Chapter 4: The Mafia Don's "Olive Branch"
1358 Words
Consciousness drifted in frigid, lightless ocean depths. Leo felt himself suffocating.
Blinding white light!
His eyelids flared as if scorched! Leo gasped violently!
"Hack... koffkoff!" His parched throat convulsed, smoke-dry and raw.
"He wakes." A woman’s arctic voice pierced the air, though not directed at him.
Leo blinked fiercely against blurred vision.
Christ, not a hospital.
Neither the sterile public wards of Santa Maria nor his own cluttered hovel.
Where was this?
Impossibly vaulted ceilings hung a colossal crystal chandelier, its brilliance both soft and unnervingly radiant. Cold notes of antiseptic mingled with rare wood essence. The blanket enveloping him? No coarse sanitized linen—downy cashmere velvet, weightless as morning mist. And the bed... God, this monstrosity of sculpted mahogany and feather-mattress excess resembled a damned fortress!
"Urgh—" Leo pushed upright, bones protesting in splintered agony. His skull seethed, molten lead flooding every crevice. Throbbing. Heavy.
"I advise you remain prone." The glacial voice resurfaced. Leo pivoted to the woman standing sentinel by his bed.
Tall. Severely tailored dove-gray skirt suit. Hair scraped into an immaculate chignon. Her alabaster face betrayed no emotion, its surface smooth and unyielding as quarried marble. Her eyes—deep Arctic blue ice-floes—revealed nothing. She traced a staccato rhythm on a tablet with bone-white fingers.
"Where am I? Who are you?" Leo’s voice rasped, abraded steel on stone.
"Rosa Casta." No glance lifted. "Locke Estate Medical Pavilion. You’ve comatosed seven hours, twenty-three minutes."
Locke Estate?
Robert Locke?!
That half-corpse plutocrat!
Leo’s mind flashed to the ER—the old man’s parting gaze! Arctic. Calculating. A trapper studying ensnared prey!
A frisson of ice shot up his spine!
"I’m leaving!" Leo ripped the velvet shroud away. "This isn't a hospital! I never consented—"
His feet touched obscenely plush carpet—vertigo spiked, bones liquefied. He swayed, nearly collapsing!
As his knuckles whitened on the bedframe—
Silent as apparitions, two monoliths slid from beside the towering oak double-doors.
Two men.
Impeccable black suits straining over corded muscle. Over six feet five. Scalp-shaved skulls. Faces carved from granite. Their eyes—frost-bitten scalpels—held zero warmth. Zero humanity.
No words. No theatrics.
Simply bracketing the exit. Twin obsidian obelisks sealing all escape.
Palpable menace coalesced—an insurmountable wall of frost and foreboding. Air congealed into glass.
Leo froze. Sweat snaked down his temple. He tasted it: battlefield scorch and fresh gore clinging to these mercenaries. Not rent-a-cops. Hunters.
So this was House Locke? Victor's "regret being born in Misthaven" Locke dynasty?
Goddamn lion's den.
"Mr. Yang." Rosa ignored Leo’s struggle, the sentinels. She set her tablet aside. Her stare—a surgical probe—impaled him. "Until Mr. Locke honors you with his presence, this room remains your sanctuary. An edict."
"Edict?! Screw his edict!" Fury overrode exhaustion. "I'm no slave! He summons and I obey? Hell no! Detention is a felony!" His shout fractured the sterile luxury. Desperate bravado.
The guardians remained unblinking statues.
A ghost of mockery slithered through Rosa's glacial irises—a sparrow battering gold-plated bars.
"Law?" Her voice could fracture glass. "In Misthaven, Mr. Locke's word is law."
A casual declaration weighted with tectonic malice. Leo’s ribs compressed. Ruthless. Sublimely arrogant.
"You goddamn—" Rage throttled his throat.
*THUD-c***k!*
Sudden, percussive footfalls outside!
The oaken doors burst inward!
A figure streaked across the suite—Victor Locke! Pomaded hair pristine, but raw anxiety warred with giddy awe on his face. Brushing past Rosa and the monoliths, he lunged for Leo’s bedside.
*"Mr. Yang! Alive—thank fate!" Victor boomed, vibrating with near-religious fervor. "How do you feel? MEDIC! MEDIC! NOW!"
"Master Victor." Rosa’s bow was gelid protocol. "Physicians have concluded. Mr. Yang’s vitals stabilize. He requires rest." Translation: Silence your hysteria.
Victor dismissed her. His gaze welded to Leo.
"Mr. Yang!" He extended a hand—impulse to grasp, restrain—then withdrew. Trembling. "Praise providence! No... praise YOU! Father—Father wakened! Minutes ago! His inaugural decree—!"
Light ignited in Victor’s eyes. Fanaticism. Revelation.
"FIND THAT YOUNG MAN!"
His voice shook the crystal droplets overhead. Re-enacting paternal authority—a death-rattle command distilled to pure dominion:
"Find him! I will have him breathing! Every second! Every minute! Henceforth, his life? Locke property! His corpse? Locke crypt!"
*Sledgehammers.*
Each syllable rammed into Leo’s sternum.
His *life* belonged to them? His**bones**their family plot?
Gratitude? Or... branding?
Frostfury detonated in Leo’s nerves!
"BULLSHIT!" Leo erupted. Forget weakness—he launched off the bed, finger jabbing Victor’s face. "I’m human meat! Not a lapdog! Not chattel! I. Walk. OUT!" His vision swam. Rage-blinded.
Victor’s beatific gratitude petrified. He scanned the livid wraith before him—a starved lynx spitting defiance—and finally grasped his father’s 'hospitality' felt like... possession.
Beside them, Rosa’s icy veneer... micro-fractured. Amusement? Watching kittens hiss.
"Mr. Yang—a misunderstanding!" Victor backpedaled. Sugared tone, unaltered purpose. "Father treasures your... singular gift! This is sanctuary! Ultra-elite amenities! You are House Locke’s most hallowed benefactor!" 'Benefactor.' 'Honored guest.' He gestured toward the monoliths. The irony curdled.
"Sanctuary? Honor?" Leo's laugh bled acid. "Look! Sentries! Prison guards!"
The statues remained indifferent. Petrified.
"Merely... precautionary!" Victor stammered. "To shield you from... unsavory attentions. Given your... sudden notoriety."
Brandon’s venom-drenched sneer flickered in Leo’s mind.
Irrelevant. This cage eclipsed petty vendettas.
"Unnecessary!" Leo snarled. "I shield myself! UNBAR THE DOOR!"
He staggered past Victor, surging toward the guardians—stumbling, fueled by wrath alone.
"Regretfully, Mr. Yang."
The left titan’s voice—geological plates grating.
He didn't strike.
He didn't move.
Just... shifted his mass. A fraction.
An invisible wave—blood-rusted iron and predatory promise—slammed Leo backward. Ribs screamed! He crashed against the bedframe, vision exploding into static.
"Steady!" Victor grabbed his arm.
"OFF ME!" Leo wrenched free. Bile scalded his throat. Fury. Agony.
He lifted his gaze, crimson-veined. Scoured the glacial barricades. The gilded cage. Victor’s fragile placation. Rosa’s calculating frost.
Asphyxiation coiled—a pit viper constricting his lungs.
'Benefactor'? Bollocks.
'Olive branch'? A farce.
This was a cudgel. Velvet-sheathed and gem-encrusted. Pinning him as spoil.
'Private property.'
From Santa Maria’s fishbowl to... this.
Sumptuous. Implacable. Bottomless.
Struggle? Futile.
The monoliths supplied the answer.
Leo sagged. Soul-deep exhaustion.
Clutching his bruised ribs, he didn't shout. Didn't fight. He just... retreated. Step by leaden step. Back to the bed’s engulfing down.
He sat.
Head bowed.
Muted gold light glinted on his tangled dark hair. Cast a funerary shroud.
Silence, thicker than embalming fluid. Only Leo’s throttled breaths stirred it.
Victor fidgeted. "Mr. Yang? Supper approaches! Kobe beef. Pétrus '82..."
Rosa observed. A newly acquired asset. Unstable. Possibly volatile.
Then—
*Bzzzzzt-*
A discreet intercom chimed in the wall.
Static hissed. Then—
A voice emerged.
Graveyard dust against coffin wood. Rusted blades drawn slow.
Robert Locke’s voice.
"Vic... tor..."
A ghost exhaling command.
"...Bring
Him
To
Me."
A pause. Air sucked from the world.
"Now!"
"BRING HIM NOW!!!"
Final syllables—razors scoring bone. Edge of dementia.
Victor convulsed. Terror eclipsing deference. "A-At once, Father!"
Rosa’s glacial eyes flickered.
Leo’s head snapped up.
Not anger. Not dread.
Something sharper. Colder. The watchful glare of quarry turning predator.
Silence resurged. More absolute. More lethal.
Victor swallowed. Turned. Forced serenity back onto his face. "Mr. Yang? My father... demands your presence. A signal honor. Kindly..." His hand gestured toward the exit. Eyes betrayed his—checking the sentinels.
Leo rose.
Pale. Trembling. The shrapnel of pain raw and visible.
But beneath...
Emergency-room indignation reviving. The refusal to be played.
He didn't see Victor. Didn't see Rosa.
His focus tunneled—beyond walls, deep into the estate’s bowels, to that imperial sickbed. To the hand demanding ownership of his pulse.
To hell with House Locke.
To hell with their 'honor.'
He stood. Frail. Unbent. A sapling lashed by hurricanes.
His voice rasped out. Low. Barely audible. Dark matter ignited:
"...Lead on."
Ember-hot.
Primed.
Ready to burn.
- Writer
