Chapter 9 - The Blood Covenant
The thunderous boom of the twelve-gauge shotgun reverberated through the stone cellar, blowing Gabriel off his feet.
The blast tore through his right shoulder, sending his silenced Beretta flying across the concrete floor where it shattered a crate of vintage Merlot.
Gabriel crashed onto the flagstones, shrieking in agony as dark arterial blood splattered across the limestone masonry.
Out from the veil of gunsmoke stepped Vincent Marchetti.
He looked like a demon clawed straight out of an inferno.
His tactical sweater was torn at the ribcage, caked in blood and grit.
A deep gash bled freely down the side of his left temple, staining his silver hair dark red.
In his hands was an empty tactical shotgun, its smoking breach open.
Behind him stood Dominic, clutching a bleeding forearm but holding a submachine gun trained steadily on the collapsed traitor.
“Vincent... no... please...” Gabriel sobbed, clutching his shredded shoulder, writhing in the pool of red wine and blood.
Vincent dropped the spent shotgun onto the floor with a dull clatter.
He walked slowly toward his younger brother, pulling a long, serrated combat knife from his tactical belt.
“I spared your life once because our mother wept on her deathbed and asked me to protect you,” Vincent said, his voice entirely flat, devoid of any human rage.
“That was my only weakness.”
“I will not make that mistake twice.”
Gabriel kicked frantically with his heels, trying to drag himself backward into the dark corners of the wine racks.
“Salvatore has the city surrounded! He’s at Navy Pier with fifty men! You can’t stop them all!”
“Salvatore is dead, Gabriel,” Vincent stated calmly.
Dominic stepped forward, pulling a heavy object wrapped in a burlap sack from behind his back and tossing it onto the floor beside Gabriel.
It rolled out, revealing Salvatore Moretti’s signature gold-rimmed aviator glasses, bent and smeared with brain matter.
“The meeting at Navy Pier was a trap, yes,” Dominic growled. “Salvatore thought he had us boxed in.”
“He didn't realize Vincent had already traded the north dock shipping manifests to the federal task force in exchange for a full swat deployment at the pier.”
“The New York command team was wiped out twenty minutes after the first shot was fired.”
Gabriel’s jaw hung open in slack-jawed despair.
His entire conspiracy had been anticipated, outmaneuvered, and crushed before the first truck even hit the gates.
Vincent knelt down beside Gabriel, grabbing him by the hair and pulling his head up.
“You brought war into my house.”
“You brought killers to butcher a woman and a child under my roof.”
“Vincent, please! I’m your brother!” Gabriel shrieked, tears and blood running together down his chin.
Vincent leaned close, whispering into Gabriel’s ear so low that only the shadows could hear.
“My family died when you aimed a gun at that little girl.”
With a single, fluid motion of his right wrist, Vincent severed Gabriel’s carotid artery.
Gabriel gasped, his body seizing violently for ten seconds before going completely limp against the blood-soaked floor.
Vincent stood up, wiped the blade on Gabriel’s pristine silk tie, and slid the knife back into its sheath.
He never looked down at the corpse again.
He turned his gaze toward me and Mia.
I was still pressed against the cold steel of the vault door, my body trembling so violently my teeth were chattering.
Mia was crying silently, her little face buried entirely into my neck, refusing to look at the carnage.
Vincent took three slow steps toward us, stopping two feet away.
The terrifying violence that had governed him seconds ago evaporated, replaced by an overwhelming, hollow weariness.
“Are you hurt, Elena?”
I shook my head, unable to speak through the knot of pure shock in my throat.
He looked down at Mia.
“Did she see?”
“N-no,” I stammered, my voice barely a thread. “I kept her face turned away.”
Vincent closed his eyes, exhaling a long, shuddering breath.
“Good.”
Suddenly, his knees buckled.
The powerful, invincible boss of Chicago collapsed onto one knee, catching himself against the stone wall with a heavy thud.
“Vincent!” Dominic rushed forward, supporting him by the elbow.
I saw it then.
Beneath his torn tactical sweater, on the left side of his abdomen, was a massive, saturated dark stain.
A bullet wound from the ambush at Navy Pier had torn clean through his side, and he had been bleeding out internally for over an hour.
He had driven back to Lake Forest through a gauntlet of gunfire purely on sheer, stubborn will to reach us before Gabriel did.
“Dominic... get the private surgeon... to the medical suite,” Vincent gasped, his silver eyes beginning to lose their razor focus.
“Already en route, boss. Hang on,” Dominic urged, hoisting him up.
Vincent turned his fading gaze toward me, reaching out with a blood-stained hand.
I took it instinctively, his calloused fingers gripping mine with shocking intensity.
“Elena...”
“I’m here, Vincent. I’m right here.”
“The adoption papers... in my desk safe... the combination is her birthday...”
“Don’t talk about papers right now, Vincent! You need a doctor!”
“Listen to me!” he rasped, blood flecking the corner of his lips.
“The New York commission won't stop just because Salvatore is dead.”
“There are cousins, lieutenants, capos who will want her claim.”
“You sign those papers... you make her a Marchetti...”
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“If she is mine... Chicago will bleed the world dry before they let anyone touch her.”
His grip slackened, his eyes rolled back, and the undisputed king of Chicago slipped into total unconsciousness.
