The Reaper

by RuNyx

  Breathing through the pain invading her heart, Morana simply took strength from the man standing pressed into her, took courage from his presence, and kept her eyes on the scene and focused on it. She could break down later.

  “Well, well,” Lorenzo Maroni guffawed. “Look who turned up from the grave. I thought I’d buried you, old friend.”

  “Always the theatrics, Lorenzo,” her father commented, sounding amused.

  Lorenzo chortled. “You should’ve left the sleeping skeletons alone.”

  “Why did you call us?” Gabriel cut through the bullshit.

  Her father shook his head. “I wanted to ask about the trade. Weapons and children these days, isn’t that right, Lorenzo?”

  “Not this old tune, Reaper,” Lorenzo looked down at his friend’s cane. “You remember the last time you threatened to expose me?”

  “Very clearly,” her father stated. “You’re not the only ones I called for this meeting.”

  Morana watched, surprised, as Dante stepped into the warehouse and leaned against one of the pillars, casually smoking a cigarette. “Hello, father.”

  Tristan inhaled above her, his heart still steady against her ear. Morana felt her own start to palpitate. She had a bad feeling about this.

  Lorenzo Maroni looked slightly startled for a second before he recovered. “Good to see you, son.”

  Dante gave an empty smile, one like she’d never seen on his handsome face. “I wish I could say the same, especially after seeing the results of your depravity the last few days, father.”

  Lorenzo stilled before turning to the Reaper. “Why call us here?”

  Her father leaned on his cane and stood him, his body lean in front of Lorenzo’s stock. “To tell you that for the last few years, I have dismantled your business. To tell you that I have been planning this for over twenty years. You are true evil, Lorenzo. And you don’t deserve to live.”

  Before anyone could move, her father twisted the top of his cane off, bringing out a hidden blade, and sliced it across Lorenzo Maroni’s throat. Morana barely contained a gasp, her fingers fisting in Tristan’s t-shirt as he took aim and steadied his gun on the scene, watchful.

  “That’s for Elaina,” her father stated, his voice cold. “That’s for killing my love and my baby, for taking away my little girl, Lorenzo.”

  Dante simply smoked in the corner, seeing his father gurgling, seeing his knees shaking, seeing his crisp white shirt turning an ugly red.

  Maroni fell forward on her father, taking out something from his own pocket. It was a blade that he stabbed him with as he went down.

  “No!” Morana whispered before she could control it, her eyes widening.

  Maroni clutched his neck, trying to talk, his eyes popping out. Her father held the gaping wound on chest and continued talking through labored breaths. “This is your justice,” her father went on, bleeding out. “You bleed to death while your son watches without remorse. That’s what you’ve created.”

  Gabriel, who had been staring at his old partner in shock, suddenly bent down and shook the dying man. “Where is my daughter?” he demanded, shaking him. “Is she alive? Damn you, Lorenzo, tell me where is she?!”

  Maroni gurgled, choked, his eyes bulging, and fell limp to the ground. At a few minutes after midnight, Bloodhound Maroni died in a pool of in his own blood.

  Morana observed all of this in stunned shock. All of this happened not ten feet from where she stood.

  Tristan twitched against her. “Stay here,” he whispered into her hair before stepping out into the melee. She saw as Dante glanced up to see Tristan come out, his eyebrows raised but otherwise silent. He threw his cigarette away. Both men stepped up to her real father in sync, bending down to see his body.

  Dante patted his chest clinically and took out an envelope, exchanging a look with Tristan.

  Her father croaked out something that Tristan bent to listen to, before he and Dante stood up and walked to the warehouse door, talking quietly. Morana didn’t know what was in the envelope and at the moment, she didn’t really care.

  Gabriel continued to shake a dead Lorenzo, asking about his daughter’s whereabouts.

  “We both know the pain of losing a daughter,” Gabriel muttered on his knees in Lorenzo’s blood. “Except you know your daughter is safe and I don’t. Now I never will.”

  Her father didn’t answer.

  Gabriel started to laugh, the sound gaining volume, becoming more and more hysterical.

  Morana stepped out from behind the pillar, watching him, aware of both Dante and Tristan turning around to watch him as well.

  Tristan looked at her, and shook his head. “Let’s leave, Morana.”

  Gabriel’s eyes fell on her and he laughed. “Morana, the little whore in his bed.”

  He stayed on his knees in the blood, grinning like a madman. “You aren’t my Morana! I don’t even know who the fuck you are!”

  Morana raised her gun and pointed it to his head, her heart hurting. “Did you kidnap girls and trade them twenty years ago?” she asked, her voice shaking.

  But Gabriel was too far gone to answer her.

  “My Morana is lost. My Morana is gone. My Morana doesn’t even exist! And me? I would kill you every day I could. I want you to feel the pain my girl was feeling somewhere; I want you to bleed as she bleeds. I want you to question why Daddy didn’t love you like my baby must have wondered.”

  Morana stepped forward, her heart bleeding, hurting, for a girl she had never met, for herself, and for all the other girls who had been brutalized by these men. “Did you kidnap girls twenty years ago?”

  She was aware of Tristan’s eyes on her, of Dante watching the scene alert, but she couldn’t look away from the eyes of the man she had loved as her father for so many years.

  Those eyes darkened as they came to her and his laughter got worse.

  “You fucking whore,” he spit at her feet. “You don’t deserve to be happy, not when my baby isn’t.”

  “I was a child,” Morana told him, her eyes burning. “An innocent child.”

  “And I was a father!” he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. “I was a father to a beautiful baby girl who was replaced overnight! Gone! And you took her place. You’re not her! You’ll never be her!”

  “Did you kidnap girls twenty years ago?” she continued asking relentlessly, her arms shaking with the strain on her mind and her muscles.

  He stood up, taking a step towards her, the hatred in his eyes burning her, not answering her question. “Every time I looked at you, it reminded me of my baby. How she must have suffered. How she must have cried for me. You didn’t deserve her life.”

  Morana felt each word assault her like a bullet, finding its mark, digging into her skin.

  In the second that it took her to process his words, Gabriel took out his gun and pointed it at her head, his dark eyes unhinged on her. “Oh, he has a gun on me. He might kill me but I’d get my shot in. And I’d hit right between the eyes.”

  Morana stared at the dark hateful eyes, unmoving. “Did you kidnap Luna Caine?”

  “I’ve been crazy for a long time but I had to pretend, for the sake of my daughter, for the hope that one day Lorenzo would tell me where she was.”

  Morana elevated her own arm, pointing it to his forehead.

  Tristan’s calm voice came from her right. “Don’t do it, Morana.”

  “Oh, do it, Morana,” Gabriel’s voice mocked her name. “Your father is dead. Your mother is dead. I will kill your lover too. And your children-”

  “Don’t let him get to you,” Tristan’s voice came from the periphery, cool and collected. “I’ve got him. You don’t want to do this.”

  “Oh you want to do this, don’t you, Morana,” Gabriel cajoled, his eyes feral like she’d never seen before. “You know if you have daughters, I will steal them-”

  “Morana, don’t listen to him-”

  “-and put them in the trade. Just like I did twenty years ago-
”

  “I’ve got him, don’t do it.”

  “Stop it!” Morana screamed at both the voices coming at her, her hands shaking, her entire form trembling with pain and rage that just kept accumulating inside her body. She felt the ice and fire battle inside her, taking her from cold-blooded detachment to burning fury in moments.

  “Did you take Luna Caine?” she bellowed at Gabriel, her voice breaking.

  Gabriel laughed. “Yes, I did!”

  It happened in a split second.

  Before she had even realized it, her fingers had pulled the trigger, the recoil hitting her hard, the sight of a gaping hole in the head of the man who had been the only father she had known all her life.

  A tormented howl left her throat even as her knees collapsed.

  “Fuck!”

  Arms came around her, pulling her up even as her eyes looked at all the death around them. Lorenzo Maroni lying in a pool of his blood, his throat slit. Her biological father, a man she had known only for ten minutes but one who had protected her all her life, dead with a slight smile on his face, his shirt soaked in blood. Gabriel Vitalio, a man who had gone mad after losing his daughter, a monster, her father, killed by her.

  Morana took it all in, and blacked out.

  It was the sound of low voices that penetrated her consciousness.

  Blinking her eyes open, Morana looked up at the familiar ceiling of the cottage living room, and tried to sit up, her head hurting. A glass of water appeared in front of her and she took it, gulping down the cool liquid down her parched throat, looking up to see Tristan staring at her solemnly. Her eyes moved to the other occupant in the room, Dante, who watched her just as solemnly.

  Suddenly, everything came rushing back to her. Taking in a big lungful of air, her chest suddenly tight, Morana looked at the both of them, blinking her tears away.

  “Are they all dead?” she croaked out, putting the glass on the table in front of her.

  Both men, to her relief, nodded their heads. Dante elaborated, “There’s going to be a shitstorm.”

  Morana focused on her breathing, so much colliding and collapsing inside her she didn’t know how to think about any of it. Things were freezing. Her blood was cooling. Ice was slowly slithering into her veins. Nodding once, she stood up, needing space, needing distance, to bury it all.

  “I need a shower.”

  Without waiting for their response, she calmly walked out of the room and up the stairs, going to the bathroom and locking the door. She gripped the granite counter with her paling knuckles, leaning on her arms, looking up into the mirror to see her reflection staring back at her.

  Who was she?

  Who the fuck was she?

  She didn’t have a mother. Her real mother had brutally died with her sister in her womb. Her father hadn’t told her her name in the few minutes they’d spent together. Her father, who had been on a quest for revenge for two decades, had watched her for years and felt proud of her. And the man she had loved all her life as her father, the man whose approval she had longed for, had been an evil monster who had destroyed so many lives. She had killed him.

  Her biceps started to shake, her reflection blurring as her breaths became harder to take.

  A knock sounded on the door behind her.

  Morana opened her mouth to reply but no sound came out. She stared, wide-eyed, at her own reflection, trying to call out but her throat closed up, a ball lodging itself there, suffocating her.

  “Morana, open the door,” whiskey-and-sin came from the other side. How could she face him? How could she when her father had destroyed his life and taken his sister away, sending him spiraling into the dark? What if she looked into his eyes and saw real hatred for herself? She couldn’t take it. Fuck, she couldn’t see him. But she wanted to turn around and twist the knob open. She needed to. She couldn’t move.

  The knocks became more insistent. “Morana, open the fucking door!”

  She really, really wanted to. She wanted to fling herself into his arms and have him tell her that he didn’t hate her. But how could she face him?

  “I swear to god if you don’t open this damn door right now...”

  Ungluing her fingers from the counter, she managed to turn around and found her knees locking together. Black spots danced in front of her eyes, her lips parting to take in much-needed air. She couldn’t breathe.

  She heard a loud thump, then another before the door crashed open and his furious form stood there.

  “Jesus-” he took one look at her and swooped in, picking her up in his arms and carrying her to the shower, turning all the faucets on and sitting down on the bench with her in his embrace.

  The cold water jarred her system, jerking her body. Morana buried her face in his neck, finding that spot right at the juncture of his shoulder, and tried to gulp in some air.

  His arms tightened around her and he kept her close. “It’s okay. It’s just a panic attack. It’ll pass. Just focus on my voice and breathe with me, Morana.”

  She did. She focused on his voice, on the whiskey that got her drunk and the sin that made her feel alive. She breathed with him, feeling the slow expansion and deflation of his chest and matched hers to him.

  Her mouth trembled. “It should’ve been me.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked softly, getting entirely wet with her.

  “Your sister was with me. She should have been here. The real Morana was supposed to be here. I wasn’t. I don’t even know who I am.”

  A hand fisted in her wet hair and pulled her head back firmly, another wrapping around her throat, demanding her attention.

  Morana closed her eyes.

  “Look at me,” he ordered, squeezing her neck once.

  She didn’t want to. She was scared of looking at him, didn’t he know that.

  The grip on her neck tightened, and she opened her eyes, staring at his throat.

  “Eyes,” the demand found its way through the fog.

  Slowly, heart thundering in her chest, Morana looked at him.

  And found those beautiful, magnificent blue eyes looking at her with anything but hate.

  “You are exactly where you were supposed to be,” he told her, his voice leaving no room for doubts. “I know exactly who you are.”

  “Who am I?”

  “Mine.”

  Morana felt her chin quiver, her eyes burning.

  “You might have been born with another name but you are Morana. My Morana. You’re the girl I killed for and you’re the woman I’d die for. You are mine and you are exactly where you’re supposed to be. Don’t ever question that again, do you understand?”

  Morana did, she understood his words, but her foundations had crumbled, her entire life shaken, her future a blank. In that moment, sitting in the cold shower with him fully-dressed, looking into his blue eyes, there was only one thing that mattered.

  “Don’t hate me again.”

  His hand flexed on her throat. “Do you know why I enjoy holding you like this?”

  She shook her head.

  “I can feel your life under my hand,” he stated, his eyes burning on hers, his fingers locking her life to him. “Your body, your life, your heart – they’re all mine now. Trust me to keep all of them safe.”

  And Morana collapsed into his chest and broke down for everything they had lost, both of them holding on to the one thing they had found.

  “I want things to be clear going forward,” Dante elucidated, looking around at each of the men and few women in the room, his gaze dark. “I will be taking over all businesses starting next week and I want you to come forward and report directly to me about everything you were keeping under the rugs for my father. That’s not how things are going to work now and if you have a problem with that, there’s the door. Get the fuck out.”

  Dante had changed. She didn’t know what had happened or what he’d seen in the envelope, but the man with the easy smiles was heading towards an explosion she didn’t think he was awar
e of.

  Morana watched him across the table in the mansion, sitting there not in the capacity of his friend but as the surviving Vitalio heir in the West. The rest of the Outfit men gathered around the room, both in shock of Lorenzo’s death and Dante’s return from the afterlife.

  Tristan sat just as gravely beside him, his sharp eyes not missing a reaction from anyone’s faces. Nobody moved out. Dante nodded. “Good. Let’s mourn my father this week. Thank you for coming.”

  People slowly shuffled out of the room, not muttering, not discussing anything. Morana watched as Leo Mancini, Maroni’s younger brother, gave a bitter look to Dante before walking out.

  “He’s going to be a problem,” Morana commented once everyone had left.

  Dante got up from the chair and walked to stand at the window, looking at the people outside. While Dante was back to being dressed perfectly, he hadn’t shaved completely since he’d come back, and the scruff suited him. His profile looked severe, harsh, and a little intimidating, if Morana was being honest.

  “I know,” he said, his eyes outside. “Leo has always been hungry for power and wanted to step out of my father’s shadow. I’ll take care of him.”

  She didn’t doubt that.

  Morana looked at Tristan, to see him watching Dante with a slight frown.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Morana asked with extra enthusiasm, trying to lift the energy in the room a bit.

  “Do you want to run a mafia family?”

  Morana blinked at the question. “Um, no. Not particularly.”

  Dante finally smirked, turning to look at her, leaning against the window. “Are you two getting married?”

  Wait what?

  Morana looked at Tristan with wide-eyes, not knowing how to answer that question. Tristan shook his head. “Not until we find Luna.”

  Dante nodded, his gaze pensive. “You know, there’s a reason why the Alliance flourished so long under those three. My father and Gabriel handled the business, and your father handled the information.”