Chapter 7 - The Blood of the Protector
Sirens blared in the distance as red emergency lights flickered to life along the hallways, casting long, demonic shadows across the walls.
Gunfire erupted outside—heavy, sustained, terrifying. Marcone’s strike team was storming the compound.
I scrambled up from the floor, my jaw throbbing, blood trickling down the corner of my mouth.
“Miss Clara!” Dante grunted, clutching his bleeding shoulder against the wall. “Take Leo! The panic room—go, go!”
“What about you?” I cried over the sound of breaking glass from the ground floor.
“I’ll hold the stairs!” Dante slammed a fresh magazine into his rifle. “Run!”
I didn't hesitate. I threw open the nursery door.
Leo was already awake, standing in his crib, screaming in sheer terror as the walls vibrated from grenade blasts in the garden below.
“Clara! Clara!” he cried, reaching his little arms toward me.
“I’ve got you, baby, I’ve got you,” I pulled him from the crib, wrapping him tightly in a heavy woolen blanket to shield him.
I ran to the heavy antique wardrobe in the corner. I reached behind the carved mahogany frame, grasping the brass wall sconce.
*One turn. Two turns. Three—*
The bedroom door was kicked off its hinges with a splintering crash.
Two men in black tactical gear and ski masks stepped into the nursery, their submachine guns raised. Behind them, Marco sneered, holding a smoking pistol.
“Drop the boy, Clara,” Marco said coldly. “Marcone wants him alive. For now. You, however... you’ve been a massive inconvenience.”
He raised his gun, aiming directly between my eyes.
Time slowed down to a crawl.
There was nowhere to run. Dante was down. The security team was overwhelmed. The panic room door was half-locked.
Leo was trembling against my chest, his little hands gripping my shirt collar, crying my name.
*“Clara... no bang... please...”*
I didn't think. I didn't hesitate.
I turned my back to Marco, curling my body completely around Leo, burying his head against my stomach and shielding him with my own flesh and bone.
*Crack.*
The impact hit me like a sledgehammer to the mid-back.
A searing, blinding fire tore through my left shoulder blade. The breath was punched out of my lungs in a bloody gasp. My knees buckled beneath me, and I collapsed onto the rug, but I never let go of Leo. I tightened my grip, tucking him beneath me, absorbing the weight of the fall.
“Stubborn little bitch,” Marco muttered, stepping closer. I heard the crunch of shattered glass under his boots. He leveled his gun at the back of my head. “Say goodbye.”
*CRASH.*
The armored glass of the nursery’s double French doors exploded inward in a shower of diamond-sharp shards.
A shadow moved faster than human sight.
A black tactical knife ripped through the throat of the first hitman before his gun could even fire. Blood sprayed across the yellow nursery rug as the man collapsed.
The second gunman turned, raising his weapon, but a thunderous double-tap from a heavy-caliber handgun blew him backward off his feet.
Marco gasped, whirling around in blind panic.
Stepping through the shattered window frame, rain-soaked, covered in blood, and radiating an aura of pure, apocalyptic fury, was Ricardo Moretti.
His eyes were not human. They were the eyes of a demon let loose from the depths of hell.
“Rico...” Marco stuttered, raising his weapon with trembling hands. “Wait, Rico, listen—”
Rico didn't say a word. He crossed the room in two strides, grabbed Marco’s gun arm, and snapped the bone with an audible *crack*.
Marco shrieked in agony, dropping the weapon.
Rico seized Marco by the throat, lifting the grown man completely off the floor with one arm, slamming him against the brick chimney.
“You broke into my house,” Rico’s voice was barely a whisper, but it shook the entire room. “You terrified my son. And you shot the woman who saved him.”
“Rico, please—mercy—” Marco choked out, kicking frantically.
“Mercy died six months ago,” Rico said.
With a brutal, single twist of his wrists, Rico ended the traitor’s life. He dropped the lifeless body onto the floor without looking at it.
The nursery fell completely silent, save for the patter of rain pouring through the shattered window.
Rico dropped to his knees beside me.
His massive hands were shaking—Ricardo Moretti, the Butcher of Brooklyn, was trembling like a child.
“Clara,” he gasped, his voice cracking with sheer panic. “Clara, look at me. Stay with me!”
He gently rolled me onto my side, being careful of the wound. Leo was unharmed, crying hysterically as he crawled onto my chest.
“Clara! Wake up! Mamma, wake up!” Leo sobbed, his tiny hands patting my pale cheeks.
I looked up at Rico. The room was spinning. The pain in my shoulder was a white-hot furnace, draining the warmth from my limbs. But I forced a weak, blood-stained smile.
“Leo...” I whispered, coughing weakly. “He's... safe. He didn't... get hit.”
Tears streamed down Rico’s face, mingling with the rain and gunpowder on his cheeks. He pressed his hand against the wound in my shoulder, trying desperately to stem the bleeding.
“You protected him,” Rico choked out, pressing his forehead against mine. “You took a bullet for my son.”
“I told you...” I murmured, my vision dimming to black around the edges. “In the nursery... I make the rules.”
“Stay awake!” Rico roared, his voice cracking with terror. “MEDIC! GET A DAMN MEDIC IN HERE NOW!”
The last thing I felt before the world faded into darkness was Rico’s warm lips pressing desperately against mine, and his broken whisper against my ear:
May you like
“Don't you dare leave me, Clara. You’re my home now.”
***
