Chapter 8 - The Cost of Blood
The heavy steel door of the bedroom swung open slowly.
Elena stood in the doorway, a heavy iron fire poker clutched in her white-knuckled hands. Her eyes were wide with panic, darting across the smoke-filled hallway.
She saw the two contractors lying motionless on the floor. She saw Marco and four Moretti soldiers securing the elevator foyer, zip-tying Salvatore’s hands behind his back.
And then she saw me.
I stood in the center of the living room, my suit jacket torn, a graze along my forearm staining my white dress shirt red. I lowered my weapon and holstered it.
Elena dropped the poker. It clattered against the floor with a loud clang.
She ran to me, throwing her arms around my neck with such force that it knocked the breath out of me. She buried her face in my shoulder, weeping openly, her whole body shaking with relief.
"You're alive," she sobbed. "You're alive."
"I told you I wasn't going anywhere," I murmured into her hair, wrapping my uninjured arm tightly around her waist, holding her like she was the only oxygen left on earth.
"Dominic," Marco called out, his voice solemn.
I pulled back slightly from Elena, looking over her shoulder.
Marco held a tablet in his hand. "Senator Marcus Barrett was just arrested at his private hangar in Bedford. State police and federal marshals caught him boarding a private jet to Zurich. The documents you leaked to the press hit the early morning wire. He’s finished."
I looked down at Salvatore, who was kneeling on the floor in zip-ties, weeping quietly into his chest, completely broken.
"Get him out of my house," I told Marco. "Hand him over to the feds along with the evidence. Let him rot in a six-by-eight cell for the rest of his life. Death is too quick for what he did to my family."
Marco nodded, motioning for the guards to haul Salvatore away.
As the elevator doors closed on my uncle for the last time, a quiet voice came from the bedroom doorway.
"Mama?"
We turned.
All four boys were standing in the hallway, clutching their pillows, rubbing their eyes. They looked past the broken furniture, past the cracked marble, and looked straight at me.
"Is the thunderstorm over?" Leo asked.
I looked at Elena. She wiped the tears from her cheeks, offering me a tearful, beautiful smile that felt like sunlight breaking through six years of winter.
I walked over to our sons, dropping to both knees, opening my arms wide.
"Yeah, buddy," I choked out, a raw, clean emotion washing over me. "The storm is over."
May you like
All four boys rushed forward, crashing into my chest, wrapping their small arms around my neck, my shoulders, my waist. I held them close, burying my face against their warm hair, letting the tears I had held back for a decade finally fall.
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