CONTRACT WITH THE DON

RESCUING HIS QUEEN

​RESCUING HIS QUEEN

​Everything was supposed to go according to plan; everything was squared away and ready, but that night something went wrong. In the dark world of the Mafia, that was a terrible sign.

​The roar of the Maserati’s V8 engine pierced the night along the coastal highway toward Anzio. It was raining heavily, but Aaron didn’t care about the wet asphalt or the sharp turns he took at over one hundred and eighty kilometers per hour.

​Beside him, in the passenger seat, the satellite phone was emitting an intermittent tracking signal that had just died. That was a panic signal for Aaron.

​Sofía had not arrived at the meeting with the auditors of the Banco Ambrosiano, just as they had agreed. Her armored car had been intercepted in a tunnel on the Via Aurelia; two of her bodyguards lay dead on the asphalt with clean execution shots to the back of the neck, and her vehicle was empty, the driver’s door wide open and the black diamond from her necklace left on the gunpowder- and blood-stained leather.

​Maroni. The cornered dog had played his last card before signing the surrender agreement. He didn’t want to negotiate; he wanted to use Sofía to tear the D’Luca structure apart from the roots.

​Aaron gripped the leather steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. The vein in his neck pulsed with a destructive rage. There was no cold calculation in his gaze that night; there was a storm of blind fire.

​He had taken off his suit jacket and was wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing the tattoos on his arms that seemed to twist under the light of the dashboard instruments.

​"Location confirmed, Don Aaron," his caporegime’s metallic voice sounded through the car’s speaker. "It’s an abandoned shipyard south of the Netuno shipyard port. There are at least fifteen armed men from the northern clan. Maroni is inside."

​"I want no prisoners," Aaron replied. His voice was not human; it was the roar of a wounded lion. "You come in with me. And whoever touches my woman dies slowly. And whoever tries to run dies first."

​Minutes later, the dark mass of the shipyard cut through the silhouette of the raging sea. The Maserati’s headlights went out three hundred meters from the main entrance.

Behind him, three black SUVs pulled up in absolute silence. Twenty-five men in tactical vests and assault rifles stepped out like shadows.

​Aaron didn’t wait for his men's cover. He pulled out his suppressed Beretta and walked straight toward the rusted sheet-metal side entrance, an assault rifle slung over his shoulder as well. No one was meant to walk away alive.

​Inside the shipyard, the smell of burnt diesel and humidity was thick, almost suffocating.

​Sofía was tied to an iron chair in the center of a workshop illuminated by a single yellowish bulb swaying in the sea wind. Her lower lip was split and a trail of dried blood marked her left cheekbone, but her eyes showed no fear.

​In front of her, Maroni paced back and forth, beside himself, clutching a handgun with a hand trembling with fury.

​"Do you think he’s coming for you?" Maroni shouted, slapping Sofía across the face and making her head snap back. "That bastard loves no one! He’ll leave you to die here the moment he realizes the Vatican contract is still in his name!"

​Sofía spat a thread of blood onto the concrete floor and looked up with a sarcastic smile.

​"You’re so afraid of him that you have your men armed to the teeth. You don’t know Aaron, Maroni," she whispered with a steady voice. "He’s not coming for the contract. He’s coming because you took his favorite toy... and he doesn't like to share. He has your head in his sights right now."

​Before Maroni could answer, the shipyard’s glass roof exploded in a thunderous crash of shattering glass and muffled gunfire.

​Chaos was instant. Two of Maroni’s men hit the floor before the shards even touched the ground, with precise shots to the chest and head. The lights in the workshop killed abruptly, plunging the place into a red gloom lit only by the muzzle flashes of returning fire.

​"Fire! Kill the woman!" Maroni ordered, his voice laced with pure panic.

​A thug tried to aim at Sofía’s head, but he never got to pull the trigger. Aaron emerged from the shadows behind him like a demon summoned by pain. He grabbed the man's wrist, snapping it with a swift motion, and drove his combat knife straight into his throat before using his body as a shield against a burst from a submachine gun.

​Sofía didn't move. She didn't even flinch when the henchman's blood splattered onto her dress. She knew exactly what was coming.

​The air inside the shipyard turned into a slaughterhouse. Aaron advanced among the containers with an animalistic violence his men rarely witnessed. He wasn't shooting to neutralize; he was shooting to obliterate. He emptied a magazine point-blank into a capo who tried to flank him; he slammed another against a steel beam until he heard the skull fracture.

​Aaron was furious and desperate all at once. Like he had never been in his entire life.

​In less than five minutes, silence returned to the workshop, broken only by the crash of waves against the pier and the ragged breathing of Maroni, who lay cornered against the back wooden wall, stripped of his gun and his strength.

​Aaron walked toward him. His face was smeared with someone else's blood and his dark eyes were empty of all humanity. His left hand was cut by glass, but he didn't even seem to notice.

​"Please... Aaron... The Commission..." Maroni pleaded, dragging himself through the mud on his knees.

​Aaron slammed his heavy boot onto Maroni's knee, shattering it instantly in a gut-wrenching scream that echoed throughout the entire port. Then, without a change in expression, he pressed the muzzle of his pistol against the forehead of the northern boss.

​"You took three hours of her life from me," Aaron said. His voice was an unmistakable death sentence. "You touched my woman... big mistake, Maroni."

​Bang.

​The shot was dry. Maroni's body went limp in the mud.

​Without looking at the corpse, Aaron holstered his empty weapon and turned abruptly toward the center of the workshop. In three strides, he was in front of Sofía. With a clean slice of his knife, he cut the hemp ropes binding her wrists.

​His hands—the very same hands that had just killed more than five men without mercy—shook slightly as they touched Sofía’s face. He wiped the blood from her cheek with his black silk handkerchief with supreme care, brushing her skin with a tenderness that contrasted terrifyingly with the butchery around them.

​"Did he hurt you?" Aaron asked, and for the first time that night, his cracked voice betrayed the terror that had consumed him since the afternoon. "Tell me, Sofía. If anyone else laid a hand on you, I’ll go back to Rome and burn the entire city to the ground until I find the bastard."

​Sofía stood up with difficulty in her heels. Her legs trembled from the tension of being bound for hours, but she held on tightly to Aaron's shoulders. She felt the Don's heart hammering wildly against his chest, a machine of war out of control that only slowed down for her.

​"You’re late, my Don," she murmured, resting her forehead against his, taking in the scent of gunpowder, rain, and the blood that enveloped him. "My dress is dark red now."

​Aaron smiled and wrapped his arm around her waist with the force of a man who had just reclaimed his empire from the depths of the abyss. He lifted her slightly off the ground, burying his face in her neck, breathing in her perfume mixed with the rust of iron.

​"Don't ever scare me like that again," he whispered against her skin, squeezing her so tightly she could barely breathe. "Don't play with your life, Sofía. Because if I lose you, there won't be a single D’Luca, nor a Lucchese, nor a priest left in the Vatican to tell the tale of what I’ll do to this world."

​Sofía smiled beneath the painful pressure of his arms against her back. She cupped the back of his neck, digging her nails into Aaron's skin, pulling his mouth toward hers, meeting him in a bitter, searing kiss.

​"Then make sure you never leave me alone again, Aaron," she answered, pulling back barely a fraction of an inch from his lips. "Because as long as I’m by your side, the only blood spilled in Italy will belong to the fools who think they can take our crown."