No.
Fuck no.
“Tristan,” she gripped his arm, shaking him, her eyes watering. “Where is Dante?”
He shook his head.
No.
No.
God, no!
He just meant Dante was busy managing the fire and wouldn’t be coming with them. That’s what he meant.
“Will he come later?” she asked, her voice breaking with hope.
God, no. Please no.
“We need to go,” he said, his own voice hard, closed-off.
Morana looked at the flames lighting up the sky and started to walk towards it.
A hand gripped her arm, turning her sideways.
She looked up at him. He shook his head once.
Tears streaked down her cheeks, a long, painful wail leaving her chest as she collapsed into his arms, sobbing for a brother she’d only had for a few days.
There were always two types of destruction. Reading history, one could analyze the decimation of any empire and slot it in two. One type was like a house of cards – one piece went missing and the whole fucking thing crumbled to the ground instantly. The other type, the one harder to pin down and slower to take action, was like the dominoes - one only saw the final piece fall but not see the trail of pieces piling one after the other behind it.
Watching the mansion driveway fill with cars from the window of the cottage, Morana couldn’t pin down which type this was.
Grief overtaking her heart, she stood alone at the window because Tristan had more important matters at hand – like trying to find Dante’s body. Her heart might be filled with grief but her emotions had calmed down enough for her to pause and think. She needed to think because if there was even a sliver of hope, she was clinging to it.
Morana replayed the entire scene in her head over and over again.
She and Tristan had been in the alley when the fire had broken out, the cause for which was under investigation. Three bodies had been recovered from the back, burned beyond recognition, and Tristan had thought one of them was Dante. But was it?
She looked down at her phone and mulled it over. Dante’s phone was disconnected and had been recovered at the site. A body with his clothes and watch had been recovered as well but it could be someone else. He had been acting oddly enough for her to question everything. It was entirely possible that she was clinging to false hope but she couldn’t, couldn’t, accept the fact that the man who had become her protector and family could suddenly be taken away from her. She wouldn’t accept that without concrete evidence.
The mansion was ablaze with lights where Lorenzo Maroni had, it seemed, called the entire Outfit after getting the news about his oldest son. They all thought he was dead – Morana wasn’t sure. She hadn’t even been able to question Tristan before he had dropped her and taken off.
Not knowing what she could do, Morana just observed as men got down from the cars and decided she needed to listen in on the meeting.
Opening
up her laptop with purpose, she quickly found the microphone she’d installed surreptitiously in the study one morning and activated it, plugging in her earphones to listen better as she watched out the window.
“They found his body,” a man spoke into the room and Morana gripped her laptop, her heart suddenly pounding. Maybe listening in wasn’t the best idea.
“This is bullshit,” Lorenzo Maroni roared in Morana’s ears. “I don’t believe this.”
There was silence for a beat before one brave man spoke, “It can be hard to accept, Lorenzo. It’s a shock to all of us. He was your heir. You’d groomed him all your life to take over. But it’s his body. I checked the proof myself.”
Maroni huffed out a laugh. “That is exactly why I know it’s not him. He’s got all you morons fooled.”
Another voice chimed in, “We need to have a funeral, Bloodhound. People are shaken. Our enemies have their eyes on us. His body is in the morgue. We have to keep up the appearance.”