Chapter 7 - The Mastermind Unmasked
"I must admit, Alessio," Dr. Kane said smoothly, picking up one of the blue vials and holding it between two gloved fingers. "I didn't expect you to solve the puzzle quite so quickly. Your sons' speech recovery was an unforeseen variable."
Alessio stepped into the room, his handguns raised and locked onto Kane’s chest. "Put the serum on the desk, Kane, and I might let you die quickly."
Kane chuckled, a dry, rattling sound that echoed off the glass walls. "Always the blunt instrument, Don Marchetti. You think this was about money? You think Vanezzi paid me five hundred million just to play a prank on you?"
"Where is Vanezzi?" Rocco demanded, sweeping his gun around the perimeter of the lab.
"Don Lucian is currently aboard a private jet heading to Zurich," Kane replied, stepping closer to a red control console on the wall. "He didn't care about the money. He wanted to prove that the great Marchetti bloodline could be broken by a simple scalpel. We took your queen, Alessio. We remade her. We wiped every trace of her love for you, every memory of those wretched children, and turned her into a ghost."
Sienna stepped out from behind Alessio, her voice shaking with rage. "You didn't destroy me, Kane. My boys remembered me."
Kane’s eyes locked onto Sienna, a cold, fascinated smile spreading across his face. "Ah, Subject 01. Magnificent, isn't it? The maternal neural bond bypassed six layers of chemical conditioning. A biological miracle. But unfortunately... a fatal one."
Kane’s thumb hovered over a large red button on the wall console.
"This button triggers the auto-destruct sequence for the remaining Lethe-9 inventory," Kane sneered. "Drop your weapons, Don Marchetti, or I smash this vial on the floor and hit the button. Your wife will have forty-eight hours left to live."
Alessio didn't hesitate. He dropped both handguns onto the floor with a loud metallic clatter. "Rocco. Drop them."
Rocco gritted his teeth, tossing his weapon aside.
"Good," Kane purred, taking a step toward an emergency exit door. "Now, stand very still while my security detail—"
BANG!
A sudden, violent explosion rocked the far wall of the laboratory! Dust and concrete debris rained down as a section of the wall collapsed inward.
Through the dust cloud, three armed men wearing Vanezzi family patches charged into the room, automatic weapons blazing!
"Ambush!" Rocco yelled, diving behind a metal supply cart.
Alessio grabbed Sienna by the waist, throwing his heavy body over hers as bullets ricocheted off the stainless-steel counters.
Kane sprinted toward the emergency exit, clutching the three blue vials against his chest!
"Alessio!" Sienna screamed over the deafening roar of gunfire. "He's getting away with the serum!"
Alessio looked down at her. A bullet had grazed his shoulder, dark blood soaking through his tactical vest, but his eyes were filled with pure, unfiltered iron.
He reached down to his boot, pulled out a long ceramic combat knife, and stood up straight into the line of fire.
With terrifying speed, Alessio snapped his arm forward, throwing the knife across the thirty-foot lab.
The blade whistled through the air, burying itself hilt-deep into Dr. Kane’s right thigh!
Kane let out a blood-curdling shriek, his leg giving out beneath him as he crashed hard against the concrete floor. The three vials of blue serum slipped from his hand, rolling across the floor toward the edge of a drainage grate!
"NO!" Sienna gasped.
She scrambled across the floor, ignoring the bullets snapping above her head, her hands flying out to trap the rolling glass vials just inches before they tipped into the dark drainage grate.
She caught all three.
She clutched them to her chest, rolling onto her back beneath a heavy steel work table.
At that exact moment, a piece of concrete fallen from the ceiling struck Sienna squarely across the back of her head.
The world went white.
A dam broke inside her mind.
Not a flash. Not a fragment. A tidal wave of three years of suppressed memories flooded her consciousness with the force of a hurricane.
Walking down the aisle in a white lace dress, looking up into Alessio’s handsome, tear-filled eyes as he slid a diamond band onto her finger.
Holding his hand in the delivery room, screaming in agony and joy as three tiny, crying baby boys were placed onto her chest.
Alessio kissing her forehead in the morning, whispering, "I love you, Elena. More than my life."
The car crash. The dark figures pulling her from the burning wreckage. The cold needle in her neck. Kane’s voice echoing in the dark...
Sienna—Elena—opened her eyes.
The fog was gone. The confusion was gone.
She looked up through the smoke and dust at the man standing ten feet away, firing his sidearm with deadly precision at the last Vanezzi enforcer.
"Alessio," she called out.
It wasn't the scared voice of Sienna the waitress. It was the rich, fierce, loving voice of his wife.
May you like
Alessio froze. He turned his head slowly, his eyes locking onto hers through the haze of gunsmoke.
"Elena?" he whispered.
