Chapter 4 - Blood On The White Shirt
The larger man whipped around, dropping his grip on my right arm as his flashlight beam caught the silhouette in the doorway.
Mia stood there in her oversized pajamas, tears streaming down her pale cheeks, clutching Barnaby to her chest.
“Grab the brat!” the smaller man barked, reaching for his waist holster.
“NO!” I screamed, throwing my entire body weight forward, sinking my teeth deep into the forearm of the man holding my other arm.
He roared in pain, backhanding me across the face with the heavy butt of his tactical flashlight.
White light exploded behind my eyes.
I hit the floor hard, tasting copper and iron as blood filled my mouth.
The second man lunged toward my three-year-old daughter, his heavy boots thudding against the floorboards.
Mia froze, petrified like a small deer caught in headlights, burying her face into Barnaby’s cotton fur.
I scrambled across the floor on my hands and knees, clawing at his boots.
“Don’t touch her! Take me! Kill me, please don’t touch her!”
The man raised his gloved hand to strike my daughter into silence.
“Touch that child.”
The voice didn't come from inside the room.
It cut through the hallway like a straight razor slicing through silk—low, lethal, and devoid of any human hesitation.
The two assassins froze instantly.
From the pitch-black corridor beyond the broken doorway, heavy, unhurried footsteps approached.
Luca Valente stepped into the faint silver glow of the moonlit hall.
He was not at the docks.
His tailored white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, splattered violently with fresh, bright arterial blood across the chest and forearms.
In his right hand, he held a heavy customized semi-automatic pistol, smoke still drifting faintly from the suppressed barrel.
His stormy dark eyes swept over the shattered doorway, over my bleeding face on the floor, and settled directly onto the man reaching for Mia.
A silence fell over the corridor that was heavier than a tomb.
“Touch that child,” Luca repeated, his voice dropping an octave into absolute venom.
“And I will bury every single soul who shares your bloodline.”
The smaller assassin panicked, letting his training slip for half a second as he tried to raise his weapon toward Luca’s chest.
Thwack. Thwack.
Two suppressed shots tore through the assassin's forehead before his gun had even cleared his hip.
The man collapsed like an empty sack of flour, his weapon clattering harmlessly against the floorboards.
The larger man, the one who had struck me, realized he was trapped.
He grabbed me by my hair, dragging my bruised body upward to use me as a human shield, pressing his gun directly beneath my chin.
“Back off, Don Luca!” the man screamed, his voice cracking with hysterical terror.
“I pull this trigger, her brains coat the wall! Take one step back and let me walk out the service stairs!”
Luca didn't flinch.
He didn't take a step back.
Instead, he took one slow, deliberate step forward, completely unbothered by the threat.
“You think she’s your shield?” Luca whispered, his eyes narrowing into cold slits.
“You are standing in my house, threatening a woman who feeds my household, in front of a little girl who wears my family’s colors.”
Mia, hearing Luca’s calm voice, didn't cower.
She broke into a desperate run, her little feet carrying her straight past the dead assassin on the floor and directly toward the mob boss.
“Mr. Luca!” she sobbed.
The gunman instinctively twitched his barrel toward the running child.
That millisecond was all Luca Valente needed.
Luca stepped in with blinding speed, swatting the man’s weapon aside with his left arm while firing a single, devastating shot straight through the gunman’s throat.
Blood sprayed across the wallpaper.
The man gurgled, dropping me instantly as he collapsed to his knees, clawing at his neck before slumping forward into the pool of his own making.
I collapsed onto my hands and knees, coughing and gasping for air.
Mia crashed directly into Luca’s tailored trousers, wrapping her tiny arms around his knee, burying her wet face into the blood-spattered fabric of his pants.
She was shaking uncontrollably, still holding Barnaby in a death grip with her right hand.
Luca stood motionless for a second, his lethal weapon lowering to his side.
Then, New York’s most feared underworld ruler did something that defied every law of his violent existence.
He dropped his gun to the floor.
He knelt down in the pooling blood, careless of his expensive clothes, and gathered my weeping daughter into his massive arms.
“I have you, little boss,” Luca murmured softly against her hair, his rough hand supporting the back of her neck.
“Nobody touches you here. Nobody.”
Mia lifted her tear-streaked face, sniffling loudly, and extended the stuffed bear toward his chest.
May you like
“Mr. Luca,” she whimpered, her tiny voice trembling in the quiet corridor.
“Barnaby is holding the secret paper Uncle Julian dropped.”
