Chapter 7 - The Bloodline
The silence in the forestry cabin was so absolute I could hear the pop of resin in the dying fire.
Lorenzo went completely, terrifyingly still.
His dark eyes dropped to my stomach, then rose back to my face. The ruthless mob Don who had faced down assassins without blinking looked as though he had just been struck by a broadside cannon.
“Say that again,” he rasped, his voice barely a whisper.
“The secondary epigenetic profile,” I swallowed hard, tears blurring my vision. “It’s fetal DNA circulating in maternal blood. I’m… I’m about four weeks along.”
The calculation hit both of us at the exact same moment.
Four weeks ago.
The weekend Elena had begged me to cover her shift. The night a sudden snowstorm had trapped three staff members at the hospital. The night a mysterious VIP patient had been brought into the private executive suite on the fifth floor under armed guard, suffering from a high-caliber graze wound to his abdomen.
I had been the night-duty nurse assigned to change his dressings.
I remembered his fevered eyes in the dark. The delirium. The sudden, desperate heat when his hands had pulled me down against the mattress, the frantic, forbidden collision in the locked private suite before he vanished at dawn without signing discharge papers.
I had never seen his face clearly in that dim hospital room.
Until the parking garage.
“It was you,” I whispered, horror and wonder colliding in my chest. “In Suite 502.”
A muscle ticked violently along Lorenzo’s sculpted jawline. “I was out of my mind on fentanyl and septic fever. I thought… I thought you were an angel my mind had invented to keep me from dying.”
“You didn't know who I was,” I breathed.
“No,” Lorenzo said, stepping toward me until his chest pressed against mine. His large hands rose, hovering inches over my abdomen before gently, reverently resting against the wool blanket covering my stomach.
His touch was trembling.
The man who killed without remorse was shaking as his palm covered the secret life growing inside me.
“You’re carrying my child,” he whispered, his voice thick with an emotion so deep, so raw, it brought tears to his dark eyes. “The Costa bloodline.”
“Lorenzo, listen to me,” I gripped his forearms, panic clawing at my throat. “If Morales finds out—if anyone in your world finds out—”
“No one will find out,” Lorenzo cut me off, his voice dropping into an icy, lethal register that made the hair on my arms stand up. “You are no longer just a witness, Aurora. You are my family. And in this life, anyone who looks at you with malice will be wiped from the face of this earth.”
Before I could reply, the satellite terminal sounded a harsh, rhythmic klaxon.
ALERT: PERIMETER BREACH - SECTOR NORTH.
THERMAL FEED COMPROMISED.
Lorenzo moved with blinding speed. He pulled a black tactical vest over his head, secured two sidearms to his thighs, and handed me the suppressed submachine gun.
“Stay behind me,” he ordered, racking the slide with a sharp metallic clack.
The cabin door was kicked in with explosive force.
A tear-gas canister rolled across the pine floor, hissing white, choking smoke.
Lorenzo fired three rounds through the doorway before the smoke obscured our vision. A body collapsed onto the porch with a heavy thud.
“Exit through the rear storm cellar!” Lorenzo barked, dragging me by the arm toward a heavy trapdoor in the floorboards.
Gunfire erupted from three sides of the cabin. Bullets chewed through the timber walls, sending wood chips flying. Lorenzo shielded my body with his own, returning fire with terrifying precision.
We dropped into the dirt floor of the shallow root cellar just as a concussion grenade detonated in the room above. The shockwave rained dirt and splintered wood down on our heads.
Lorenzo kicked open the wooden delivery chute leading out into the dense ferns behind the cabin.
We scrambled into the freezing mountain rain.
The night was alive with muzzle flashes and tactical laser beams. Three of Lorenzo’s perimeter guards lay dead in the mud.
Standing in the clearing beside two armored black SUVs was a tall, silver-haired man in an expensive cashmere overcoat.
Raul Morales.
Beside him stood two men holding Ethan, a burlap sack tied over my brother’s head, zip-ties cutting into his wrists.
“ETHAN!” I screamed, terror ripping through my lungs.
“Aurora, hold your fire!” Lorenzo grabbed my shoulder, forcing me down into the ferns.
May you like
Morales smiled—a sickening, predatory grin that gleamed in the cold drizzle.
“Good evening, Don Lorenzo!” Morales called out, his voice amplified by a megaphone. “You have five seconds to drop your weapons and bring Dr. Hayes’s daughter out of the brush! If I count to six, your little brother’s brains will decorate this cedar tree!”
