Chapter 4
869 Words
I shoved Lily into the car.
“Drive.”
Damiano slammed his foot on the gas.
The SUV shot into the night like a black panther, gravel spraying behind us and striking the estate’s iron gate.
In the rearview mirror, headlights flared to life.
Three cars.
Coming after us.
“Hold on.”
Damiano jerked the wheel hard.
The SUV fishtailed across the icy road and swung into an unlit side lane.
Lily clung to my arm.
Her nails dug into my skin.
She didn’t scream.
She only repeated in that hollow voice, over and over.
“Papa will be angry.”
“Papa will be angry.”
“He’s not Papa.”
I held her tightly.
“Lily, he never was.”
We tore through the darkness for forty minutes.
The pursuing headlights fell farther and farther behind us.
Then vanished completely.
The SUV finally stopped in the underground garage of an abandoned bakery on the south side.
Damiano killed the engine and exhaled slowly.
“It’s safe here.”
“Falcone’s men won’t find this place.”
Only then did I have a chance to really look at him.
Blood had soaked through the fabric at his left shoulder.
He had been shot while getting us out of the estate.
And he hadn’t said a word.
“You’re wounded.”
“Grazed.”
He pulled off his scarf and wrapped it roughly around the injury.
“It’s nothing.”
I stared into his eyes.
Twelve years.
A boy barely out of his teens had watched his father murdered before him.
Then spent twelve years building a web strong enough to bring down Don Falcone.
That kind of hatred—
I understood.
“The donor registry you mentioned.”
My voice was cold.
“What is it?”
Damiano was silent for a moment.
Then he dragged a metal case from the back seat.
Inside was an encrypted laptop and a thick stack of photocopied documents.
“Falcone’s real business isn’t docks.”
“It isn’t weapons.”
“It’s people.”
He opened the laptop.
Scanned pages appeared across the screen.
Photos of children.
Genetic compatibility charts.
Organ listings.
Client numbers.
“He targets children left behind after he wipes out rival families.”
“No parents.”
“No relatives.”
No one left to search for them.
“He brings them home and tells the world he adopted them.”
“Plays the compassionate don.”
“But in secret, he raises them into clean, healthy, highly compatible living donors.”
“And sells them to the most powerful clients in America.”
“Politicians.”
“Judges.”
“Old men who own multinational corporations.”
“Anyone rich enough to buy a young heart and call it a second chance.”
I stared at the photographs.
My stomach twisted violently.
Every child had the same empty eyes as Lily.
“What happened to them?”
Damiano didn’t answer.
He simply turned to the next page.
The latest two files.
One was mine.
One was Lily’s.
On the back of my photo, the label read:
Heart. Client A-07. Delivery within seven days.
I stared at those words for a long time.
A very long time.
Then I looked up.
“My mother.”
My voice sounded so cold it barely seemed human.
“How did she really die?”
Damiano’s jaw tightened.
“The car accident was staged.”
“Your mother found Falcone’s registry.”
“She tried to run with you and Lily.”
“Falcone couldn’t allow a woman who knew the truth to live.”
“But he needed both of you.”
“You and Lily were the rarest matches in his entire registry.”
“So he killed your mother.”
“And kept you.”
“Then raised you beside him for twelve years.”
“Made you call him Papa.”
I closed my eyes.
I remembered being small.
Crying for my mother.
Falcone would lift me onto his lap and pat my back.
“Don’t cry, Sera.”
“Papa is here.”
The hands that comforted me were the hands that murdered my mother.
The man I called father was my mother’s killer.
Hatred poured down my spine like ice water.
And suddenly, I was terribly, terrifyingly calm.
“I want him dead.”
I opened my eyes.
“Not escaped from.”
“Dead.”
“And everyone who tried to buy us—”
“They pay too.”
Damiano looked at me differently then.
Almost with reverence.
“You really are a Ferraro daughter.”
At that moment, Lily began coughing violently.
She covered her mouth as her body curled in on itself.
When she pulled her hand away, her palm was bright with blood.
“Lily!”
Damiano’s expression changed instantly.
“The treatments in her system...”
“They were stopped too suddenly.”
He grabbed his phone.
“Her organs are already rejecting.”
“If we don’t find someone who can detoxify her soon—”
He looked at me.
Every word landed like a bullet.
“She won’t live long enough to see Falcone die.”
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