Chapter 8 - The Traitor in Black Silk
Twenty minutes felt like an eternity in the subterranean shadows.
The gunfire above had begun to taper off, replaced by the occasional, sharp
crack of a single execution shot.
Then, the heavy oak door at the top of the library stairs creaked open again.
Soft, hurried footsteps descended the wooden steps. The rustle of expensive silk
dragged across the floorboards.
Baron growled softly, but it was not the ferocious bark he had given the gunmen.
It was a sound of deep, personal disgust.
I raised my weapon, aiming at the corner of the archway.
A figure stumbled into the dim emergency lights.
It was Bianca.
She was covered in mud, her black mourning veil torn away, her hands bloody
where she had picked the crude lock on the cold room in the slaughterhouse. In
her right hand, she clutched a small, pearl-handled .22 caliber revolver.
“I know you’re down here, Maria!” Bianca shrieked into the darkness, her voice
completely unhinged. “Vance’s men failed! Lorenzo killed them all! But you won't
leave this house alive! If I can't have the Geneva accounts, nobody will!”
She rounded the corner, her revolver raised.
“Drop it, Bianca,” I said, stepping into the center of the corridor with my Sig
Sauer leveled at the bridge of her nose.
Bianca froze. Her wild, bloodshot eyes darted from my steady hands to the
massive Doberman standing beside my hip, his fangs bared.
“You,” Bianca hissed, pure venom dripping from her cracked lips. “You little
peasant bitch. You think you’re one of them now? You think Lorenzo will look at
you as anything more than a maid who cleaned his toilets?”
“I don't care how he looks at me,” I replied, my voice steady as stone. “I care
that Donna Maria is safe behind three inches of reinforced steel. And you are
standing in a concrete dead-end.”
Bianca let out a manic laugh, raising her small revolver toward my chest. “I’ll
kill you first, you insolent—”
Baron didn't wait for her to pull the trigger.
He lunged forward with a ferocious, bone-jarring leap, his jaws clamping down on
Bianca’s right wrist with crushing force.
The small revolver fired wildly into the brick ceiling, stone chips raining
down, before clattering harmlessly into the water.
Bianca screamed in agony, collapsing against the damp wall as Baron pinned her
arm to the floor, his fangs buried deep into her flesh, his eyes fixed on her
throat.
“Call him off! Call him off! He’s tearing my arm off!” she wailed, thrashing
against the stones.
“Baron. Out,” a deep, commanding voice echoed from the staircase.
Baron instantly released his grip, stepping back two paces, though his low snarl
never ceased.
Lorenzo Moretti stepped out of the shadows.
He was a terrifying sight. His black wool sweater was torn across the chest,
soaked in blood that was not his own. In his hands, he carried an M4 carbine,
its barrel smoking faintly in the damp air. Behind him stood Matteo and four
Moretti enforcers, their faces grim, their weapons lowered.
Lorenzo didn't look at Bianca writhing on the floor.
His silver eyes moved across the corridor, taking in the two dead Vance soldiers
behind me, the spent brass casings on the floor, and finally settling on my
face.
He took three long strides toward me.
Before I could lower my pistol, Lorenzo reached out, his large, calloused hand
cupping the side of my neck, his thumb gently wiping away a streak of brick dust
from my cheekbone.
“Are you hurt, Evelyn?” he asked, his voice shaking with a terrifying, raw
intensity.
“No, Mr. Moretti,” I breathed, the adrenaline finally draining from my limbs,
leaving my knees weak. “Your mother is secure in the vault. Doctor Harris is
with her.”
Lorenzo let out a long, ragged exhale that sounded like a prayer.
He turned his head slowly, looking down at his cousin sobbing in the muddy
water.
“Bianca,” Lorenzo said, his tone dropping to that chilling, absolute register of
the grave.
“Lorenzo... please... blood is thicker than water...” she wept, clutching her
mangled wrist to her chest. “We’re family!”
Lorenzo reached into his tactical vest and pulled out the brass safe key covered
in his mother’s dried blood.
He dropped the key onto Bianca’s lap.
“My mother’s blood is on that brass, Bianca,” Lorenzo said. “And that is the
only blood that matters in this house.”
He looked up at Matteo.
May you like
“Drag her to the central courtyard. Chain her to the iron fountain. When the
storm clears at dawn, the five families will hold court.”
