Chapter 7 - The Bloodline Contract
Gunfire shattered the opulent silence of the thirty-second floor.
A bullet tore through the floor-to-ceiling glass, sending a shower of crystalline shards raining down onto the Persian carpet.
The Chicago wind shrieked through the gaping hole, whipping the silk drapes into violent white banners.
Valentina had fired the first shot, the round snapping past Alessandro’s shoulder and burying itself into the mahogany paneling.
Alessandro didn't flinch.
With the terrifying, predatory instinct that had kept him alive through a dozen gangland purges, he threw his body across mine.
His massive weight slammed me onto the floor, his broad shoulders shielding my head and torso from the incoming fire.
"Marco, suppress them!" Alessandro bellowed against my ear, his voice cutting through the deafening cracks of gunfire.
"Get the perimeter secured!"
I pushed hard against his chest, gasping for air amidst the smoke and the smell of cordite.
"Get off me, Alessandro!" I shouted.
"Stay down, damn it!" he roared back, his eyes wild with a feral, protective fury.
"You wanted your answers, Elena, now stay alive long enough to hear the rest of them!"
Across the ruined living room, Valentina was retreating behind the heavy marble bar, firing wildly through the decorative mirrors.
Two of her personal bodyguards, dressed in gray tailored suits, had breached the service elevator behind Marco’s squad.
The corridor was a howling corridor of lead and concrete dust.
One of Alessandro's men took a round to the collarbone, collapsing against the entryway console with a wet, choked scream.
Marco dropped to one knee, returning fire with methodical, surgical precision.
His heavy .45 barked three times in rapid succession.
The lead Russo gunman lurched backward, blood spraying from his chest, and crashed through the elevator doors into the shaft.
"Don Moretti!" Marco shouted through the haze of gray smoke.
"The Russo syndicate has two armored vans coming up the freight lift!"
"Carlo Russo knows we have Elena!"
"They are burning the contract, boss!"
"They don't want a merger anymore—they're executing a full decapitation strike!"
Alessandro dragged me behind the overturned mahogany dining table, his hand gripping my wrist with bruising strength.
"Valentina!" Alessandro bellowed across the room, his voice rising above the roar of the wind.
"Throw the weapon down!"
"The police tactical units are already rolling from the 1st District!"
"You have three minutes before this entire tower is crawling with federal SWAT!"
A manic, hysterical laughter drifted from behind the marble counter.
Valentina leaned around the corner, her hair wild, her white pantsuit splattered with black soot and fine glass dust.
"You think I care about the federals, Alessandro?" she screamed.
"My father already signed the cooperation agreement with the Department of Justice two hours ago!"
The words hit the room like a concussive shockwave.
Alessandro’s grip on my wrist tightened until my fingers began to go numb.
"What did you say?" he growled.
"The Russo family is walking away with full immunity!" Valentina mocked, her voice shrill with venomous triumph.
"We gave them the offshore banking routes!"
"We gave them your laundering companies!"
"We told the special prosecutor that you executed Marco Vance twelve years ago to conceal the syndicate treasury!"
"The only thing missing was the physical evidence from the vault to verify the ledger!"
"And now that your pathetic, brainless little wife has walked out of LaSalle Street with the USB drives, we have everything we need!"
She pointed her weapon directly at the edge of our table.
"Give me the drives, Elena!" Valentina shrieked.
"Give me the drives, and I will let you walk down the fire escape before my father’s cleanup crew burns this penthouse to the ground!"
"Don't do it, Elena," Alessandro whispered, his face inches from mine, his dark eyes burning with an intense, desperate light.
"If she gets those drives, she eliminates both of us before we reach the street."
"Those drives contain Carlo Russo's original execution orders for your father."
"Marco Vance wasn't just hiding Moretti money; he was holding Carlo Russo's entire life by the throat."
I looked down at the heavy canvas pockets of my trench coat.
Inside, the cold rectangular weight of the encrypted drives rested against my ribs.
My father's handwritten words from the letter echoed through my thoughts with absolute clarity:
"Be ruthless, my daughter."
"In our world, mercy is a luxury paid for in blood."
I didn't reach for the USB drives.
I reached for my father's 9mm semi-automatic pistol resting on the carpet beside my knee.
I looked Alessandro dead in the eyes.
"You lied to me for eight years about how my father died," I said, my voice dead, flat, and hollow.
"I lied because I knew the moment you learned the truth, you would hunt Carlo Russo yourself and get slaughtered," Alessandro whispered back.
"I kept you in that gilded cage to keep you breathing, Elena."
"I took the blame so you would stay behind the walls where my soldiers could die for you."
"And look where your cage brought me, Alessandro," I replied, cocking the slide back with a sharp, fluid motion.
"Right into the middle of your execution."
I rolled out from behind the heavy mahogany table before Alessandro could grab my jacket.
The cold Lake Michigan wind whipped my hair across my face as I rose onto one knee.
Valentina saw me emerge, her eyes widening in disbelief as she brought her gold-plated pistol up to track my chest.
She expected a pleading wife.
She expected a terrified orphan.
She did not expect the woman who had watched Chicago's most ruthless Don command armies for nearly a decade.
I squeezed the trigger twice without hesitating.
The first round struck the heavy crystal bottle of scotch resting on the bar directly beside Valentina’s head, showering her face in high-proof alcohol and blinding glass shrapnel.
The second round punched clean through her right shoulder.
Valentina screamed, a high, piercing wail of pure agony, as her gold gun clattered against the marble floor.
She stumbled backward, clutching her bleeding shoulder, her pristine white suit turning crimson in the cold morning light.
Alessandro surged forward behind me like an unchained beast, his heavy black combat boots thudding against the hardwood.
He crossed the room in three strides, kicked Valentina’s weapon across the shattered glass toward Marco, and grabbed the heiress by the throat.
He slammed her back against the bar, his massive fingers digging into her windpipe until her heels lifted off the floor.
"Where is your father, Valentina?" Alessandro growled, the monster fully unleashed, his voice vibrating with absolute death.
"Tell me where Carlo is staging the drop, or I will throw you through that broken window onto the pavement thirty-two floors below."
Valentina gasped for air, her fingernails clawing uselessly at his iron wrist, her blood dripping onto his knuckles.
"Pier... Pier forty-two," she choked out, her face turning a dark, suffocating purple.
"The container terminal... he meets... the federal convoy... at noon."
Alessandro stared into her eyes for three long, agonizing seconds.
Then, with a cold, disgusted sneer, he hurled her sideways onto the floor like a broken rag doll.
"Marco, zip-tie her and throw her in the service closet," Alessandro ordered, wiping her blood from his fingers onto his trousers.
"If she makes a sound, put a bullet through her other shoulder."
"Understood, Don Moretti," Marco replied, stepping forward with heavy plastic restraints.
Alessandro turned back toward me, his chest heaving, his dark hair plastered against his forehead by the freezing lake wind.
"We have less than two hours, Elena," he said, stepping toward me with outstretched hands.
I raised my pistol and leveled it straight at his heart.
"We aren't going anywhere together, Alessandro."
"You are going to give me the keys to your car, and you are going to let me walk out of this building alone."
Alessandro froze, staring at the black barrel of the gun, a bitter, shattered smile touching his lips.
"You still don't trust me," he whispered.
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"I will never trust you again as long as I live," I said.
"Now step aside, Don Moretti, before I finish what my father started twelve years ago."
