I Raised The Mafia Boss’s Secret Daughter For Five Years—Until He Caught Her At The Airport / Chapter 82 / 95

Chapter 82 - The Inoculation

The moment Valerie disappeared into the mist, I scrambled across the broken stone floor, snatching the glass vial of antivenom before racing back to the altar.

"Maya! Come out, baby, hurry!"

The wooden plank shifted, and Maya crawled out of the dark recess, her face smudged with dirt, her tiny hands clutching the silver key against her chest. She didn't cry; she ran straight into my legs, burying herself in my coat.

"Mommy, the bad lady is gone?"

"She's gone, sweetie. But we have to help Vincent right now."

I picked Maya up and rushed to the driver's side of the station wagon. Vincent had slumped back against the front wheel, his breathing shallow, his pulse racing at an alarming speed. Dark, purple veins were spider-webbing out from beneath the bandage on his shoulder, crawling up his neck toward his jawline.

"Vincent, look at me," I said, dropping to my knees beside him. I snapped the neck of the glass ampoule, exposing the pre-loaded autoinjector needle inside. "Hold still. This is going to hurt."

Vincent gripped my wrist with what little strength he had left. His eyes, burning with fever, bored into mine. "If... if I don't wake up from this, Clara..."

"Don't speak like that," I ordered, my hands trembling as I positioned the needle over his uninjured thigh.

"Listen to me!" he gasped, his grip tightening painfully around my wrist. "The cipher... it's not a code. It's... it's her heartbeat. Julian linked the vault's acoustic resonance to her infant electrocardiogram recorded in Geneva. Lorenzo knows the sequence, but he doesn't have the live harmonic match. Only Maya can unlock it."

My breath seized. Julian hadn't just created an inheritance; he had turned his daughter's very existence into the ultimate lock.

"If Valerie takes her into that vault," Vincent whispered, his head slumping back against the tire, "she will extract the biometric scan... and then execute you both. Do not... trust her..."

I slammed the autoinjector into his leg.

Vincent’s body arched violently as the synthetic neutralizing agent surged through his bloodstream. A strangled cry tore from his throat, his teeth grinding together as his muscles locked in a massive convulsion. His eyes rolled back, and he went completely limp, his head dropping onto my lap.

"Vincent!" Maya cried, reaching out to touch his pale, cold cheek. "Vincent, wake up! Don't sleep!"

"He's fighting, baby. He's just resting," I whispered, pressing my fingers to his carotid artery. The pulse was still erratic, but the rapid, fluttering rhythm was slowly settling into a deeper, steadier beat. The black webbing along his neck was beginning to recede.

The thrum of the approaching helicopter grew louder, shaking the loose mortar from the church’s arched ceiling. We had less than five minutes before Lorenzo's airborne recon swept this coordinates.

I looked at the dead mercenary lying near the altar. Beside his body lay the keys to a secondary transport vehicle—a black, armored utility van parked in the dense brush behind the church cemetery.

"Maya," I said, wiping the tears from her dust-covered face. "Take Vincent’s hand. We have to drag him."

With every ounce of adrenaline coursing through my veins, I hauled Vincent's deadweight across the gravel, Maya pushing bravely against his knees. We tumbled into the back of the mercenary's van just as the shadow of a twin-engine chopper swept across the chapel roof, the downdraft flattening the tall grass all around us.

I slammed the rear doors shut, locked the reinforced deadbolts, and climbed into the driver's seat.