Chapter 14 - Blood Against Blood
The wind howled like a pack of wolves as we kicked open the heavy steel emergency doors leading onto the Drake Hotel’s rooftop helipad.
The Chicago skyline was swallowed by a wall of driving, freezing rain, the neon towers blurred into streaks of gold and crimson below.
A sleek twin-engine private helicopter sat idling on the center of the concrete pad, its rotor blades spinning in a blur of spray and deafening roar.
Standing beside the open cabin door was Vincent Moretti, clutching a black leather briefcase packed with bearer bonds and false passports.
Two remaining Apex mercenaries flanked him, their submachine guns raised toward the rooftop stairwell.
Gabriel didn't hesitate.
He stepped out into the gale-force wind, firing twice with brutal, mechanical precision.
The lead mercenary took a heavy round to the collarbone and tumbled backward over the safety netting into fifty stories of empty air.
The second mercenary panicked, spraying a wild burst toward the stairwell doorway.
I dropped flat against the wet gravel roof, leaning around the concrete doorframe and firing three controlled shots into the mercenary’s lower abdomen.
The guard collapsed onto the slick asphalt, dropping his weapon into the puddle.
Vincent dropped his briefcase, whipping out a gold-plated snub-nosed revolver and firing wildly into the rain.
A bullet grazed the outer sleeve of Gabriel’s suit, tearing the wool at his shoulder.
Gabriel didn't even flinch.
He closed the distance between them with unstoppable, predatory momentum, swatting the gun from Vincent’s grip with the back of his heavy arm.
The gold revolver skittered across the helipad and disappeared over the edge into the city below.
Vincent swung a desperate, wild punch, but Gabriel caught his fist in mid-air, squeezing with the exact same terrifying force he had used on my wrist hours ago.
Vincent cried out in agony as the bones in his hand compressed together like dry twigs.
Gabriel slammed him against the fuselage of the roaring helicopter, his forearm pinning Vincent’s throat against the cold metal.
“You tried to put me in a wheelchair, little cousin,” Gabriel spoke through clenched teeth, rain streaming down his scarred face.
“You paid a butcher to slice my spine while I was unconscious.”
“I deserved that seat!” Vincent screamed over the roar of the rotor blades, spit flying from his lips.
“Your father always looked at me like a stray dog he picked up from the gutter!”
“I built the offshore accounts, I bought the judges, I cleaned your blood off the books!”
“And you were always the favorite son!”
“My father gave you a home, Vincent,” Gabriel said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, deadly calm.
“He gave you a name.”
“And you gave him a grandson who sold his family for corporate contracts.”
Vincent reached surreptitiously into his vest pocket with his free left hand, slipping out a small, spring-loaded surgical scalpel Dr. Vale had given him as a backup.
He lunged the blade upward toward Gabriel’s exposed throat.
“Gabriel, look out!” I screamed, sprinting across the wet helipad.
Gabriel saw the flash of steel in the rain.
He didn't pull back.
He drove his forehead down like a sledgehammer into the bridge of Vincent’s nose.
The sickening crack of shattered bone echoed over the storm.
Vincent’s head snapped back against the helicopter fuselage, the scalpel slipping harmlessly from his limp fingers onto the wet metal deck.
Gabriel grabbed Vincent by the lapels of his ruined tuxedo, hauled him off the helicopter, and dragged him to the rusted perimeter guardrail overlooking the abyss of Michigan Avenue.
The city glittered fifty-eight floors below, indifferent, cold, and vast.
Vincent dangled over the edge, staring down into the dizzying drop, the wind whipping his bloodied face as terror completely consumed him.
“Gabriel... please!” Vincent wailed, clutching Gabriel’s wrists.
“We’re blood! You can't kill your own blood!”
Gabriel held him out over the void with one arm, his healing muscles straining under the weight, his breathing steady despite the sheer physical exertion.
For five long seconds, the fate of Vincent Moretti hung by Gabriel’s scarred fingers.
I walked slowly across the gravel, stopping three feet behind Gabriel.
The storm blew our clothes tight against our bodies, the rain washing away the blood and gunpowder.
“Gabriel,” I called out softly, my voice cutting through the wind.
Gabriel didn't turn around, but his shoulders tightened.
“He deserves to fall, Elena,” Gabriel growled, his knuckles white against Vincent’s lapels.
“He took three weeks of my life, he tried to cripple me, and he endangered you.”
“He does deserve to fall,” I agreed, taking another step closer until my hand rested gently on the center of Gabriel’s broad back, right between his two healing scars.
“But if you drop him over that rail, you’re just the butcher he claimed you were.”
“You become the monster who executes men in the dark.”
Gabriel’s frame went rigid under my palm.
“Don't let him take your humanity with him, Gabriel,” I whispered.
“You survived the poison.”
“Don't let his rot stay inside you.”
Gabriel looked down at his sobbing, broken cousin, then looked up into the stormy night sky.
The predatory madness in his dark eyes slowly retreated, replaced by the cold, sovereign authority of a true king.
With a roar of raw, channeled strength, Gabriel hauled Vincent back over the railing and slammed him face-first onto the wet gravel of the helipad.
Vincent lay there coughing blood, shivering in the freezing puddles, completely broken in body and spirit.
Down below, the wailing sirens of Chicago police cruisers and Commission convoy vehicles began surrounding the Drake Hotel.
Gabriel turned around, stepping away from the fallen traitor, and stood directly before me.
His chest was heaving, his clothes soaked through to the skin, but his eyes were clearer than they had ever been.
He reached out, cupping my rain-slicked face in both of his warm, battered hands.
“You saved my life twice tonight, Elena Vance,” Gabriel murmured, his voice thick with raw emotion.
“Once with medicine.”
“And once from myself.”
I looked up into his dark, rugged face, feeling the steady, unbroken beat of his pulse beneath his skin.
“That’s what nurses do, Gabriel,” I said, a soft, breathless laugh escaping my lips.
May you like
“We keep the heart beating until sunrise.”
He leaned down through the storm and pressed his lips against mine, sealing an unspoken oath between an underworld king and the woman who held his soul in her hands.
