Chapter 29 - The Crimson Vow
"No, no, no! Dad!" Clara screamed, pressing her face against her father’s cold chest, her two meters of golden hair spilling over his lifeless body like a burial shroud.
Behind her, Dante rose.
He didn't use a wall for support. He didn't cry out in pain. Fueled by pure, unadulterated adrenaline and a wrath that transcended human anatomy, Dante Serrano forced his shattered body upright. Blood poured from his shoulder, soaking his charcoal suit, dripping from his fingertips onto the white marble floor, but his eyes were no longer silver. They were the color of cold steel forged in the fires of vengeance.
"Clara," he said. His voice was death itself.
She looked up, tears cutting clean lines through the soot and blood on her porcelain cheeks.
Dante walked over, picked up the iron signet ring and the silver drive from Julian’s dead hand, and dropped them into Clara’s palm. Then, he knelt before her, lifting a handful of her blood-drenched golden hair, pressing it to his lips.
"They took your childhood," Dante murmured, his voice trembling with a ferocious, sacred vow. "They made you sleep in the dirt. They lied to me my entire life, made me their weapon, and now they took your father."
He pulled her up until she was standing against his chest, their blood mingling against the torn silk of her gown.
"Marco didn't run to hide," Dante said, looking toward the shattered bronze doors. "He ran to the Cathedral of St. Patrick. The Serrano reserves... the gold bullion and the syndicate war-chest are hidden in the catacombs beneath the altar. If he reaches the vault, he buys every cartel army from Mexico to Montreal."
"Then we don't call the police," Clara said. Her tears stopped. Her hazel eyes hardened into unbreakable emerald ice. The homeless survivor, the street-hardened wraith, took complete control of the heiress. She racked the slide of Dante’s spare pistol with a sharp, metallic snap. "We don't call an ambulance."
"We end the bloodline," Dante finished.
Ten minutes later, the armored black Escalade tore through the blizzard-blanketed streets of Fifth Avenue, sirens wailing in the distance as the city realized a full-scale mafia war had broken out in broad daylight.
The heavy oak doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral were unlocked.
Inside, the vast cathedral was quiet, save for the howling wind rattling the stained-glass windows of the saints looking down in silent judgment. Snow blew through the nave, dusting the red carpets.
At the foot of the high altar stood Marco.
He had already blown the floor mosaic apart, revealing the iron hatch leading to the subterranean vaults. Around him stood twelve heavily armed Serrano loyalists—men who had secretly served Armando’s true bloodline all along.
"You're too late, brother!" Marco’s voice echoed off the sacred stone pillars, booming through the nave. "The vault is open! In ten minutes, the private jets at JFK take us to South America. You rule a kingdom of ash, Dante!"
Dante and Clara stepped into the center aisle.
The wind from the open doors whipped Clara’s two-meter golden hair around them both like an angelic, terrifying storm of spun sunlight and dried blood. Side by side, their weapons raised, they advanced down the aisle toward the altar.
"You can take the gold, Marco," Dante spoke, his voice carrying the calm, terrible weight of a final executioner. "You can take the Serrano name."
Clara raised her weapon, her finger tightening on the trigger, aligning her sights directly between Marco's eyes.
"Because the Bellandis," Clara whispered, "have come to collect the debt."
Marco smiled—a slow, terrifying, deranged grin—and pulled a remote detonator from his coat pocket.
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"You really think I was planning on leaving witnesses?" Marco laughed, his thumb resting over the glowing red switch. "Look under the pews, Dante. The whole damn church is wired."
He pressed the button.
