Chapter 5 - THE TRAITOR’S BLOOD
Sloane Barrett stood at the top of the concrete stairwell, looking like a terrifying angel of death in her white gown. Behind her, two heavily armed men wearing the Barrett crest blocked the only exit.
“Put the gun down, Dom,” Sloane said, her voice echoing in the damp, claustrophobic space. “Don’t make me do this in front of the children.”
I didn’t lower my weapon. I aimed it directly at the center of her chest. “If you wanted the children alive, you wouldn’t have chased us into a corner.”
“I don’t want all of them,” Sloane corrected smoothly, her eyes flicking down to the four boys huddled behind Clara. “I only need one heir to satisfy my father’s obsession with the bloodline. The other three are... redundancies. And you and Clara are loose ends.”
Clara gasped, pulling the boys impossibly closer. Leo buried his face in my leg, his tiny hands gripping my slacks.
“Marco played you perfectly,” Sloane continued, walking down one step. “He convinced your father you were dead, shipped Clara off, and forged the paperwork. Marco gets the Moretti empire, I get the heir, and the two families merge under our control.”
“Marco is a dead man,” I growled, my finger tightening on the trigger.
“Marco is currently securing your family’s main compound,” Sloane smiled. “By the time the sun comes up, he’ll announce that the Barretts assassinated you in a tragic ambush, and he’ll step up to lead the retaliation. A retaliation my father will intentionally lose.”
I calculated the odds. Three targets. Narrow stairwell. If I fired, Sloane’s men would spray the basement with automatic fire. The children wouldn’t survive. I had spent my entire life building an empire of fear, and right now, it was utterly useless against the sheer vulnerability of my family.
“Drop it, Dominic,” Sloane demanded, raising her rifle. “Or I shoot the woman first.”
I slowly lowered my gun, placing it on the concrete floor. I kicked it away.
“Good boy,” Sloane sneered. She nodded to her men. “Grab the biggest child. Kill the rest.”
The two men started down the stairs.
But they forgot one crucial detail. They forgot who was standing behind me.
Clara didn’t scream. She didn’t beg.
With a movement so fast it was a blur in the dim light, Clara stepped out from behind me. She raised her suppressed pistol with both hands, her stance perfect, her eyes cold as ice.
Pfft. Pfft.
Two suppressed shots echoed like quiet coughs in the stairwell.
The two heavily armed Barrett enforcers dropped instantly, both taking a round precisely between the eyes. They tumbled down the concrete steps, landing in a heap at my feet.
Sloane shrieked in shock, swinging her rifle toward Clara.
But I was already moving. I lunged up the stairs, tackling Sloane before she could pull the trigger. We crashed onto the landing, her rifle clattering away into the alley.
Sloane fought like a cornered animal, clawing at my face, but I pinned her to the wet pavement, my forearm pressing hard against her throat.
“You stupid bitch,” I snarled, the raw, unfiltered monster of my mafia upbringing finally breaking loose. “You thought you could touch my family?”
Sloane gasped for air, her eyes wide with terror as she realized she had grossly underestimated the kindergarten teacher she had dismissed as a pawn.
“Dominic!” Clara yelled from the bottom of the stairs. “We have to go! Marco will hear the commotion!”
I grabbed Sloane by the hair, hauling her to her feet. I pulled a zip-tie from my pocket—a habit I had never outgrown—and bound her wrists tightly behind her back.
“You’re coming with us,” I told Sloane, shoving her toward the alley exit. “You’re our insurance policy against your father’s men.”
Luca appeared from the shadows, limping heavily but alive. He had managed to circle around the block during the firefight. He took one look at the dead enforcers and Clara holding the gun, and a slow, respectful smirk crossed his bloody face.
“Remind me never to piss off your wife, Boss,” Luca muttered.
“She’s not my wife yet,” I said, looking back at Clara as she ushered the boys up the stairs. “But she will be.”
We stole a nondescript minivan parked three streets over. It smelled like stale french fries and wet dog, but it ran. I shoved Sloane into the third row, binding her ankles to the seatbelt anchor. Luca took the wheel, while Clara and I sat in the middle row with the four boys.
The adrenaline was beginning to wear off, leaving a cold, terrifying reality in its wake. My empire was compromised. My right-hand man was a traitor. And the entire Barrett family was hunting us.
“Where to, Boss?” Luca asked, checking his rearview mirror constantly. “All our safe houses are blown. Marco knows all the locations.”
I looked at Clara. Her hands were shaking again as she smoothed down Max’s messy hair. She looked exhausted, haunted.
“There’s one place Marco doesn’t know about,” Clara said quietly, not looking up.
I frowned. “Clara, if Marco has the Moretti files, he knows every piece of property in New England.”
“He doesn’t know this one,” Clara insisted, looking up at me. Her eyes were hard, filled with a secret she had carried for six years. “Because it doesn’t belong to the Morettis. It belongs to me.”
Sloane let out a muffled laugh from the back seat. “You? A broke schoolteacher? You don’t have any property, sweetheart.”
Clara reached into her trench coat. She bypassed the pocket where she kept her gun and reached into a hidden lining. She pulled out a heavy, iron key attached to a worn leather strap.
“When your father told me you were dead,” Clara said, looking directly at me, “he gave me a bag of cash to disappear. I didn't spend it. I used a fake name and bought a fortified cabin in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Off the grid. No digital footprint. No property taxes linked to my name.”
I stared at her in absolute awe. While I thought she had run away in terror, Clara had been building a fortress to protect our children.
“Drive north, Luca,” I commanded.
The drive took two agonizing hours. The boys fell asleep, exhausted by the trauma of the night, tangled together in a pile of limbs across Clara’s lap. I sat beside her, watching the dark trees blur past the window.
“Clara,” I whispered softly, not wanting to wake the kids. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
Clara didn’t look at me. She stared out the window into the darkness.
“When a man tells you that you have to disappear because powerful people want to kill you,” she said, her voice devoid of emotion, “you don't sign up for knitting classes, Dominic. I spent five years paying ex-military contractors in cash to teach me how to protect them.”
She finally turned to look at me, and the vulnerability I had loved six years ago was back, shining through her hardened exterior.
“I didn't know if they would look like you,” she whispered, tears welling in her eyes. “But when they were born... all four of them. It was like looking at a ghost every single day. I couldn't lose them, Dominic. Not after I lost you.”
I reached across the dark van and took her hand. Her skin was cold, but her grip was fiercely strong.
“You didn’t lose me,” I promised, intertwining my fingers with hers. “And you’re never going to.”
Suddenly, Luca slammed on the brakes. The minivan skidded on the gravel road leading up to the mountain, throwing us forward against our seatbelts.
“Boss,” Luca said, his voice tight with panic.
I looked out the windshield.
We had arrived at the coordinates Clara had given us. The secluded, off-the-grid cabin in the White Mountains.
But it wasn't a safe haven.
The heavy oak front door was kicked completely off its hinges, hanging violently by a single splintered piece of wood.
And sitting perfectly centered on the front porch, illuminated by the headlights of our van, was a tiny, familiar object.
It was a small, blue child’s shoe.
Clara let out a blood-curdling scream.
I whipped around to look at the backseat.
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The boys weren't asleep in Clara's lap. The middle row was completely empty.
And the rear door of the minivan was swinging wide open into the dark night.
