Chapter 6 - The Secret in the Blood
We stayed in the abandoned forestry cabin until dusk.
The small cabin was cold and smelled of damp pine, but the stone hearth held a crackling wood fire that cast long, amber shadows across the floorboards.
Outside, a private security detachment of four Costa loyalists, summoned by an encrypted satellite ping, secured the perimeter with night-vision scopes and thermal drones.
Inside, the world had shrunk to the space between Lorenzo and me.
We lay on a heavy woolen blanket before the hearth, our bare skin glowing in the firelight. The rhythm of his deep breathing against my collarbone was the only anchor keeping me tethered to sanity. My body still hummed with the aftershocks of our intimacy—raw, desperate, and consuming in a way that terrified me far more than the assassins on the highway.
I traced the silver scar along his jawline with my fingertips.
“What happens when we unlock the drive, Lorenzo?” I asked quietly, staring into the flickering embers.
Lorenzo caught my fingers, pressing a slow, warm kiss into my palm. His dark eyes were fixed on the flames.
“The drive contains bank routing numbers, wiretap transcripts, and federal compromise files that Morales has used to blackmail judges and port authorities for a decade,” he said. “Once it’s decrypted, I release it to a trusted contact in the Department of Justice. The Morales cartel gets dismantled by federal indictments, and their remaining enforcers will be hunted across three states.”
“And then?”
Lorenzo turned his head to look at me. His gaze was intense, unblinking.
“And then you and Ethan are free. New identities, if you want them. A trust fund with ten million dollars. A house anywhere in the world.”
My chest tightened with an ache I didn't expect. “And you?”
A faint, tragic smirk touched his lips. “I stay in Seattle. Men like me don't get fresh starts, Aurora. We just hold the line until someone younger and faster puts a bullet in our spine.”
“Don't say that,” I whispered, tears pricking my eyes.
“It’s the truth, tesoro.” He sat up, leaning over me, his hand cupping my cheek. “Which is why after tomorrow, you need to put as much ocean between yourself and me as humanly possible.”
The thought of walking away from him—after the way he had held me, after the fire we had shared—felt like tearing off my own skin. But before I could speak, the satellite terminal on the cabin table chimed.
A high-priority data packet had arrived.
Lorenzo stood, slipping into his black trousers and shirt, and walked over to the glowing screen.
“Marco has Ethan,” Lorenzo announced, relief softening the hard line of his jaw. “They crossed into the secure perimeter at the Yakima vineyard twenty minutes ago. The decoy worked.”
I let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for forty-eight hours. “Thank God.”
“And our forensic technician in Portland just finished analyzing the blood sample we drew from your locker at Mercy General.”
I frowned, pulling the woolen blanket around my shoulders as I walked over to him. “My blood sample? You took my blood from the hospital?”
“We needed to verify the biometric key parameters before attempting to locate the hardware drive,” Lorenzo explained, tapping the keyboard.
The screen displayed a high-resolution DNA sequencing chart—two overlapping helical strands glowing in blue and crimson.
A red alert box flashed in the center of the terminal:
BIOMETRIC MATCH CONFIRMED: 99.8% (SUBJECT: AURORA HAYES)
ANOMALY DETECTED: SECONDARY EPIGENETIC PROFILE PRESENT.
Lorenzo stared at the screen, his brow furrowing. “What is this secondary profile?”
I leaned closer, my nursing background taking over as I scanned the biochemical markers. Elevated human chorionic gonadotropin. Altered progesterone binding. Gene expression shifts in maternal serum proteins.
My breath caught in my throat.
The room seemed to spin. My knees went completely weak.
“Aurora?” Lorenzo caught my elbow, his grip instantly tightening as he felt me sway. “What does that mean?”
I stared at the blinking red cursor, my hand trembling as it rose to touch my flat stomach.
Two weeks.
The dizziness in the pediatric wing. The nausea I had blamed on bad hospital cafeteria soup. The overwhelming exhaustion that had made me collapse in the parking garage.
It wasn't burnout.
“Aurora,” Lorenzo’s voice dropped, laced with sudden, intense urgency. “Talk to me.”
May you like
I looked up into the dark eyes of the most feared mafia boss in the Pacific Northwest, my heart hammering like a trapped bird.
“I’m pregnant, Lorenzo.”
