Chapter 77 - The Shadow of Julian
The command cut through the stillness like a bullet. Vincent didn't hesitate. Betrayal or not, five years of calculated combat instincts overrode his emotional devastation. In a blur of motion, his uninjured right hand swept upward, throwing his combat knife with deadly precision.
The blade buried itself to the hilt in the throat of the lead gunman stepping through the security door. The man collapsed with a gurgling shriek, his automatic weapon discharging into the concrete ceiling, raining fragments of rock and plaster down upon us.
"Run!" Vincent snarled, grabbing my arm with his blood-slicked fingers and shoving me toward the narrow maintenance conduit on our left.
"Vincent, your shoulder—"
"Move, Clara, or I leave you both to rot!" he roared, pulling a compact secondary pistol from his ankle holster.
I didn't stop to argue. I scooped Maya up into my chest, shielding her head beneath my coat as gunfire erupted behind us. Bullets ricocheted off the iron pipes lining the tunnel walls, sparking brightly in the damp darkness. Valerie screamed orders, her voice sharp and frantic, while Lorenzo's calm baritone directed the kill squad with cold efficiency.
We scrambled through the narrow access hatch, squeezing into a forgotten service shaft that sloped upward toward the street level of the old industrial district. Behind us, Vincent fired three rapid, controlled shots. A scream echoed from the opening, followed by the heavy thud of another body falling.
Vincent dragged himself into the conduit behind us, slamming the reinforced steel hatch shut and turning the wheel lock just as a volley of high-caliber rounds slammed into the reverse side, denting the metal outward.
In the confined space of the vertical shaft, his breathing was loud, wet, and labored. The smell of fresh copper was overpowering. He slumped against the rusted iron rungs of the ladder, clutching his chest.
"Mama..." Maya whimpered into my collar, her tiny hands gripping my hair. "It's loud. The bad men are loud."
"Shh, baby, I know. Close your eyes. Mommy has you. Vincent has you," I whispered, though the moment I uttered his name, Vincent flinched as if struck.
He looked up at me from the shadows beneath his brow, his eyes cold and hollow. The emergency flare in the tunnel below flickered out, leaving only a sliver of moonlight filtering down through the street grate twenty feet above us.
"Don't speak my name to her," Vincent rasped, his voice trembling with an emotion he was desperately trying to suppress. "Not after what your mother wrote. Not after what you did."
"Vincent, listen to me," I pleaded, stepping closer despite the terror vibrating through the narrow shaft. "Julian didn't just give her to me. He died in my arms in that Geneva clinic. He knew Lorenzo had arranged the boat accident. He knew Lorenzo would murder any child born out of wedlock to maintain the syndicate's alliance with the Bellini family!"
"And you thought you could use me?" Vincent sneered, a bitter laugh tearing from his throat. "You knew I carried the guilt of his death. You knew I blamed myself for not being on that boat. So you set a trap in Milan. You made me look at you, made me want you, made me believe that this innocent child was mine—so I would spend my men, my fortune, and my sanity tearing down my father's empire to keep you safe!"
"I didn't plan Milan!" I cried, tears finally breaking free and tracking through the dust on my cheeks. "I was running! I had three of Lorenzo's cleaners behind me, and I collapsed outside that café because I had nowhere else to go! When you saw me, when you looked at Maya—you were the only man alive powerful enough to keep Lorenzo De Marco from cutting her throat in her crib!"
Vincent closed his eyes, his head falling back against the rusty iron rungs. His chest rose and fell in ragged, shallow gasps. "She has Julian's eyes," he whispered, so quietly I barely caught it. "I kept looking at her, thinking she had mine. But they were his."
"She is your family, Vincent," I pressed, desperation clawing at my throat. "She is the last piece of your brother left on this earth."
Before Vincent could answer, a dull, heavy metallic thud resonated from the hatch below. Lorenzo’s men had brought cutting torches. The perimeter of the steel door began to glow a deep, smoldering red.
"They're burning through," Vincent said, pushing himself upright with agonizing effort. His shirt was almost entirely soaked in crimson now, but the lethality had returned to his gaze. "We can't take the street above. The grid is locked down by Valerie’s operatives."
"Then where do we go?" I asked, holding Maya tighter.
May you like
Vincent reached into his inner coat pocket and withdrew a small, tarnished brass key—a key distinct from the one Lorenzo held, stamped with the crest of the Florentine central vaults.
"Julian didn't just leave you a baby, Clara," Vincent said coldly, climbing the first rung of the ladder with his right arm. "He left a contingency that could destroy every asset the De Marco family owns. And if we don't reach the Florence repository by dawn, Lorenzo will execute the kill switch on Julian’s accounts, erasing every trace that my brother—or that child—ever existed."
