Chapter 47 - The Lion's Pawns
Dr. Laurent provided us with an old diesel delivery truck loaded with crates of pharmaceutical supplies. It was slow, loud, and inconspicuous—the exact opposite of the high-performance convoy Antonio’s mercenaries were scanning for along the coastal motorways.
Maya slept in a makeshift cot nestled between boxes of saline bags, breathing easily through a portable nebulizer. I sat beside her on an overturned wooden crate, holding a loaded Beretta that Vincent had placed in my hands before we left the lodge.
"Safety off, point and squeeze," he had instructed me calmly. "If anyone opens that door who isn't me or Laurent, don't ask questions."
I had never held a firearm in my life. The cold steel felt unnatural, heavy with the weight of death, but when I looked down at Maya's small chest rising and falling, my fingers closed around the textured grip without a single tremor. A mother doesn't flinch.
Up front, Vincent drove through the torrential rain, navigating the coastal backroads toward the private shipping docks of Genoa. Through the small partition window, I watched his profile illuminated by the amber glow of the dashboard. He was bleeding through his shirt from a shrapnel cut on his shoulder, but he refused Laurent’s offer to stitch it before we left.
"Genoa is held by the Rossi clan," Vincent said through the partition, his voice cutting through the engine's drone. "They were loyal to my father. But their loyalty has an expiration date, and Antonio has more gold than God."
"Can we trust them?" I asked.
"In our world, trust is a transaction," Vincent replied. "Old Man Rossi has an eight-year-old grandson suffering from leukemia. When the Rossi family was cut off by the Commission three years ago, I secretly funded the boy’s bone marrow transplant in Zurich. Rossi owes me a blood debt."
Two hours later, the truck rumbled across the industrial rail tracks of the Genoa port district, rolling past towering stacks of rusting shipping containers toward Pier 14.
The rain had turned into a thick, choking sea fog. Vincent cut the lights and killed the engine near an abandoned grain silo.
A flashlight flickered three times from behind a stack of rusted steel beams.
Vincent signaled back with the truck’s high beams. "Stay here. If I don't tap twice on the panel in five minutes, take Maya and run toward the dry docks."
"Vincent, wait," I called out.
He stopped, his hand on the door handle, looking back at me.
"Be careful," I whispered.
A ghost of a smile touched the corner of his lips. "I’m always careful, Elena. It’s staying alive that’s difficult."
He slipped out into the fog like a wraith. I sat in the darkness, the seconds ticking by with agonizing slowness. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. Maya shifted in her sleep, murmuring incoherently. I checked the Beretta, my finger resting lightly against the trigger guard.
At four minutes and thirty seconds, a sharp *tap-tap* sounded on the rear metal door.
I threw the bolt open, gun raised.
Vincent stood there, flanked by an elderly Italian man in a worn fisherman's slicker, carrying an umbrella. The man looked at me, then at the sleeping child in the crate, and crossed himself reverently.
"She has Maria’s eyes," the old man whispered in cracked Italian. "The daughter of the true blood."
"Marco," Vincent said. "Is the trawler ready?"
"The *Santa Lucia* is fueled and cleared for Tunis," Marco Rossi replied, stepping aside. "The harbor master took the bribe, but you have less than forty minutes before Antonio’s scouts realize the Genoa perimeter was breached. If the Italian Coast Guard scrambles their interceptors, I cannot protect you."
"We only need twenty miles of open water," Vincent said. "From there, my Sicilian loyalists will take the helm."
We moved quickly through the wet fog, transferring Maya into the cramped captain's cabin of the rusted forty-foot fishing vessel. The engine chugged to life with a deep, vibrating shudder, and the lines were cast off.
May you like
As the trawler slid away from the pier into the black, churning waves of the Ligurian Sea, Marco Rossi called out from the dock:
"Vincent! Beware the harbor at Trapani! Antonio’s flagship, the *Leviathan*, anchored there yesterday afternoon! He is waiting for you at the gate of hell!"
