Chapter 3 - The Blood of the Covenant
The nursery was silent as I waited by the door,
my ear pressed against the cold wood,
listening to the murmurs of the men I had once considered my brothers.
I could hear Dante giving orders,
his voice filled with a greedy impatience that proved he had already spent the inheritance he thought was coming.
He didn't know that the ventilation vent was large enough for a man of my size to climb through,
provided I was willing to drop thirty feet into the library below.
“Hunter,”
I said,
turning back to her as I began to strip off my heavy leather jacket.
“I need you to listen to me very carefully.”
“I am going to leave through the roof vent and come back through the main hall.”
“I want you to take Leo and hide in the reinforced closet behind the crib.”
“It has its own oxygen supply and a panic button that will alert the state police,
bypassing our local security.”
Hunter stood up,
holding Leo with a fierce,
protective grip that reminded me of Sophia in her final moments.
“What if you don’t make it back?”
she asked,
her eyes searching mine for a promise I wasn't sure I could keep.
“Then you stay in that closet until you hear the sirens,”
I told her,
my voice hard and flat.
“You take the money in the safe and you go as far away from this city as you can.”
“You raise him as your own,
do you understand me?”
“His name is Leo,
but he can be anyone you need him to be to stay safe.”
Hunter nodded,
a look of grim determination settling onto her face.
“I won’t let them touch him,”
she promised,
and for the first time,
I believed that a stranger could be more loyal than blood.
I climbed onto the changing table and hoisted myself into the narrow metal shaft,
the cold air biting at my skin.
Moving through the ductwork was a slow,
agonizing process,
every scrape of my shoes against the tin sounding like a gunshot in the quiet house.
I reached the library vent and kicked the grate open,
dropping onto the carpeted floor with a muffled thud.
The library was dark,
smelling of old paper and the expensive cigars I used to share with Dante.
I moved through the shadows of the mansion,
my gun held low,
my eyes scanning for the men who had betrayed me.
I found the first guard by the grand staircase,
a man named Marco who had been at my wedding.
I didn't give him a chance to speak;
I moved in silence,
the barrel of my gun meeting the base of his skull before he could even turn around.
I took his radio and heard Dante’s voice crackling through the static.
“Is it done yet?
The doctor is waiting at the gate.”
I didn't answer;
I moved toward the nursery hallway,
my heart a drumbeat of pure,
undiluted vengeance.
I saw Dante standing by the door,
holding a canister of gas that he was preparing to hook up to the room’s air intake.
He was smiling,
humming a tune that Sophia used to love,
completely unaware that the man he had betrayed was standing ten feet behind him.
“Dante,”
I said,
my voice a cold rasp that cut through the darkness of the hall.
He spun around,
the canister dropping from his hands and clattering across the marble floor.
“Lorenzo?”
he stammered,
his hand reaching for his holster,
but he was too slow.
I fired once,
the bullet shattering his kneecap and sending him screaming to the floor.
I walked over him,
my boots clicking against the stone,
and stood over the man who had tried to kill my son.
“You thought you could take everything from me?”
I asked,
the barrel of my gun pressed against his forehead.
“You thought I was so broken by Sophia’s death that I wouldn't notice you feeding my son poison?”
“It wasn't me!”
Dante wailed,
his face contorted with pain and terror.
“It was the doctor!
He said the baby wouldn't survive anyway!
I was just trying to speed things up so the family wouldn't suffer!”
I looked at him with a profound sense of disgust,
realizing that evil doesn't always come in the form of a rival boss;
sometimes it comes in the form of a coward who thinks he’s doing you a favor.
I didn't kill him then;
I wanted him to see the boy he had tried to destroy.
I unlocked the nursery door and threw it open,
calling out for Hunter.
She stepped out of the closet,
Leo cradled in her arms,
the child’s eyes open and alert,
watching the world with a newfound strength.
“He’s safe,”
Hunter said,
looking at the man bleeding on the floor with a cold,
shimmering anger.
“He’s safe because he chose to live,”
May you like
I replied,
“and because you chose to stay.”
