Chapter 8 - The Price of Blood
Matteo slowly turned back to face Daniel Shaw.
The Kimber pistol in Matteo’s hand hung heavy at his side. He didn't raise it. He looked at the man who had been his father’s shadow, his own mentor, and the keeper of the monstrous secret that defined his entire existence.
“Put the gun down, Daniel,” Matteo said. The rage in his voice had vanished, replaced by an absolute, terrifying calm.
Daniel looked at Matteo’s eyes. For the first time in thirty years, the old chief of staff saw no humanity in the face of the boy he had raised. He saw only the apex predator that Carmine Bellini and Arthur Vance had built in a petri dish.
Daniel lowered the barrel of the tactical rifle. The safety clicked on. He let the weapon hang limply from its sling.
“Where is the facility?” Matteo asked.
“The old textile mill on the Hudson, north of Yonkers,” Daniel said, his head hanging low. “The sub-basement is five stories deep, built into the granite cliffside. Vance has fifty private contractors on site. Automated defenses. Heavy armor. If you roll up on that facility with your crews, it will be a bloodbath. The state police will be on the scene in ten minutes.”
“I don't care about the state police,” Matteo said coldly. “I don't care about the Commission. I don't care about the Five Families.”
Matteo walked over to his daughter.
He knelt down in front of Clara, gently taking both of her small hands in his. The faint blue tint beneath her nails sent a cold spike of dread through his stomach, but his face remained an immovable mask of fatherly strength.
“Clara,” Matteo said softly.
“Daddy,” she whispered, her chin trembling. “Am I sick?”
“No, baby,” Matteo lied smoothly, offering her a faint, rare smile that softened the harsh contours of his scarred face. “You aren't sick. You just need a special medicine. And Daddy is going to go get it for you right now.”
Clara looked over at Rosie, who was still clinging to Grace’s side like a frightened barnacle.
“Can Rosie have the medicine too?” Clara asked innocently. “Her hands look cold like mine.”
Matteo felt something tear deep inside his chest—a raw, primal realization that obliterated thirty years of syndicate conditioning. It didn't matter if he was Subject One. It didn't matter if Clara was Subject 7-A. It didn't matter if their DNA had been drafted by a team of biochemists in Switzerland.
Clara loved that little girl.
And Matteo loved Clara.
Love wasn't written in genetic markers or allele pairings. Love was the blood you were willing to spill to keep another human being breathing.
Matteo reached out and gently rested his large hand on top of Rosie’s dark curls. The three-year-old leaned into his touch instinctively, looking up at him with Elena’s gray-green eyes.
“Yes, Clara,” Matteo said, his voice thick with unyielding resolve. “Rosie gets the medicine too. Both of you.”
He stood up and looked at Grace.
“Take them to the wine cellar,” Matteo ordered. “The blast door is solid titanium. There is enough water and rations for three days. You lock that door from the inside, Grace. Do not open it for anyone. Not even me.”
Grace’s eyes filled with fresh tears. “Matteo... what are you going to do?”
“I am going to finish what Elena started,” Matteo replied.
He turned toward the doorway, pausing only long enough to look Daniel dead in the eye.
“You’re driving, Daniel,” Matteo said. “And if you flinch, if you hesitate, if you miss a single turn on the saw-mill parkway, I won't just kill you. I will make sure the Bellini name erases every trace of your bloodline from this earth.”
Daniel straightened his posture, wiping the soot and tears from his face with the back of his sleeve. The look of shame on his weathered features transformed into a hard, desperate resolve.
“I’ll get you through the front gate, boss,” Daniel said. “After that... may God have mercy on Vance.”
***
Ten minutes later, the reinforced black Cadillac Escalade tore down the winding gravel driveway of the Bellini estate, its heavy V8 engine roaring like an enraged beast in the autumn rain.
In the back seat, Matteo sat surrounded by tactical hardware. He had stripped off his tailored suit jacket, wrapping his wounded shoulder tightly with field dressing and combat gauze, pulling a heavy Kevlar vest over his broad chest. On the seat beside him lay three customized assault rifles, twenty high-capacity magazines, and a crate of thermite demolition charges.
He took his phone from his pocket and dialed a single, encrypted number.
The phone rang twice before a raspy, gravelly voice answered on the other end.
*“Yeah?”*
“Frankie,” Matteo said.
A heavy pause fell over the line. Frankie ‘The Hammer’ Donahue was the underboss of the Bellini syndicate, a ruthless veteran who commanded seventy armed soldiers across the northern boroughs.
*“Matteo? We heard rumors about the estate. Word on the street is someone kicked your front door in.”*
“Gather the crews,” Matteo commanded. “Every soldier. Every captain. Every crew from Yonkers to the Bronx. Pull them off the docks, pull them out of the clubs, pull them out of their beds.”
*“Where are we going, boss? Who are we hitting? The Colombos? The Luccheses?”*
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“The textile mill on the Hudson,” Matteo said, his voice dropping into a register that made the underboss go completely silent on the line. “We aren't doing a sit-down, Frankie. We aren't negotiating. Tell the men to bring every drum of gasoline and every heavy weapon they own. Today, the Bellini family goes to war.”
***
