BLOOD AND BOURBON: THE ECHOES OF BOSTON

By the time I reached the East Wing, my clothes were still damp, but my blood was boiling. The hallway was heavily guarded, four men armed with tactical rifles standing at attention as I approached. Harold stood by the door, his posture impeccably straight, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Status," I demanded, walking past him to put my hand on the brass doorknob.

"She ate a bowl of chicken soup, sir," Harold replied, his voice even. "She is currently drawing with some crayons one of the maids provided. She asked for her mother several times."

I studied Harold for a long moment. He had served my father before me. He had wiped the blood off my face after my first kill. Was he the rat? Was he the one who had condemned Elena to five years of hell? His expression betrayed nothing, but in my world, the best liars looked just like saints.

"Keep your post," I said, opening the door and stepping inside.

The guest room was massive, decorated in soft creams and golds. Emma looked impossibly small sitting at the oversized mahogany desk, her little legs dangling off the chair. She had changed out of her wet clothes and the oversized apron into a small set of pajamas one of the staff must have procured from emergency supplies. When she heard the door click, she spun around, dropping her red crayon.

"Mister!" She slid off the chair and ran toward me, stopping just a few feet away. "Did you find my mommy?"

I knelt down, forcing the anger out of my eyes and replacing it with a gentleness I didn't know I possessed. "I found her, Emma. She's downstairs with my doctors. She was very sick, so they are giving her medicine to make her better."

Emma's shoulders slumped in relief, a heavy sigh escaping her tiny lips. "Is she going to die?"

"No," I said fiercely, the vow echoing in the quiet room. "I will never let anything happen to her. Or to you. Do you know who I am, Emma?"

She tilted her head, her pale blue eyes—my eyes—studying me intently. "Mommy said you are a very powerful man. She said you are a dragon. You live in a castle and you breathe fire on bad guys."

I let out a breathless, broken chuckle. A dragon. It was an apt description of the monster I had become. "Your mommy is very smart. But to you, I'm just... Julian." I couldn't bring myself to say the word 'father'. Not yet. Not until Elena woke up and we faced the ghosts of our past together.

Before I could say anything else, the door opened, and Dominic stepped in, looking tense. "Boss. You need to come to the command center. Now."

I stood up, giving Emma a reassuring smile. "Keep drawing, little one. I'll be back soon."

I followed Dominic down the grand staircase into the tactical room hidden behind the library. Vincent, my underboss, was pacing in front of a wall of security monitors. He was a slick, calculating man who handled the financial side of the syndicate, rarely getting his hands dirty.

"Julian," Vincent said, stopping as I entered. "We have a massive problem. The jammer intercepted an outgoing encrypted signal from inside the estate just three minutes ago. Someone tried to send a burst transmission to a Moretti burner phone."

"Where did the signal originate?" I asked, walking over to the computer terminal.

"The West Wing guest quarters," Dominic said, pulling up a map of the estate on the screen. "Vincent's room."

Silence fell over the room, heavy and suffocating. I slowly turned my head to look at Vincent. His eyes widened in genuine panic, the color draining from his face.

"Julian, no," Vincent stammered, backing away, his hands raised. "I swear on my mother's grave, it wasn't me! I was in the parlor when the lockdown was initiated! Anyone could have planted a transmitter in my quarters!"

"You've been questioning my leadership ever since the Bentley blew up," I said, my voice terrifyingly calm. I drew the Glock from my holster, the metallic click of the safety disengaging sounding like a cannon in the quiet room. "You said I was distracted. You said the Morettis were offering a truce we should take."

"That was business!" Vincent pleaded, sweat dripping down his forehead. "I'm a pragmatist, Julian, not a traitor! Think about it! If I wanted to kill you, why would I use a bomb under your car? I sit across from you every day! I could poison your scotch!"

"Maybe you didn't want to get caught in the crossfire," Dominic suggested, his hand resting on the hilt of his own weapon.

"Bring him to the interrogation cells," I ordered, not lowering my weapon. "If he resists, shoot him in the kneecaps."

As Dominic moved to grab Vincent, my private secure line on the desk buzzed. It was Silas from the medical bay.

I snatched the receiver. "Is she awake?"

"She's conscious, Boss," Silas said, his voice tight. "Fever is breaking. But she's fighting the nurses. She says she needs to tell you something urgent about the bomb."

"I'll be right there." I slammed the phone down. I looked at Vincent, who was being cuffed by Dominic. "Keep him alive until I get the truth from Elena."

I took the secret elevator back down to the medical bunker. The moment the doors slid open, I heard the sound of breaking glass. I sprinted down the sterile corridor and burst into the trauma room.

Elena was sitting up in the hospital bed, an IV ripped from her arm, bleeding slightly. She was holding a shattered glass vial like a weapon, pointing it at a terrified nurse. When she saw me, her wild eyes softened, the glass dropping from her trembling hand to shatter on the floor.

"Julian," she gasped, her chest heaving.

I crossed the room in two strides, wrapping my arms around her, burying my face in her neck. She smelled like antiseptic and fever, but beneath it all, it was still her. It was still my Elena.

"I've got you," I whispered. "You're safe."

She pushed me back just enough to look me in the eye. "Julian, listen to me. The bomb under your Bentley... it wasn't Vincent."

I froze. "How do you know about the Bentley? It wasn't on the news."

"Because I saw the man who bought the C4 from a Russian arms dealer in the South End," she said, her voice shaking with residual terror. "I work... I worked in a diner where the Bratva hold their meetings. I overheard them. I saw the buyer, Julian."

"Who was it?" I asked, my blood turning to ice.