The Predator (Dark Verse #1)

by RuNyx

Lorenzo 'Bloodhound' Maroni was the boss of the Tenebrae Outfit,

Hmmm ;)

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

Tristan 'The Predator' Caine.

She was going to kill Tristan Caine.

"I'm no gentleman to give you a free pass," he spoke quietly. "You are in my debt."

"And I will collect it one day."

Hehehe a threat i love

Eagles. Dozens of them. Circling the building, again and again, calling to each other, the cacophony of their voices lost in the flap of their wings against the wind.

"I prefer you gone."

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

"Never make the mistake of thinking you scare me. It will be your last."

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

either leave alone or never leave at all.

She hated how she was expected to stay silent and just look good without having an opinion when she had more IQ than the entire table combined.

He was there. Right there. Walking, no sauntering, towards the table like he owned the restaurant, like he owned every ounce of air in that room, as though he commanded it to will.

A shiver that apparently he detected from three tables down, because the moment she trembled, his eyes flared with something, something she couldn't place, something that wasn't triumph, something that wasn't gloating. She'd never seen that something be directed right at her before with that intensity.

"Your heart is beating way too fast for someone so in control,"

"I warned you not to think, for one second, that you know me." "And I warned you not to think, for one second, that you scare me," she reminded him in the same whisper.

A predator in the skin of a man.

If voices could be drinks, his was a centuries-old vintage whiskey, rolling off the tongue, down the throat, leaving a trail of fire inside, making every cell in the body aware that it had been consumed.

"You broke into my house. I thought I'd return the favor."

"Don't play with toys you don't understand," his voice whispered right against her ear,

"One day, I'm going to carve your heart out and keep it as a souvenir. I promise."

"Thank you," she spoke sincerely, "for taking care of me when I was vulnerable. I'll not forget this kindness."

"I know what it's like to be a woman alone on enemy grounds, and I wouldn't wish it on anybody. Don't thank me for it. Just do the same for me someday if I need it."

"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."

Secrets were the stones that paved these roads. Threats were the truths that lay in this ground, morbid tales of lost men never to be seen again ringing around in the wind.

"She stays here," he growled. Growled.

He had made her feel a little less lonely.

Because Morana Vitalio was many things but she wasn't a coward. And if she was going to die, she was going to die knowing that.

She shouldn't be thinking about him. But god help her, she couldn't stop.

"I'll be honest now. I despise you but I want you. Fuck it, I do. And I want you out of my system."

but standing there with the realization that her enemy was more respectful of her than her own father stung.

She cried for the girl she had been, the girl who had died after the fall today. She cried for the lost hopes she'd been clinging to, for the lost dreams of maybes. 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.

Knowledge was power, but in the wrong hands, it was a weapon.

At what point had being watched by someone in the dark from behind become not something threatening but thrilling? And only by him, because Morana knew, was it someone else, she’d be running for the knife.

Me: Planning to make me go somewhere, Mr. Caine? Tristan Caine: On the contrary, I’m planning to make you come somewhere, Ms. Vitalio. 5 minutes.

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.

Saving her had destroyed him. One day, he vowed as he watched a man pick up the little girl and take her away, his eyes on her, he would collect his debt.

The blood he had shed to save her; the blood he had marked her with trying to clean her.

Was this what friendship was like?

While the boy he’d been might want her life, might still want to hold on to the debt in his mind, the man he was only wanted her. That was his weakness.

Everything else aside, the bottom line was she was alive today because he’d chosen to save her.

“I know it came at a cost nobody should’ve had to pay, least of all a young boy, and I’m so, so very sorry for all of it.”

“You deliver my death or you let it go.