The Predator (Dark Verse #1)

by RuNyx

Lorenzo 'Bloodhound' Maroni was the boss of the Tenebrae Outfit, his career longer than four decades, his rap sheet longer than her arm, his cold-blooded attitude a thing of admiration in their world.

Beside Lorenzo stood his older son Dante 'The Wall' Maroni.

Tristan Caine. He was an anomaly. The only non-blood member to have taken the oath with blood in the family.

Tristan 'The Predator' Caine. They called him the predator. His reputation preceded him. He rarely went on the hunt but when he did, it was over. When he did, he went straight for the jugular. No distractions. No playing around. For all his unruffled attitude, the man was more lethal than the knife cutting into her thigh. He was also the reason she had come to the party. She was going to kill Tristan Caine.

"I prefer you blonde." Her breath seized in her throat at the voice coming from behind her. The voice she hadn't been able to forget for a week. The voice that had whispered the ways of murder into her skin like a lover's caress. The voice of hard whiskey and sin. She swung her gaze up, her eyes leveling with the

"I prefer you gone."

"Death isn't the main course, sweetheart. It's the dessert."

Tristan Caine stepped out from behind her and joined his blood brother at his side, his muscular arms crossed across his muscular chest, no hint of a smile anywhere on his face.

At the same damn time

"I had no reason to believe otherwise." "Except the fact that I didn't even know you existed," Tristan Caine chimed in a dry tone. Liar. Her eyes flew to his, narrowing, the memory of his recognition of her name sparking inside her. Oh, he'd known of her existence, alright. But he was lying for some reason.

Liar liar pants on fire

"In the two times we have met, I can see how much you detest touching me. Pinning me to flat surfaces is loathsome."

"You are nothing like the women I like to pin. I certainly don't hate them." "You don't hate me," Morana pointed out. "No," he shook his head, his eyes hardening by the second, resolve entering them as she saw him inhale heavily. "I despise you."

"I am not killing you only because I don't want that fucking war." His tone made her flinch. The look in his eyes made her stomach drop. "Just because I cannot harm you doesn't mean I won't."

One day, she vowed, she would kill Tristan Caine.

"One day, I'm going to carve your heart out and keep it as a souvenir. I promise." She'd thought he would respond with silence, or with a clenched jaw, or with another jab at her. He didn't. He chuckled. Seriously? "You assume I have a heart, wildcat."

They've always been protective of women and children. Which is why what happened tonight was not ordinary."

He hated her, she had no doubt of that. She didn't know why, but he truly, deeply hated her.

"There was another reason why I followed you tonight." The air stuck in her throat and her chest tightened, her heart pattering. "What?"

"No one else gets to kill you, Ms. Vitalio," he spoke quietly. "The last face you see before you die will be mine. When it comes to death, you're mine."

"Surely you have another car I can borrow?" she asked in a completely natural tone. "Yes, but the storm outside is not feasible for driving." That made Morana turn, her eyes locking with his blue ones, a streak of dirt across his one cheek where he'd tussled on the floor. "You're worried about my safety?" she asked, disbelief thick in her voice. He raised his eyebrows. "I'm worried about my car."

And his body, she realized, was more than a weapon. It was a temple of strength. It was a keeper of tales — tales of his survival, of things she couldn't even fathom in this ugly, ugly world.

"My sister loved the rain." The softly spoken words, in that husky, rough voice, broke through her thoughts. And then the words sank in, stunning her. Not just because it was something supremely private he'd shared with her, but because of the deep, deep love she could hear in his tone.

In that moment, the enemy had done what no one had ever even tried to do for her. He had made her feel a little less lonely. The moment would be over when the sun came out.

"Tristan doesn't allow people into his space. Everyone who knows him knows that."

"We've been honest so far, Ms. Vitalio," he murmured. "I'll be honest now. I despise you but I want you. Fuck it, I do. And I want you out of my system."

Tristan Caine: Apparently, you're not out of my system, Ms. Vitalio.

She had no friends, no people who cared about her, not one place she could go to when she needed to stay.

She cried because she had no one to give her a shoulder and hold her as she cried because she had to wrap her arms around herself and hold herself together, in the basement of her enemy. She cried.

The moment she entered the bedroom, she blinked. The bathroom door was open, steam billowing out from a full tub while a large black t-shirt and drawstring pants lay draped over a chair, the sheets on the bed turned down.

He hated her, she had no doubts. He had claimed her death and he had tried to fuck her out of his system. He had not spoken a word to her, not even looked at her, and yet, there lay the evidence of a kindness that was completely at odds with everything she knew about him.

The doors swished open and Morana stared at the mirrored panel staring back at her, her stomach in knots as she realized that despite everything, Tristan Caine had made her safe for both nights that she'd been in his territory, both times when she'd been at her most vulnerable. He could have taken advantage. He could have turned her over to her father. He could have simply refused to take her in. But he hadn't. He'd sat down with her in silence and watched the rain that first time. He'd run her a bath and given her clothes and fed her this second time. He'd gotten her car repaired and refused his own summons to Tenebrae.

“Next time, I’m going to see how loud you can scream, Ms. Vitalio. I’m going to make you so sore you won’t know if it’s from the screaming or the fucking.”

The Predator. Always the hunter, never the hunted. He could not be hunted. He could not be tamed. He could not be destroyed. That kind of unbreakable aura was so, so tempting to her.

If there was one thing she knew for a fact, it was that this man would not let anyone else kill her. Her death was his, and only his.

She’d chosen to not betray him to these people. He’d chosen not to let her die.

“I don’t know whether to snap your neck or fuck the life out of you,” that voice washed over her senses, so low it made her want to roll her eyes back into her head and wantonly lay back on the counter. His words sank in.

“This body belongs to me, Ms. Vitalio,” he murmured in a low voice, the whiskey and sin combining to make her head tip back over his broad shoulder as her stomach clenched.

There had been enough lewd details to make her want to be sick, but still, it hadn’t been that which had brought her to the edge. It had been about her. The fact that she’d been one of the little girls too. She’d seen her own photograph staring back at her, her chubby cheeks wet with tears as she sat along with two other little girls. One of whom had been Luna Caine.

There had been another toddler in the picture between them. Three girls in the picture. Twenty-five girls gone missing. And Morana was the only one to have been found.

“You should have died,” her father repeated the words from the other night. “At least I wouldn’t have had to deal with you all these years.”

“I see how he looks at you. Despite knowing about you all my life, I never thought he’d be as he is with you.” “How is he with me?” the words escaped her softly before she could think about them. Amara didn’t look down at her, kept staring at the clouds overhead, her lips curling slightly. “Alive.”

I want you to know, woman to woman, friend to friend but also because you’re the only one I think can save Tristan from himself. To do that, you need to know the truth.

His baby sister was gone and it was his fault. Her protection had been his duty; her safety his responsibility. It had been seventeen days and not a clue about her.

Tristan wiped the tears that fell down his cheeks quietly with his long white sleeves. His father had taught him to never cry. He was a big boy and if he wanted to be powerful, he could never cry. Tristan tried. He tried really hard not to.

Tristan had listened to it all, looking at the rain outside the window, remembering how happy it had made Luna.

And then his father had mentioned the girl—the girl who’d been found. The only girl to have come home. That was why Tristan had sneaked in. Tristan had come to see the girl.

He just wanted to see her, maybe learn something about what had happened to his sister. He wanted to know if she had been with her; if she’d seen Luna.

He didn’t understand how. He didn’t understand why. But suddenly, the little girl’s eyes came to him beside the pillar in the shadows, found him. She tilted her chubby little head in wonder. And then she smiled. A completely toothless, completely adorable smile that just knocked him in the stomach. Tristan felt his own lips move. He felt himself smile for the first time in days since Luna had gone missing.

“Even if you break our deals, you can’t kill me. I have my own territory and fail-safes in place.” “I know. I may not kill you, now,” the Boss said. “But I can do to you what we did to Reaper.”

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.

As of tonight, her life was his. He’d given up everything so she could live. Her life was his.