Chapter 10
Z
The metallic taste of blood filled Vincent’s mouth as he lay prone on the ruined rug, his nervous system screaming from the concussive force of the flashbang. His vision was a blurred, swirling vortex of grey shadows and dancing orange spots, but the animal instinct that had kept him alive through a decade of mob wars refused to let him die.
A mercenary stepped toward him, raising a silenced pistol to deliver a coup de grâce directly to the back of Vincent's skull.
Vincent didn't try to stand. He rolled hard to his left, grabbing the mercenary’s ankle and twisting it violently outward. The joint snapped with a sickening pop. The soldier screamed, falling sideways, and Vincent drove his elbow hard into the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe instantly. Vincent snatched the fallen pistol from the floor, fired twice upward into the chest of a second operative stepping into the room, and scrambled to his feet, leaning heavily against the soot-covered wall.
Victoria Sterling didn't even flinch at the sudden violent outburst. She simply took two measured steps backward, keeping herself framed safely behind her remaining three heavily armed bodyguards.
"Remarkable resilience, Vincent," Victoria murmured, pulling a sleek, gold-plated lighter from her pocket and casually lighting a thin cigarette. "Your father always said you were built like a draft horse. Unbreakable, but utterly lacking in vision."
"Touch my son..." Vincent gasped out, wiping a stream of warm blood from his forehead where a glass fragment had cut him, "...and I'll tear your world apart inch by agonizing inch."
Victoria took a slow drag, exhaling a plume of thin blue smoke into the ruined air of the living room. "You don't have a world left to tear, my dear boy. Do you really think I came to Maine just with a tactical squad?"
She held up a sleek black tablet. The screen displayed a live, high-definition satellite feed of a quiet residential street in Zurich, Switzerland. On the screen, a middle-aged woman and two teenagers were walking into a school building, completely unaware of the red crosshairs hovering over their heads.
Vincent froze, his breath catching in his chest. He recognized that woman. It was Sofia—Elena’s younger sister, who had fled to Europe eight years ago to escape the Moretti shadow, living under an assumed name that only Vincent and Elena had ever known.
"Elena thought she was so clever, hiding her family in Europe," Victoria smiled, her crimson lips curling into a cruel, perfect arch. "One press of a button on this tablet, Vincent, and your sister-in-law and her children cease to exist. Then my teams in London and Rome will execute the rest of Elena's surviving relatives."
Victoria lowered the tablet, her eyes hardening into two chips of emerald ice. "So here is the bargain. You step aside. You let me take the boy for twenty minutes. My medical team will extract the retinal scan using a non-lethal laser procedure—he won't even lose his sight, I assure you. Once I have the algorithm, I disappear, and you can go back to playing house in this miserable little village."
"No!" a voice screamed from the basement hatch.
Elena climbed out of the bunker, holding a heavy iron poker from the fireplace in both hands. Her face was smeared with ash and tears, but her posture was rigid with an unyielding, primal fury. "You will not lay a finger on my child! You monster!"
Victoria sighed softly, looking at Elena with patronizing pity. "How pathetic. A mother's love... the most predictable flaw in human architecture."
Victoria raised her gloved hand, signaling her guards. "Take the mother. Kill the girl if she makes a sound. Bring me the boy."
Before the guards could move, young Adrian walked slowly out of the dark basement hatch. He wasn't crying. He wasn't cowering. He held his wooden toy airplane tightly in his left hand, his gray-blue eyes fixed squarely on Victoria Sterling.
"Adrian, NO!" Elena shrieked, reaching for him, but Adrian stepped past her, standing directly beside his father.
"I'll go with you," Adrian said, his young voice ringing with a terrifying, eerie calm that shocked everyone in the room. "If you promise to leave my mama and sister alone."
Vincent looked down at his seven-year-old son, his heart tearing completely in two. He saw no fear in Adrian’s eyes—only the cold, calculating intelligence of the Moretti bloodline, a burden no child should ever have to bear.
"Adrian... no..." Vincent whispered, reaching out a trembling, blood-stained hand.
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Adrian looked up at Vincent, meeting his father's eyes. "Grandma told me something before she died, Dad. She said the Morettis never give up their keys... unless they're opening a trap."
Victoria’s smile instantly vanished.
