Chapter 9 - Blood and Iron
Adrian did not look like a man who had been poisoned two weeks ago.
He wore no coat now. His white formal shirt was torn at the shoulder, soaked in dark grease from the carriage house mechanisms, and his chest was strapped into a black nylon rig holding three spare magazines. His left hand was clamped over a Remington 870 police shotgun, its steel receiver smoking faintly in the cool air.
In his eyes was an emptiness so vast, so terrifying, that even Vincent, half-crazed with panic, stepped back two paces into the ruined bedroom.
“Adrian,” Vincent gasped, raising both hands, the silver Colt trembling in his grip. “Listen to me—the council—Luciano made the offer—it was business, Adrian! Just business!”
Adrian didn't answer with words.
He racked the slide of the shotgun. The heavy, metallic *CLACK-CLACK* of the action was the loudest sound in the universe.
“You came for the child, Vincent,” Adrian said. His voice was barely a whisper, yet it cut through the smell of powder and blood like a razor.
Vincent fired.
The .45 round was wild, deflected by the terror in his wrists; it struck the ceiling, showering them with plaster rosettes.
Adrian didn't even flinch. He fired from the hip.
The load of heavy buckshot struck Vincent in the left knee. The underboss screamed—a wet, horrific sound—as his leg collapsed beneath him like a snapped dry branch. He hit the floorboards, his silver pistol skittering away into the dark corner near the headboard.
Titan released Victor’s broken arm. The dog stood over Vincent now, his chest heaving, his gray hide streaked with crimson that wasn't his own, his teeth dripping foam and blood two inches from Vincent’s sweating neck.
“Down, Titan,” Adrian commanded softly.
The dog did not step back, but he held his position, his throat vibrating with a low, mechanical drone that kept Vincent pinned to the floor as if an iron anvil were resting on his throat.
Adrian walked forward. His dress shoes clicked rhythmically against the floorboards, stepping over the broken glass and the fallen men without looking down. He stopped beside Vincent, looking down at his cousin with an expression of mild, clinical detachment.
“Adrian... please,” Vincent sobbed, clutching his shredded knee, tears cutting tracks through the plaster dust on his cheeks. “We’re blood. We’re Moretti. Your father wouldn't—”
“My father,” Adrian said softly, “would have fed you to the harbor crabs ten years ago.”
He dropped the empty shotgun to the floor. It clattered against the wood with a heavy *thud*.
Adrian leaned down, picked up the silver Colt .45 Vincent had dropped, and checked the chamber.
“The Luciano family will not be coming to help you, Vincent,” Adrian whispered. “Dante intercepted their vans on the parkway twenty minutes ago. Half of them are dead. The other half are currently explaining their business to the state police in a ditch in Revere.”
Vincent’s face went the color of curdled milk. “Adrian... don't.”
Adrian turned his head slightly.
Behind the bed, a small, terrified sob sounded.
Sophia had peeked around the corner of the mahogany headboard. Her hazel eyes were wide, taking in the blood, the shattered door, the ruined men on the floor, and the silver gun in Adrian’s hand.
Adrian froze.
His amber eyes met the child’s.
In that fraction of a second, the entire trajectory of three generations of violence hung in the balance. Adrian looked at his own reflection in the girl’s eyes—a monster standing in a room full of bodies, about to execute his own kin on the floorboards of his ancestral home.
Then, Elena stepped forward.
She didn't look at Vincent. She didn't look at the fallen men. She stepped past Titan, reached down, and placed her small, trembling hand over Adrian’s wrist—the wrist holding the Colt.
Adrian’s fingers tightened on the checkered grip. For a second, his muscles were like iron bands, ready to tear through her touch.
“Adrian,” Elena whispered.
He looked at her. Her face was smudged with soot, her sweater torn at the collar, but her eyes held neither fear nor judgment. They held only that fierce, maternal clarity that had walked into his study two weeks before.
“Not in front of her,” Elena said softly. “Please.”
Adrian’s breath came out in a long, shuddering hiss that rattled against his ribs. The madness in his amber eyes slowly, painfully receded, replaced by the gray exhaustion of a man who had fought his way back from the grave.
He looked down at Vincent.
“Dante,” Adrian said, without looking at the door.
Dante stepped through the ruined threshold, his sidearm drawn, two fresh security guards flanking him with zip-ties and first-aid kits.
“Get this filth out of my house,” Adrian said, his voice flat and dead. “Take him to the cellar. Call the district attorney. Give them the Antwerp manifests, the warehouse leases, and Vincent’s signature on the Luciano bills of lading.”
Vincent looked up, his jaw slack with disbelief. “You’re... you’re turning me over to the feds? You don't involve the law! That’s the rule!”
Adrian tossed the silver Colt onto Vincent’s chest with a contemptuous flick of his wrist.
“The Moretti family is out of the logistics business, Vincent,” Adrian said cold. “And you are going to spend the next forty years in a federal penitentiary in Colorado. Take him.”
Dante grabbed Vincent by the collar of his camel-hair coat, dragging him across the splintered floor toward the landing. The wounded underboss’s shrieks faded down the grand staircase until the heavy oak doors below slammed shut, cutting off the sound forever.
Silence fell over the fourth floor.
The room smelled of sulfur, plaster, and sea air blowing through the shattered dormer window.
Adrian stood in the center of the destruction, his frame suddenly seeming to sag, as if the iron cables holding his spine had finally been released. He pressed his left hand against his chest, his breathing shallow and ragged, his skin turning that terrible, waxy gray once more.
“Adrian!” Elena caught him by the waist just as his knees gave way.
He was heavy, his dead weight nearly pulling her down, but she braced her hips against the corner of the writing desk, holding him upright with a strength born of pure desperation.
“Reynolds!” Elena screamed toward the landing. “Dr. Reynolds! Get up here!”
“I’m fine,” Adrian rasped, though his eyes were rolling upward into his head. “Elena... the girl...”
“She’s safe!” Elena cried, her tears finally overflowing, streaming down her dust-covered cheeks. “She’s safe, Adrian! Look at her!”
Sophia ran from behind the bed. She didn't look at the blood. She ran straight to Adrian, throwing her arms around his knees, burying her face into his trousers.
Titan followed her. The massive dog was bleeding from a cut on his shoulder where the breaching blast had peppered his hide, but he ignored the wound completely. He pressed his broad, warm flank against Adrian’s right side, acting as a living buttress, holding his master off the floor with his hundred and thirty pounds of solid muscle.
Adrian looked down.
He saw the child clutching his knees. He saw the dog bracing his hip. And he looked into Elena’s face, her hands gripping his torn shirt, her tears falling onto his collar like warm rain.
A faint, broken smile touched the corners of Adrian Moretti’s lips.
May you like
“Yellow,” he murmured, his fingers brushing the fabric of Sophia’s cardigan before darkness took him again. “The warmest color...”
***
