Chapter 13 - The Reckoning of the Bloodline
The front door of the library rattled violently as someone threw their heavy shoulder against the wood from the hallway.
The oak armchair wedged under the handle groaned, wood fibers splintering under the strain.
“Open the door, little girl!” a raspy, elderly voice sneered from the other side.
Uncle Marco.
He was leaning against the portal, his breathing heavy and wheezing from climbing the stairs.
“Your little boyfriend Leonardo is fish food at the bottom of Brooklyn harbor!”
“There is no rescue coming for you!”
“Give me the girl, and I might just let you walk out the front door!”
Inside the room, Sofia was curled into the wheelchair, shivering uncontrollably, her teeth chattering with fear.
Dr. Gregory stood in the corner, holding a small scalpel in his trembling hand, his back pressed against the leather-bound book spines.
Dora stood in the center of the Persian rug, the heavy pump-action shotgun leveled directly at the lock mechanism of the door.
Her expression was carved from solid granite.
“You killed your own brother with poison, you sick old bastard!” Dora shouted through the wood, her voice steady as an executioner's bell.
“You think I believe a single word that comes out of your rotting mouth?”
“My brother was weak!” Marco spat back, his voice rising in hysterical rage.
“He built an empire and refused to let us harvest the fruit!”
“And Leonardo was even worse—letting a dirty interstate waitress sit at our table!”
He signaled to the two armed mercenaries beside him.
“Blow the hinges!”
Before the men could position their breaching charges against the oak frame, a sudden, wet thud echoed from the hallway outside.
Then a second thud.
A gurgling, choking gasp followed, cut off by the sharp, sickening snap of cervical vertebrae being twisted past their breaking point.
Silence fell over the hallway.
Absolute, terrifying silence.
Marco’s voice turned high-pitched, laced with sudden, cold dread.
“Vinnie? Tommy?”
No answer came from the corridor.
Only the sound of heavy, measured boots stepping through the pooled blood on the floorboards.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Unyielding.
The doorknob turned slowly, rattling against the wedged chair.
Then, a fist slammed three times against the upper panel in a distinct, rhythmic pattern.
One.
Two.
Three.
Dora lowered the barrel of the shotgun by half an inch, her breath catching in her throat.
It was the exact knocking pattern Leonardo used when he stepped into Rusty’s Diner at two in the morning.
“Dora,” a deep, gravelly voice rasped from the hallway.
It was rough, choked with sea salt and exhaustion, but it was unmistakably his.
“Clear the door.”
Dora dropped the shotgun onto the rug and rushed forward, dragging the heavy oak armchair away from the frame.
She turned the deadbolt and pulled the heavy door inward.
Leonardo Costas stood on the threshold.
He looked as though he had clawed his way out of the gates of hell itself.
His black dress shirt was torn to ribbons, drenched in seawater, soot, and drying crimson.
Two makeshift splints bound his broken ribs beneath a salt-encrusted tactical harness.
His left arm hung dead at his side, wrapped in charred bandages, but in his right hand, he held his customized Kimber .45 pistol, smoke still curling lazily from the barrel.
Behind him on the floor lay the two mercenaries, their necks broken and their weapons scattered across the Persian runner.
Kneeling between them on his knees, trembling like a wet dog with a gun pressed against his temple, was Uncle Marco.
Leonardo looked past the dying old man, his pale hazel eyes sweeping over the room until they found Dora’s face.
For five seconds, the entire world ceased to exist.
He took in the blood on her knuckles.
He saw the steel IV pole clutched in her hand.
He saw Sofia, terrified but completely unharmed, sitting upright in the medical wheelchair.
The brutal, predatory darkness that had consumed his eyes since the raid on Pier 42 slowly, miraculously dissolved.
“You’re alive,” Dora whispered, her voice cracking as the iron resolve she had held for hours finally fractured into tears.
“I told you,” Leonardo replied softly, his voice trembling with a rare, naked vulnerability.
“Refills are free, but I always pay my tab.”
He turned his gaze down toward his uncle kneeling at his feet.
Marco looked up at his nephew, his eyes wild with terror, clutching his ivory-handled cane to his chest like a talisman.
“Leonardo… please,” the old man begged, saliva dribbling from his lower lip.
“It was Angelo’s idea! He forced my hand!”
“We are blood, Leonardo! You can't kill your own family!”
Leonardo looked down at the man who had poisoned his father’s wine and sent death squads to murder an innocent girl in an interstate diner.
“My father believed in family, Marco,” Leonardo said, every syllable dropping like an anvil onto cold stone.
“That was why you were able to slip venom into his cup while he smiled at you.”
He lowered the muzzle of the Kimber until the cold steel touched Marco’s forehead.
“I do not make my father's mistakes.”
“Leonardo, no!” Marco shrieked.
Leonardo did not hesitate for half a second.
He pulled the trigger.
The shot echoed through the library with the finality of a closing tomb.
Marco’s body collapsed forward onto the carpet, motionless.
Leonardo lowered the weapon, let out a long, ragged exhale of pure agony, and leaned his heavy frame against the doorframe as his legs finally gave out from blood loss and exhaustion.
Before he could hit the floor, Dora was there.
She threw her arms around his broad, soaked shoulders, bearing his weight against her chest, letting his blood stain her faded shirt just as he had stained her diner floor seven days ago.
“I’ve got you,” Dora whispered, burying her face into his wet collar.
“I’ve got you, you arrogant bastard.”
Leonardo rested his forehead against her neck, his breath warm and shallow against her skin.
“The docks are gone, Dora,” he murmured into her hair.
“The syndicate is broken.”
“There is nothing left to rule.”
Dora tightened her grip around his neck, looking out through the arched windows as the morning sun finally broke through the clouds, bathing the Atlantic in a blinding sheet of pure gold.
May you like
“Good,” she said softly.
“Then you can finally learn how to live.”
