Chapter 24 - The price of a mother
"Sarah!" Richard's roar ripped through the basement, an ungodly sound of a patriarch watching his world shatter.
Distracted for a split second by the image on the screen, Richard felt Elena’s heel smash backward into his kneecap. The joint buckled with a nauseating pop. As Richard stumbled, Elena tore free from his grip, spinning with a small derringer she had palmed from her sleeve.
She fired once at point-blank range.
The bullet ripped through Richard’s shoulder, spinning him into the shallow water. Elena didn't stay to finish the kill. She turned and darted up the southern service stairs, locking the iron security grate behind her with a heavy slam of the deadbolt.
Richard pulled himself up from the freezing puddle, gasping against the white-hot agony in his shoulder and shattered knee. Blood poured down his sleeve, but his mind shut down the pain receptors. A father who cannot protect his children has no right to feel pain.
He dragged his limp leg across the flooded floor to the emergency fire axe mounted on the wall. He smashed the lock off the service grate with two ferocious blows, wrenching the iron bars open with his bare, bleeding hands.
He climbed the stairs step by agonizing step, using the handrail to haul his battered body upward.
When he burst back into the master bedroom, the smoke was so thick it burned his lungs. The smell of burning flesh and gasoline hung heavy. Richard dropped to his knees beside Sarah’s still form on the threshold of the panic room.
"Sarah... baby, please," he croaked, pressing his trembling, soot-stained fingers against the side of her neck.
For three agonizing seconds, there was nothing. Then, a faint, thready pulse fluttered beneath his fingertips. She was alive. The blood wasn't from a bullet wound; she had been bludgeoned violently across the temple with the butt of a heavy weapon.
Her eyelids fluttered open, glassy and unfocused in the flickering red light of the fire. "Papa..." she whispered, her voice barely a breath. "He... he took him. Arthur... he looked at Noah's eyes and laughed. He said... he said Noah has the retinal cipher."
"Don't speak, Sarah. Stay still," Richard pleaded, pulling off his jacket to press it against her bleeding head.
"No, Papa... listen to me," she choked, grabbing his collar with desperate strength. "Noah isn't my adopted son. He's... he's Julian's boy. My dead brother Julian had a child with Arthur’s daughter before the war broke out. Noah is... he's the heir to both sides of the bloodline. The money in Zurich... it only unlocks with Noah's DNA and retina. That's why they starved him. They needed him weak... so he wouldn't resist the scan."
Richard felt the ground tilt beneath him. Julian, his oldest son, who had supposedly perished in an offshore yacht explosion six years ago, had fathered this boy with their sworn enemy's daughter. Noah wasn't just a grandson; he was the bridge over forty years of slaughter.
"Where did they take him, Sarah?" Richard demanded, leaning down until his forehead touched hers. "Where is Arthur taking my grandson?"
"The old iron foundry... by the docks," she gasped, her eyes rolling back as unconsciousness dragged her down again. "Pier 44... they have a submarine waiting in the deep channel... Papa, save him..."
Her hand slipped from his shirt, falling limp against the charred carpet.
Richard stood up. He felt no pain in his knee. He felt no burning in his lungs. Every ounce of humanity stripped away from his soul, leaving only the cold, unyielding predator that had built the Bellacorte empire on the bones of twenty rival families.
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He walked over to the gun rack hidden behind the burning wall panel, grabbed an automatic combat shotgun, three drums of military-grade buckshot, and a pair of tactical tourniquets.
The Bellacorte family had ruled New York with velvet gloves for twenty years. Tonight, the iron fist was coming out.
