The Syndicater: A Dangerous Dark Romance (Dark Verse Book 6)
The Syndicater: Epilogue 4

On a dark night, Lyna looked around her full house, her heart full.

Her family were all in her home in Bayfjord for a dinner night. They came once every three months, leaving Tristan and her to cook and prepare the meals. That was one of her favorite parts about bonding with her brother and son, both men loving being in the kitchen as much as he did, cooking the best meals for them all. That was her moment with Tristan and Xander and she wouldn’t change it for the world.

Lyna—now used to her new name, one she’d made for herself—looked at the adults, Dante and Amara, Alpha and Zephyr, Tristan and Morana, all sitting around the table with the kids in between—one Maroni daughter and two Maroni sons, one Villanova daughter, and Lex, who Dante and Amara had adopted, and Xander. Xander, who lived with Tristan and Morana and was legally their child, but who spent a weekend every month with her and was biologically hers. He somehow balanced both, and so did she and her brother. They all loved Xander and wanted the best for him, and this was the best.

She felt arms come around her waist and turned her face up to see the man who was a myth to so many and a monster to so many, standing behind her as always.

‘Your family keeps getting bigger, flamma,‘ he complained, referring to the pregnancy Morana had announced. It had come as a beautiful surprise and Tristan was the happiest she’d seen him since she’d known him. It was a new beginning for them.

She smiled at the words of her husband. She knew he wasn’t put out by the number of people who kept getting added to his list of people to protect. He had been heading The Syndicate for almost two years now, replacing the man who had been his sperm donor, creating him in a lab of experimentation rather than human. Maybe that was why he was so different, so extraordinary. It didn’t matter. He had shut down all projects and trades related to children and was flushing the market out so that a vacuum couldn’t be created, eradicating the potential suppliers before they could reach the peak with money, manipulation and murder. He sat at the top of the pyramid with a council of Tristan, Dante, Alpha, and Morana assisting him. She would’ve thought they would have protested his takeover and his total control over the organization—especially her brother, who still barely tolerated Dainn’s existence in her life.

But they all knew, even her brother, that Dainn was the right person for this role. What made people sick and disturbed left him completely neutral and still focused on his mission. That was power in this context, and none of them had what he did—the stomach to do whatever was necessary to ensure the power remained with him.

She’d learned of her own power, her own role, in the last two years too. She was his moral compass, the only one in the world who could keep him in check as he did what was needed. He didn’t listen to or heed to anyone. A train could be speeding at him and he wouldn’t budge but a word from her would make him move. He’d told her once that he was a weapon she could point anywhere, and she now knew that was her power.

She looked around the full house. The four cats—two her own, one Morana’s and one Amara’s—ran around the only dog—Xander’s boy—making him spin in circles. She looked at all the people and cats and dogs, and it felt surreal to think this was her life.

‘You’ll keep them safe, won’t you? All of them?’

His eyes locked with hers. ‘For you, anything.’

Her eyes lingered on the born and unborn children who had good parents. ‘And they will never go through what we did?’ she asked him.

‘It ended where it began,’ he stated. ‘This is a new era.’

The end of one era. The beginning of another. And this one was all of theirs.