Chapter 13 - Blood of the Covenant
Damian Russo woke up in a world that had been scrubbed of his presence.
The mansion in Mendham was a shell,
its windows shattered,
its treasures looted by the very men he had paid to protect them.
He sat up,
his head throbbing with a rhythmic pain that matched the vibration of the now-silent obelisk in the yard.
The guards were gone.
The servants were gone.
Even the ghosts seemed to have fled the property.
He stood up,
stumbling toward the kitchen,
where he found Silas sitting at the table,
staring at a bottle of expensive scotch.
Silas looked like he had aged twenty years in a single night.
“They took them,
Damian,”
Silas said,
his voice a mere croak.
“They took the girl and the children.
They took everything.”
Damian didn't answer.
He went to a hidden panel behind the pantry and pulled out a heavy,
black case.
Inside was a satellite phone and a high-caliber sniper rifle.
“Who are they,
Silas?”
Damian asked,
his voice cold and lethal.
“The white hawks.
The men with the visors.
Who do they work for?”
Silas took a long pull from the bottle.
“The Aethelgard.
My father used to whisper the name when he was drunk and afraid.
He said the Russos were just the gardeners for a much bigger estate.”
Silas looked at Damian with watery eyes.
“We were never the kings,
Damian.
We were the proxies.
The middlemen.
Lorenzo knew it.
That’s why he hid the twins.
He wasn't trying to save them from the Syndicate.
He was trying to hide them from Julian Thorne.”
Damian’s jaw tightened.
“Julian Thorne is dead.
I saw the report.”
“Julian Thorne is as dead as the shadows,
nephew,”
Silas replied.
“He’s the one who designed the serum.
He’s the one who built the vault.
And now,
he’s the one who has your family.”
Damian walked to the window,
looking at the obelisk.
The metal was cold now,
the violet light extinguished.
But he could still feel the residue of the power it had unleashed.
He picked up the satellite phone and dialed a number he had sworn never to use.
It was a direct line to the "Cleaners"—a group of mercenaries who operated outside the laws of both the government and the Mafia.
“This is Russo,”
he said when the line connected.
“I need a full tactical sweep of the northern coordinates.
Look for a high-altitude signature moving toward the Arctic Circle.”
“That’s Aethelgard territory,
Russo,”
the voice on the other end said.
“You go in there,
you don't come out.”
“I’m already dead,”
Damian said,
looking at the bloodstains on the floor where Elara had been dragged away.
“I’m just waiting for the funeral.
Get me the location.”
He hung up and looked at Silas.
“Are you going to sit here and drink,
or are you going to help me burn down the world?”
Silas looked at the bottle,
then at the rifle on the table.
For the first time in his life,
the coward found a spark of Russo fire.
“I never liked Julian Thorne,”
Silas said,
standing up.
“He always looked at me like I was an insect.
I think it’s time the insect bit back.”
They left the mansion in a hail of gravel,
driving toward the private airfield where Damian kept his fastest jet.
The war for the Russo name was over.
The war for the Russo soul had just begun.
And Damian Russo,
May you like
the man who wanted to be a businessman,
was finally embracing the monster he had been born to be.
