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.