Chapter 8 - The Battle for the Marchetti Legacy
"I remember," she sobbed, tears spilling over her dirt-streaked cheeks as she held the blue vials tight against her heart. "Alessio, I remember everything! I remember the boys! I remember our wedding! I remember you!"
Alessio dropped his empty gun, dropping to his knees beside her beneath the steel table. He pulled her into his arms with a force that took her breath away, burying his face in her neck, his body trembling violently with three years of held-back grief and relief.
"Elena... my sweet girl... my queen," he wept into her hair, kissing her neck, her cheeks, her lips. "You came back to me. God forgive me, you came back to me."
"Boss!" Rocco roared from the doorway, reloading his rifle. "We have to go! The facility's automated alarm lit up the precinct! We have police and Vanezzi reinforcements converging on this grid in five minutes!"
Alessio pulled back, looking into Elena’s eyes. "Can you run?"
"I can fight," Elena gritted out, her hazel eyes blazing with the fierce, dangerous pride of a Marchetti queen.
Alessio grabbed one of the blue vials from her hand, snapped the glass top, and handed her the neutralizer syringe Dr. Harrison had prepared. Elena didn't hesitate; she plunged the needle into her thigh, depressing the plunger.
Instantly, a cool, soothing sensation washed through her bloodstream, neutralizing the burning headache and solidifying her restored memories.
Alessio pulled her to her feet, hand in hand. They walked over to where Dr. Kane lay groaning on the floor, clutching his bleeding thigh.
Alessio looked down at the doctor like a man looking at a cockroach.
"Please..." Kane whimpered, raising a trembling hand. "I can help you... I know Vanezzi's financial codes... I can give you everything..."
"You stole three years of my wife's life," Alessio said softly. "You made my sons mute with grief."
Alessio raised his boot and brought it down hard.
They cleared the underground facility in under three minutes, sprinting out into the rainy loading bay where two black Marchetti SUVs were idling.
As the convoy roared away from Saint Jude’s, emergency sirens wailed in the distance, blue and red lights flashing against the stormy night sky.
Elena sat in the back of the lead SUV, her head resting on Alessio’s chest, his strong arm wrapped securely around her waist. Her hand rested on his thigh, their fingers tightly intertwined.
"Where is Lucian Vanezzi?" she asked, her voice cold and focused.
"He thinks he’s flying to Zurich," Rocco said from the front passenger seat, turning around with a dark grin. "What he doesn't know is that his pilot is on my payroll. The jet isn't landing in Switzerland, Elena. It’s landing at our private airfield in thirty minutes."
Alessio stroked her hair softly. "He took my wife. He tried to destroy my family. Tonight, the Vanezzi name is wiped off the map forever."
Forty minutes later, at the rain-slicked tarmac of the private Marchetti hangar, a Gulfstream jet touched down under the cover of darkness.
As the stairs lowered, Don Lucian Vanezzi—an arrogant, middle-aged man in a tailored camel coat—stepped out onto the wet asphalt, expecting his Swiss security detail.
Instead, he walked into the glare of twenty high-powered floodlights.
Standing in the center of the hangar floor was Alessio Marchetti, flanked by fifty armed men. And standing right beside him, dressed in a sleek black leather trench coat, her dark hair blowing in the wind, was Elena.
Lucian stopped dead in his tracks on the airstrip stairs, his cigar dropping from his mouth onto the wet pavement. His face turned the color of ashes.
"Impossible..." Lucian gasped, his knees shaking. "Kane said... Kane said the project was irreversible!"
Elena took three steps forward into the harsh white light, her hazel eyes cutting through him like twin daggers.
"You underestimated a mother's love, Lucian," Elena said, her voice ringing out like thunder over the roaring storm. "And you forgot what happens when you strike a Marchetti."
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Alessio didn't give the order to fire. He walked up the stairs himself, grabbed Lucian Vanezzi by his throat, and dragged him down into the darkness of the hangar.
Justice was served in silence.
