Chapter 5 - THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT
“Leo,” Damien whispered, the coat check ticket trembling in his massive hand.
I held Luca tighter against my chest, the baby’s cries softening into exhausted whimpers as I continued the steady one-two-three tap against his spine. “Your brother?”
Damien’s face hardened into a mask of pure, unadulterated grief, quickly calcifying into fury. “My older brother. The Commission exiled him to Palermo five years ago for running unsanctioned hits. He swore he’d come back for the throne.”
Damien looked down at Marcus’s lifeless body on the nursery floor. The realization was sickening. Leo hadn’t just orchestrated a coup; he had corrupted Damien’s closest friend, his wife’s doctor, and his own household. Leo had engineered a tragedy designed to make Damien look like a cursed, grieving, unstable leader, paving the way for a "sane" brother to return and take control.
“He forced Marcus to take the poison,” Damien said quietly. “He knew Marcus was compromised when the watch was dropped. Leo is cleaning house. Which means...”
Damien’s eyes snapped up to the security cameras mounted in the corners of the nursery. The tiny red recording lights were off.
“The security feed is down,” Damien realized, drawing a heavy, matte-black pistol from the holster at his waist. “Leo isn't in Palermo. He’s in Chicago. He’s in this house.”
Suddenly, the lights in the nursery flickered and died.
The entire mansion plunged into pitch darkness. The heavy thud of emergency lockdown doors sealing echoed through the massive estate.
“Get down!” Damien hissed.
I dropped to the floor, curling my body protectively around Luca. Enzo was still in his crib, asleep, oblivious to the nightmare unfolding around him.
The sound of suppressed gunfire—rapid, quiet thwips—erupted from the hallway outside. Men were shouting. Bodies hit the floor. The guards Marcus had posted were either part of the mutiny or were being executed by Leo’s loyalists.
“We can’t stay here,” Damien said, his voice barely a breath in the dark. He moved to the crib, scooping up Enzo with one massive arm while keeping his weapon raised with the other. “They know exactly where the nursery is.”
“Where do we go?” I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I thought it might crack them.
“There’s a panic room behind the master suite,” Damien said, moving toward a hidden panel in the nursery wall. He pressed a sequence of invisible buttons in the dark wood. A heavy, silent door slid open, revealing a narrow, pitch-black maintenance corridor. “Go. Stay behind me.”
I scrambled into the dusty, narrow passage, clutching Luca. Damien followed, letting the hidden door slide shut just as the main nursery doors burst open in a spray of splintered oak.
Flashlight beams swept the room we had just vacated.
“Find them!” a harsh, heavily accented voice commanded through the wall. “Leo wants the babies alive. The girl and Damien die.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, holding my breath to keep Luca’s whimpering muffled against my chest. Damien put a heavy, reassuring hand on my shoulder in the dark, guiding me forward.
We moved blindly through the walls of the sprawling mansion, the air thick with dust and the muffled sounds of a hostile takeover echoing through the vents.
“Damien,” I whispered, panic rising. “Luca is burning up. The withdrawal is peaking. If I don’t get fluids in him soon, he’s going to seize.”
Damien cursed under his breath. “The panic room has emergency medical supplies. Just hold on for two more minutes.”
We reached a heavy steel door at the end of the corridor. Damien punched a code into a keypad. The door hissed open, revealing a stark, brilliantly lit bunker lined with monitors, weapons, and medical supplies.
We rushed inside. Damien sealed the vault door, throwing the heavy steel deadbolts.
I immediately laid Luca on a sterile metal table, grabbing a bottle of purified water and a syringe from the emergency medical kit. I began dropping tiny amounts of water into the baby’s mouth, forcing him to swallow, trying to flush the toxins from his system.
Damien laid Enzo next to his brother, watching me work with a desperate intensity.
“Will they be okay?” he asked, his voice cracking. The invincible mafia boss was completely stripped away.
“Their vital signs are stabilizing,” I said, not looking up, focusing on the rhythm of their breathing. “They’re fighters. Like their dad.”
Damien let out a breath that sounded like a sob. He leaned against the steel wall, sliding down until he was sitting on the floor, his head in his hands.
I looked at him. Really looked at him. The scars on his face, the blood on his shirt, the absolute devastation in his posture. He was a monster to the world, but in this room, he was just a man who had lost his wife, his best friend, and his home in a matter of hours.
I finished stabilizing the twins, covering them in a clean, sterile thermal blanket. I walked over and sat down on the cold floor next to Damien.
I didn't say anything. I just sat beside him.
After a long moment, Damien reached out and gently took my hand. His fingers were rough, calloused from violence, but his touch was incredibly soft.
“Why are you helping me?” Damien asked quietly. “You know who I am. You know what I do. You could have walked away in that restaurant.”
I looked down at our joined hands. “Three years ago, I watched a doctor play god and kill the person I loved most. No one helped me. No one stopped him. I promised myself I would never be the person who stands by and watches someone else lose their world.”
Damien looked at me, his dark eyes filled with a raw, intense emotion that made my breath catch.
“Ellie,” he murmured, leaning closer.
Before the moment could go any further, one of the security monitors on the wall flared to life.
The camera feed showed the hallway outside the vault door.
Standing there, flanked by heavily armed men, was a man who looked like an older, crueler version of Damien. He was holding a child's stuffed bear—the one from the twins' crib.
Leo Moretti looked directly into the camera lens. He smiled, a cold, reptilian stretch of lips.
He held up the coat check ticket.
“Damien, little brother,” Leo’s voice crackled through the intercom. “I know you’re in there. You always were predictable. But you see, I planned for the panic room.”
Leo pressed a button on the wall keypad.
The air vents inside the vault suddenly hissed.
A thick, white gas began pouring into our sealed room.
May you like
“Carbon monoxide,” Damien yelled, jumping to his feet. “He’s flushing us out!”
“You have three minutes before you suffocate, brother,” Leo’s voice mocked. “Open the door, give me the boys, and I’ll make it quick for you. Keep it closed, and you all die in the dark.”
