Chapter-14
1201 Words
---
Chapter 14 – Ashes of the Innocent
---
The sun rose blood-orange over the Montana hills, casting eerie shadows through the shattered glass of the motel window where they’d holed up.
Dante sat in the far corner of the room, a pistol in one hand and a blood-stained towel in the other, watching his brother like a man waiting for a ghost to vanish.
Luca hadn’t spoken since they pulled him from Vanguard Hollow. He hadn’t screamed either. He just stared—at the walls, at his own hands, at some distant, unreachable point beyond reason.
Aria stood over him now, brushing back his matted hair, her fingers gentle, voice soft.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “You’re safe.”
Luca didn’t move.
---
Killian re-entered the room, laptop under one arm, face drawn tight. “We need to move. I scrubbed all digital trails from the motel’s system, but Sable won’t stop. She’s military-grade, Dante. Not freelance. This is a full-scale black-ops clean-up job.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed. “Meaning?”
“Meaning someone powerful still wants Luca erased—and us with him.”
Killian placed a flash drive on the nightstand.
“I decrypted what was left from Vanguard Hollow’s server before it fried. You’ll want to see it.”
---
The footage was grainy, timestamped two years ago. A cold lab room. Luca strapped to a chair, screaming as a voice over a speaker instructed him to kill a cardboard cutout of Dante.
He refused.
Even as they shocked him. Even when they brought in another prisoner and told him they’d die if he didn’t obey.
He refused again.
Dante clenched his jaw so tight it hurt.
Killian turned off the footage. “He fought them.”
Aria looked up. “And they broke him for it.”
Dante’s voice was hoarse. “We’re done running.”
---
That afternoon, Aria left the motel briefly. Not to run—but to return to something she’d left behind.
The truth.
She stood in front of the massive iron gates of a colonial-style house on the edge of Valemont. The kind of place where power lived in the walls and secrets sank into the floorboards.
Her father’s old friend—Judge Milton Braxley—opened the door, surprised.
“Aria? My God, you’re the spitting image of your mother.”
She smiled faintly. “I need answers, Judge. About my dad. About what he really died for.”
---
Inside, the judge poured two glasses of bourbon but only drank his. Aria sat across from him, notebook in hand, voice steady.
“You told me years ago that my father was a good man. That he died trying to protect this city. But I found something—a file he left hidden in a clock at our cabin. It mentioned something called Operation Specter.”
The judge’s hand twitched.
He set his drink down.
Then he sighed.
“Your father was part of a covert task force under Verratti. Officially, they were informants. Unofficially, they were cleaners—silencers for high-value political deals involving the syndicates.”
Aria stared, stunned. “He was… working for Verratti?”
“He thought he could change it from the inside. He believed in diplomacy—until he saw Verratti kill a senator’s aide with his bare hands. That was when he tried to turn state’s witness.”
The judge reached behind a bookshelf and pulled out a small black box.
“He gave me this before he died. Said if anything happened to him, you should have it.”
---
Inside the box was a thumb drive, a photo of her father and Verratti standing in military uniforms… and a silver locket.
She opened the locket.
Inside were two names etched in cursive:
> “Aria”
“Dante”
She blinked.
“Why is Dante’s name here?”
The judge hesitated.
“Because your father and Dante’s father weren’t just associates. They were brothers.”
---
Back at the motel, Dante stared at the cracked screen of his burner phone.
His mind spun.
The footage of Luca. The sound of his screams. The look in his eyes.
Killian approached, holding a burner SIM card.
“Just got word. The name ‘Sable’ finally hit in the dark net. She’s not just an assassin. She’s a ghost asset—trained under Verratti’s elite. Used for internal purges. She only gets called when someone on the inside goes rogue.”
Dante’s expression hardened. “Which means Verratti knows Luca survived. And he knows I’m coming.”
Killian nodded. “And he’s starting to get scared.”
---
Aria returned just before sunset, her face pale but determined.
Dante looked up. “Where were you?”
She handed him the locket.
He opened it.
Stared at the names.
Read them again.
“What is this?”
Aria exhaled. “My father and your father were brothers. Which makes us—”
“Cousins,” Dante finished, stunned. “All this time…”
Aria looked at him. “We were born into the same war. On different sides of the same lie.”
Dante swallowed hard. “You okay?”
She shook her head. “No. But I’m ready.”
---
That night, Luca spoke.
He was lying on the motel bed, arms stiff, eyes wide.
Dante sat beside him, silent, waiting.
Then the whisper came.
“I remember you.”
Dante froze.
Luca turned his head slowly. “You had a scar… on your shoulder. I asked you if it hurt. You said pain was just memory.”
Dante smiled faintly. “You were always too smart for your age.”
Luca’s voice cracked. “They made me forget you. They… they put things in my head. I tried to hold onto your voice. But it got buried under screams.”
Tears slid down his face.
Dante leaned forward. “You held on, brother. That’s all that matters.”
Luca grabbed his hand.
And for the first time since the m******e… Dante felt like he had something left to save.
---
Later, as the team packed up, Killian pulled Dante aside.
“I decoded the thumb drive from Aria’s box.”
Dante raised a brow. “What’s on it?”
Killian’s face darkened.
“It’s a list. Names. Dates. Transactions. It confirms everything—judges, agents, senators. All bought and sold through Verratti’s war machine.”
He paused.
“And there’s one more name on the list. Under ‘current operative.’”
Dante leaned in.
“Marco.”
Dante’s fists clenched.
Killian added, “He’s not just Verratti’s clean-up guy. He’s the next in line to inherit the entire syndicate.”
---
As they drove out of Montana, Aria sat beside Dante in the front seat, the silence between them a shared grief.
“He was your brother,” she said quietly. “And now… he’s ours.”
Dante glanced at her. “I won’t let them touch him again.”
“They won’t,” she said. “Because this time, we’re not fighting for revenge.”
She looked at him, eyes fierce.
“We’re fighting to end the cycle.”
---
- Writer
