Chapter 5 - The Sovereign at the Head of the TableElena stood beside the wheelchair, her fingers tightly wrapped around the brass spindle, as the heavy timber door of Room 12 was blown clean off its hinges under the concussive force of Marco Santoro’s combat boot.
Marco stepped into the room, his gun drawn and leveled, his dark eyes ablaze with murderous intent.
Behind him crowded eight armed commandos with tactical carbines, and behind them slipped Henderson, his face twisted in venomous panic as he pointed a shaking finger at Elena.
“There she is, Don Marco!” Henderson shrieked. “The thieving scullery maid! She must have snuck in here to steal your father’s jewelry and tripped the alarm wire! Shoot her down before she hurts the old man!”
Marco took two steps forward, his gun aimed at Elena’s chest.
He took in her ripped smock. He saw the dark, weeping scratch on her cheek, the purple finger marks on her collarbone, and the undeniable six-month swell of her pregnancy.
“Drop what’s in your hands, girl,” Marco commanded, his voice a low, terrifying growl.
Elena did not drop the brass anchor.
She stepped directly between Marco’s barrel and the wheelchair, holding the key high into the firelight.
“He is not an invalid!” Elena shouted, her voice ringing with absolute, fearless defiance. “He is not brain-dead! And while you were sitting in your high-rise offices, your manager was feeding your father moldy bread and letting him freeze in the dark!”
“Lying gutter rat!” Henderson screamed, lunging forward with a brass-knuckled fist aimed directly at Elena’s face.
He never touched her.
From the rusted wheelchair, a movement stunned every man in the room.
Don Silvio Santoro did not wait to be protected.
With an explosive, terrifying roar of awakened strength, the seventy-year-old sovereign pushed himself upright from the seat.
His legs trembled beneath his thin flannel trousers, but his spine was locked into unyielding granite.
He stood on his own two feet.
Six feet two inches of towering, ancient wrath, his silver beard bristling, his dark eyes burning with an apocalyptic fury.
His right hand shot out like an iron clamp, catching Henderson by the throat mid-swing.
The impact drove Henderson backward, lifting his feet clean off the floorboards and slamming him against the stone chimney with enough force to crack the mortar.
Henderson’s eyes rolled back, his tongue protruding as he clawed frantically at the old man’s iron fingers.
The eight mob bosses and commandos behind Marco fell to their knees in absolute, paralyzed terror, crossing themselves in the presence of a resurrected ghost.
Marco’s gun clattered to the floorboards.
He dropped onto both knees before his father, tears breaking through his hardened facade and streaming down his scarred face.
“Father...?” Marco choked out, his voice cracking into a broken, disbelieving sob.
Silvio did not let go of the choking manager.
He turned his head slowly, his lethal dark eyes pinning his son to the floor.
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His jaw moved, and the voice that had ruled the Atlantic coast for thirty years boomed through the freezing room like naval artillery:
“You let a dog... starve your father, Marco.”
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