Chapter Two: Bloodlines
1130 Words
LUCIA
The leather seat is cold against my bare legs.
I haven't stopped shaking since they put me in this car.
There are two of them, men in black, faces carved from stone, eyes forward like I don't exist. Like bundling a terrified girl into a blacked-out SUV is just another Friday night task. Maybe for them it is.
That thought makes my stomach turn violently.
"Where are you taking me?"
Nothing.
"Hey." My voice comes out sharper than I feel. "I am talking to you."
The one on my left doesn't blink. Milan slides past the tinted windows golden streetlights, late night shadows and with every passing minute I feel myself getting further from anything familiar. My phone is in my locker at the club. My bag is behind that bar. I have absolutely nothing.
Okay Lucia. Think.
I press my hands flat on my knees and force myself to breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. My professor always says the brain cannot problem solve from inside a panic response.
Right now I desperately need my brain to work.
What do I know?
I know I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I know I saw things I was never meant to see. And I know the man who looked at me across that room is not someone ordinary. Nobody ordinary commands silence like that. Nobody ordinary looks at devastation they caused and feels nothing.
"Portala via."
Those two words have been circling me since he said them. Not "kill her". Not "get rid of her."
"Take her."
I don't know yet if that is better or worse.
The car slows.
I lean forward slightly and my breath catches completely.
We are pulling through enormous iron gates that swing open silently as we approach as though they already knew we were coming. A long private road stretches ahead, tall cypress trees lining each side like sentinels standing permanent guard.
And at the end of it
A mansion that swallows the night sky whole.
It rises from the dark like something ancient and immovable pale stone, arched windows, iron detail, lit from below so it glows against everything around it. Three storeys. Wings extending on either side. A fountain in the circular drive that murmurs steadily as we sweep around it and stop.
It is breathtaking.
It is absolutely terrifying.
The door opens. I consider refusing to move. I consider it seriously for about four seconds before deciding that refusing will accomplish exactly nothing tonight.
I get out.
"Lucia Cafiero."
A man is walking toward me from the entrance steps tall, dark-haired, broad, but carrying himself with something lighter than the men in the car. Almost easy. He stops a few feet away and looks at me with assessing but not unkind eyes.
"My name is Luca," he says. "I am not going to hurt you."
"You will forgive me if I don't immediately believe that."
Something shifts in his expression. Almost a smile. "Fair. Come inside."
---
The room they gave me is bigger than my entire apartment.
High ceilings. Heavy burgundy drapes. A bed so enormous and white it looks impossible. Marble bathroom. A window overlooking dark sprawling grounds below.
Beautiful.
A cage.
Luca stands in the doorway watching me take it all in.
"You are not a prisoner," he says.
I turn slowly. "The locked gates say otherwise."
"You are a guest. Until we establish that what you witnessed tonight stays with you."
"And if I cannot promise that?"
He holds my gaze. "I would strongly suggest that you can."
Not a threat. Something quieter than a threat and somehow worse.
I look away first.
"Try to sleep," he says and pulls the door shut behind him.
I sink onto the edge of the bed and press my palms to my knees.
From somewhere deep in the house slow measured footsteps in the corridor outside.
Stopping right outside my door.
I stop breathing.
The silence stretches until it becomes unbearable
Then the footsteps move away and I release a breath that shakes the whole way out.
---
MATTEO
Three hours earlier.
"Say that again."
My voice is always quiet. Men who raise their voices have already lost control of the room. I have not lost control of a room in thirteen years.
Marco my head of intelligence doesn't flinch. "Fabrizio Martinelli raided the warehouse on Via Settembre at tenforty-five. Everything destroyed. Estimated loss four point two million euros."
The number sits in the room like a stone dropped into still water.
I say nothing.
Luca is at the window. I feel him go carefully, deliberately neutral. He knows what my silence means.
I was six years old the first time I heard the name Martinelli at my father's table. Remember that name, Matteo. I remembered. Through my father's war with their empire. Through the hospital corridor at nineteen antiseptic and grief and a doctor who couldn't meet my eyes.
Fabrizio's father pulled the trigger on my entire world.
Now his son thinks he can raid my warehouse and breathe tomorrow.
"Where is he?"
"Club Nero on Via Dante. Private booth."
I stand. That is all. No words. No dramatics.
Luca falls into step beside me without being asked. This is why he has been my brother in everything but blood since we were boys. He doesn't ask questions I won't answer. He simply loads his weapon and walks beside me into whatever darkness needs entering.
The club is exactly as described.
We move through it quickly.
Fabrizio's booth is empty when I reach it half empty glasses, overturned ashtray, jacket thrown over the seat like he left mid-breath.
"He knew we were coming," Luca says.
The anger is cold. It is always cold.
His men are found near the service exit. I handle it the way I handle all necessary things directly and finally.
When it is done I turn
And I see her.
Ocean eyes peering from behind the bar cabinet. Wide with terror. Red hair spilling over trembling shoulders. A face so completely, disarmingly beautiful that for one suspended moment the room ceases to exist entirely.
I cross to her before the thought fully forms.
She tells me to let go. Her hands shake but her eyes those impossible eyes do not break. Not completely. There is something underneath the fear that she probably doesn't know exists in her.
"What is your name?"
"Lucia," she whispers.
I release her and turn to Luca.
"Portala via."
I walk away without looking back.
I don't need to.
Her face is already somewhere behind my ribs where nothing has lived in a very long time.
That is the most dangerous thing that happened tonight.
And I just had three men killed.
---
- Writer
