Chapter 13 - The Blood Secret
Valentina’s gun swung toward Adrian before memory caught up with instinct.
He raised both hands.
“Easy.”
“Do not tell me easy.”
His eyes found Lily’s closed nursery door upstairs.
Then came back to Valentina.
“She’s alive?”
Valentina crossed the distance and struck him across the face.
The room did not move.
Adrian took it.
“You let me bury you.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You always had a choice.”
“Not if I wanted her alive.”
Valentina’s hand tightened around the pistol.
“Whose threat?”
Adrian looked at Marco.
Marco smiled faintly.
Eight years earlier, Adrian said, he had been ambushed on a Moretti route outside Newark.
Two men died.
Adrian survived with a bullet through his shoulder and a knife wound that left the scar on his jaw.
The message waiting in his safe house was simple.
Disappear or Valentina dies.
He disappeared.
Then Domenico found him.
“You met my father after?”
“Three times.”
Valentina nearly shot him for that alone.
“Domenico discovered the ambush was internal. Not Moretti. Not Carbone. Bellini.”
Every eye moved to Marco.
Marco’s expression went flat.
Adrian continued.
“Your father realized a child between us would eventually connect two blocs Marco needed fighting each other. That is why the Lily Clause exists.”
Valentina thought of every year Lily had been watched, guarded, scheduled.
Not just because she was a boss’s daughter.
Because she was a bridge.
Marco stood suddenly.
Nico raised his weapon.
Marco drew first.
His pistol came up toward Nico.
Valentina fired.
The shot hit Marco’s wrist.
His gun dropped.
He kicked the table into Nico and lunged sideways.
Straight toward the staircase.
Toward Lily.
Adrian tackled him before he reached the second step.
Both men hit the floor.
Marco clawed for the fallen gun.
Valentina kicked it away.
Nico dragged Marco upright.
Blood ran down Marco’s fingers.
He looked at Valentina and laughed.
“You think Adrian came back for you?”
Valentina looked at Adrian.
He said nothing.
Marco spat blood onto the marble.
“Ask him who funded Garden Seven after Domenico died.”
The room went still.
Nico opened the final ledger page.
One post-Domenico transfer.
Millions.
Authorized by:
May you like
ADRIAN MORETTI.
