The words stopped her in her tracks. Rage flooded her system as she whirled around to skewer him.
“I didn’t get the memo that I’d been promoted to a prisoner,” she spoke in a cool voice, completely at odds with the riot inside her.
His face remained blank as he placed the bowl on the counter and leaned against it, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I’ve treated you as a guest here, Ms. Vitalio, we both know that,” he pointed out evenly. “You’ve had the access to your beloved car. You’ve had the freedom to come and go as you please. But yesterday, you changed the equation. You followed me the entire day, putting not only your life on the line but mine. Not just once, but repeatedly.”
He pushed away from the counter and started walking towards her slowly, his arms still crossed and face hard, the shadows playing on his face, the longer scruff and stiff look making him seem even more intimidating than he was.
“Do I need to remind you we’re on the cusp of war here?” he grit out, blue eyes sparking fire. “Just because your father hasn’t retaliated yet, don’t think he wouldn’t. I insulted him on his territory, not only by hitting him but by letting you stay here. That’s not considering your wild codes out there that need to be found.”
He wasn’t wrong. But Morana didn’t utter a word, letting him speak as he stopped a few feet from her.
“So yes, I’ve explicitly told the guards not to let you out unless I say so, because if your pretty neck is wrung before the codes are found, all of us are screwed.”
Her heart stopped for a second before picking up pace again. “Is that why you didn’t kill me back at the casino? Why you haven’t killed me yet?”
He tilted his face to the side, expression blank. “Of course.”
A pinch of hurt curled inside her heart but she shoved it away, knowing this man had more layers to peel than a stubborn onion, and she couldn’t see them with teary eyes. She narrowed her gaze and focused on his eyes, seeing them without her own emotions clouding them.
Her lips curled as she shook her head, turning away to leave before he could say anything, pressing the button for the elevator. “Tell the guards to let me through. Otherwise either they’ll get hurt, or I will. Dealer’s choice.”
The doors swished open and she stepped inside, pushing the button for the parking and finally looking at him again.
“Oh, and keep telling yourself that’s why you didn’t kill me, Mr. Caine. You might get some decent sleep.”
His eyes flared and the doors closed, shutting him out, the mirrored panels reflecting her own form.
Morana looked back at herself, at the smug smile on her face, and realized, that after a few minutes with the infuriating man, her hands had finally stopped shaking.
She was in the graveyard, lying on the grass, looking up at the cloudy sky.
This was her place.
Morana had discovered th
is small little graveyard right beside the airport by accident a few years ago. It was closed off from the runway by a huge fenced wall. When she’d stumbled upon this place while driving around, she’d become addicted to the peace and quiet immediately. The ground had shaken beneath her feet and she’d looked up, to see the belly of a monstrous plane just a few feet above her head, taking flight. Something so, so much bigger than she had made her feel so small beneath it. That had been the moment she’d been hooked.
She’d come to this place countless times since then. Just to lie back on the grass and see plane after plane leave every five minutes, the noise rumbling everywhere in her body, the seclusion of this place making it just hers. This was where she thought the best. She’d made a lot of brave decisions for herself here, and in the insanity of the past few weeks, she’d forgotten how much she missed this place.
Lying on the soft grass now, Morana felt the tell-tale rumble in the ground and smiled up at the cloudy sky, folding her hands on her stomach as the rumble grew and grew until her entire body shook with the ground. With a roar, the nose of the plane came into view, followed by its underbelly, so vast and so close above her she could feel it in every pore, the noise deafening.
She kept her eyes glued to the plane as it soared higher and vanished from sight, leaving behind utter silence.
Making her feel alive and then leaving her with the dead. Quite literally.
Morana chuckled at her own thoughts, before sobering, sorting out the mess her head had been for days, dividing and categorizing her problems into three neat stacks.
The first stack was the codes. Although she’d almost written the sister program that would render those codes useless, it wasn’t that which worried her. Someone had hired Jackson, while pretending to be Tristan Caine, to woo and get her to make the codes, framing the other man without his knowledge. Had she not confronted him at his party, he probably wouldn’t have found out until it was too late.
But who, and why? The person clearly knew Tristan Caine enough to want to frame him but how did they know about her? The only people who knew about her expertise were people who were into programming, and not many of them were found in the mob. Except within the span of a few weeks, she’d encountered two such people. Clearly, her anonymous source was an expert in finding things digitally, things even she hadn’t been able to find.
Could the two be related? And what did it all have to do with the Alliance?
The second stack was Tristan Caine. Even as everything inside her shied away from wanting to take a close look at whatever she felt about him, she forced herself to do exactly that. Denial wouldn’t do her any good.
She desired him, she’d admitted that much. Not just a quick fuck against a wall as they didn’t look at each other. She wanted him to stroke her back like he’d done last night for a few seconds. She wanted, for once, for him to hold her breasts and not just make her wet with his fingers. She wanted to be able to caress that jaw and feel the scruff rasp against her palm. She wanted to feel the scars under her tongue. She wanted to trace those tattoos with her fingers. She’d desired him before and still did. Yet, her hunger was not appeased, not satiated, and it had been dumb of her to think one time would have been enough.