s little sister who had disappeared twenty years ago.

  Amara felt her heart clench at the way he leaned against the window, rigid, looking down at the floor, and she walked to him. Hunched as he was, his head was the same height as hers. Amara put a hand on his bicep, giving him a squeeze, and he looked up at her with those focused blue eyes.

  “Don’t lose hope, yeah?” she whispered to him. “You worked so many years to get control. You have the reins now. You have Dante, who has the reins here. You have Morana, who does stuff I don’t even understand. And you have me, who does nothing but for moral support. We’ll find her.”

  His jaw clenched but he gave her a nod, straightening and walking to sit beside Morana, who snuggled into him like he was a bear instead of one of the most dangerous men in their world. But then, nobody knew how dangerous he was more than Morana.

  Amara took Tristan’s vacated space and leaned against the windowsill, as Dante spoke up. “You notice too many fires in buildings of late, Tristan?”

  “Yeah, it’s fishy.”

  “I agree,” Dante took a sip of the drink. “So, we don’t have any leads as of now?”

  Morana shook her head. “I’ve contacted the airport guy again but haven’t heard anything back yet.”

  Dante nodded. “Well, let me tell you what I know.” Putting his drink to the side, he took out a cigarette from his pocket, and hesitated, his eyes coming to Amara. She nodded at him to go ahead, and he lit it up. She didn’t have anything to contribute to the meeting per se, but Amara knew Dante wanted to keep her in the loop. She appreciated that, especially because if she was to be by his side, she wanted it to be a true partnership.

  He inhaled deeply, telling her just by the action that it was stressful. “The Syndicate is deeper than we thought,” he began. “I barely got through the surface and the filth is deep. They’ve been trading in children for at least twenty-years that we know of. Could be much more than that.”

  Amara felt her hand instinctively go to her stomach, before she breathed out, bile rising in her throat at what he was saying. It was ghastly. Children were a line never, ever to be crossed, and to hear they had been grossly violated for decades just made her skin crawl.

  Why aren’t you screaming anymore, slut?

>   The memory came out of nowhere, barreling into her consciousness. She had been a child too.

  She pinched the inside of her wrist and exhaled, listening to Dante’s voice, anchoring herself to the present.

  “I don’t know how many ways they operate,” he went on. “But I did find one of them. They have recruiters of sorts who scour through chat rooms and forums where assholes who are into kids go, and that’s where they find members to get into the organization.”

  “Factoring in at least twenty years, maybe more,” Morana voiced, “this could mean they have over hundreds of thousands of members.”

  “Jesus,” Tristan cursed, rubbing a hand over his face.

  The kids. The poor kids.

  Dante took another drag. “These members seem worthless though. We need to find more information about how deep this goes and who all are involved in this. The recruiter this guy told me about went by the username MrX.” Dante hesitated, casting a small look at her, before speaking again, a tic in his jaw. “He’s also the guy who ordered Amara’s abduction fifteen years ago.”

  The strings of a conversation from long ago drifted back to her, triggered by that name.

  ‘MrX is here.’

  ‘Show me the girl.’

  “He was there,” Amara murmured, her brain still trying to recall more of a conversation she didn’t even remember happening.

  Dante turned to look at her, one eyebrow raised.

  “That name triggered something,” Amara frowned. “I think I wasn’t fully conscious when I heard his name. But he was there for a moment.”

  Dante’s eyes blazed as he looked back at Morana. “Tristan and I looked into the building back then and it was a dead end. I want you to look again, look deeper, to see if we missed anything. Amara’s abduction never made any logical sense to me, and this MrX guy being connected to it… he’s a lead to pursue.”

  Morana nodded. “I’ll get on it. If they’re hunting these forums, there would definitely be a trail on the dark web. But it won’t be safe. I hadn’t realized how much the Reaper – my father, I mean, had been shielding me down there. It might take a while for me to cloak myself but I can do it.”

  Amara was kind of in awe of Morana’s brain and her confidence in her abilities. As a woman who had to rebuild herself from the ground up, and someone who still had days of self-loathing, that confidence seemed so unreachable to her. As a therapist, she knew that confidence was a well-made shield hiding a well of emotion.

  “Good, but it shouldn’t lead back to you,” Dante pointed out. “We can’t risk them closing the one door we found. Also, do me a favor and try to find something on the Shadowman, if you can.”

  “The Shadowman?”

  “He’s involved?”

  The other couple spoke at the same time.

  The Shadowman. That was an interesting name, especially given how they were earned in their world.

  Dante looked at Tristan. “My interrogation told me the one person the Syndicate is careful of is the Shadowman. So, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I want to meet my new friend and find out what he knows.”

  “Okay, but that’s a badass name,” Morana echoed Amara’s thought. “Who is this guy?”

  “No one knows,” Tristan answered her, his arm over the back of the couch behind her. “There were whispers about him on the street out of nowhere. Big players turned up dead right in their homes, no signs of entry or exit, no break-in, dead by a bullet, garrote, poison, ice. He has no MO, no face, no name. That’s why they started calling him the Shadowman.” He turned to Dante. “But why would the Syndicate be careful of him? He’s one man, they’re an entire organization.”

  “Why indeed,” Dante muttered, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “You feel like paying a visit to Alessandro Villanova tomorrow? We’ll take the jet.”

  Tristan nodded. “Time?”

  “Eight.”

  “Alpha,” Amara spoke up from the side, seeing all eyes turn to her. “That’s what he told me to call him. He was kind to me, especially given I was there under a false name. He even offered me protection.”

  “Did he now?” Dante stubbed the cigarette in an ashtray, his dark eyes on her, the possessive fire that had simmered in them over the years burning hot again. “Could it be because you were a beautiful woman all alone in his territory?”

  Amara narrowed her eyes. “I’m not defending him. Just keep in mind that he was good to me when he didn’t have to be.”

  Dante’s jaw clenched before he turned to the other two in the room. “We’re getting married.”

  Amara felt her jaw drop at his sudden announcement as Morana exclaimed an ‘oh my god’, and Tristan’s eyebrows hit the roof. He looked between the two of them before a small smile curved his mouth. “Congratulations.”

  “This is amazing!” Morana leaned forward, her excitement so genuine it warmed Amara’s heart. “Wait, where is her ring? Did you propose without a ring?”

  “It wasn’t planned. I’ll get my ring on her, don’t worry,” Dante reassured her. “You need to send Vin back to the compound. I need him here. And keep your eyes on Nerea. Any suspicious movement, tell me immediately.”

  Morana nodded, still grinning. “Okay, but I’m helping you plan the wedding. I’ve never been to a wedding!”

  Amara realized with surprise she hadn’t either. The first wedding she was going to attend would be her own.

  Tristan raised his glass. “To hope.”

  Coming from him, Amara truly felt it bubbling in her heart. Hope.

  Alessandro ‘Alpha’ Villanova was one reclusive motherfucker. Who the fuck stayed on the edge of the fucking Amazon?

  Dante felt the sweat collecting on his brow as he got out of the black jeep that had picked them up from the airport and driven them through Los Fortis to the outskirts of the city, to the point where he had started to wonder if these guys meant to dispose of him and Tristan in the jungle. He could see Tristan was on alert too, but silent as they jumped out of the vehicle and onto one of the largest compounds he had ever seen. Dante had thought his compound on Tenebrae was big and green but this one felt endless, stretching as far as the eyes could see, situated on a plateau that dipped into the vast ocean of green on the east side, the only access road connecting to the city on the west.

  “Follow me,” one of the henchmen who had picked them up, a tall, lanky guy with African heritage led them up the concrete pavement closed by climbing trellises on the sides. The scents of tropical flowers infused the air around them, the sounds of birds chirping close by a musical cacophony.

  Dante was impressed, and it wasn’t easy to impress him. As a courtesy, as it was when any leader wanted to enter the territory of another, Dante had had a meeting arranged with this man, curious to meet him but wary. The fact that the property he and Tristan had infiltrated had been registered in his name didn’t win him any points, but Dante also knew how easy it was to use something in someone else’s name. Keeping his mind open for the moment, and ignoring the fact that he’d tried to possibly make a move on his woman, Dante gave Tristan a nod and both men followed the guy.

  The trellises ended with the pavement and Dante came to a stop, his eyes looking upon one of the most spectacular creations he had ever seen. Just twenty minutes away from Los Fortis, Alessandro Villanova had built himself a compound the likes of which Dante had never seen.

  There were three tiers to the entire compound, the bottom one with at least ten or more small brown cottages around the incline, with sloping, red-tiled roofs that had faded to a light sandstone color. A three-story grey building was to the side on that tier, the only flat-roofed structure in the place. The second tier had bigger and fewer cottages, in the same brown and red, spaced out by lush green flora with colorful flowers. And on the top tier was a huge grey mansion of bricks and glass, with wide terraces on either side of the mansion, and a large curved pool that started beside the terrace and probably extended to the back.

  If places could giv
e people hard-ons, this one would top the list. The seclusion, the exoticness, the views, the savage grandeur, it was all combined together to be a private sanctuary to a small army, an empire hidden from the plain eye.

  “Fuck,” Tristan muttered from his side, taking the place in, and Dante felt that. Shaking his head, he took in the various people milling about the first tier and climbed up the stone steps that led from the ground to the top. Just living here was one serious workout.

  By the time they had climbed to the mansion, Dante could feel the sweat inside his suit. But fuck, just the view was worth it – the city in the distance on one side, and vast stretches of dark forest on the other.

  The henchman led both him and Tristan to a seating arrangement on one of the terraces, and Dante clocked in the lack of any security on this level.

  “He’ll be with you in a minute,” the henchman said and left them alone, descending the stairs they had just climbed. The stairs were the sole point of access that he could see.

  “No security,” Tristan commented, on the same page as him.

  Dante nodded, pushing his hands in his pockets and staring at the view. The air at this level was cold but slightly humid. “How did we never know about this place?”

  Tristan came to stand beside him. “It’s pretty peaceful here. Reminds me of these honeymoon resorts Morana keeps showing me.”

  Honeymoon resorts. The guy was talking honeymoon resorts. Pigs really had to be flying somewhere in the world.

  Dante turned to consider the other man. “You think you’ll ever go on a honeymoon with her?”

  Tristan stared out at the lush landscape. “I don’t think she actually expects us to. Not right now, anyway. The thing with the Reaper hit her hard. For now, she’s coping by distracting herself with travel plans after Luna, and I’m letting her. She’s processing.”

  Dante felt his lips lift. “You’re whipped.”

  “Fuck off, asshole.”

  Dante grinned, looking out at the cloudy sky. “I’m happy for you, you little shit. For both of you.”