Chapter 2 - The Bloodline Contract“You have three choices, Matteo,” my mother’s voice chimed from the overhead intercom, completely unbothered by the infant’s muffled wailing echoing through the wall. “Option one: You use the master override key in Julian’s pocket, unlock the door, and take your wife and child. But doing so breaks the silent protocol. The explosives will detonate, and all three of you die together in this hole.”
I stared at Julian Vance. The old man’s eyes were wide, but not with fear—with a sick, calculated amusement. He was a devout believer in the Rossi law: the family business came before blood, before love, before life itself.
“Option two?” I demanded, my hands shaking as I adjusted my grip on the gun.
“Option two,” Victoria continued, “you walk through the service tunnel behind the utility cabinet. There is a helicopter waiting at the eastern perimeter. You fly back to Europe, finalize the merger with the Bratva, and never set foot on Italian soil again. In return, the baby lives. He will be raised as my ward. He will bear the Rossi name, but he will never know who his mother was. And Grace... Grace will be moved to a private facility in Switzerland where she will spend the rest of her days comfortably... detached from reality.”
“And option three?”
Silence stretched over the speaker for three agonizing seconds. When my mother spoke again, her voice dropped an octave, dripping with pure poison.
“Option three is the truth. But you aren't strong enough for the truth, Matteo. You never were. You take after your father—always letting your heart bleed for things that can be easily replaced.”
I didn't answer. I slammed the butt of my Beretta into Julian Vance’s temple.
The old doctor dropped like a sack of stones, his silver tray clattering across the wet concrete. I immediately dropped to my knees, raking through his lab coat pockets until my fingers wrapped around a heavy, brass double-bitted key and a small, leather-bound black notebook.
I shoved the notebook into my jacket, threw the key into the electronic locking console of the vault door, and pulled out my tactical knife.
I didn't put the key into the lock. I knew my mother. The key was a trap—an electrical contact that would complete the circuit to the C4 detonator. Instead, I carved through the rubber casing of the industrial cable running out of the vault door, exposing the copper wires inside.
If the explosives were linked to the infant’s heart rate monitor, the system needed a continuous signal to verify the child was alive. If the signal dropped below a certain threshold, boom. But what if the signal wasn't coming from a real heart? What if it was coming from an external feed?
I whipped out my phone, opening the encrypted Rossi mainframe application I had used while commanding operations in Eastern Europe. My fingers moved across the glass in a blur, bypassing the regional firewalls and tapping directly into the estate’s local biometrics server.
There it was: Subject 0-B. Heart Rate: 142 BPM. Status: Oxygen Deprivation - Stage 1.
Grace hadn't given birth six months ago. She had been forced into labor days ago.
My mother hadn't kept Grace hidden to keep her away from me. She had kept her hidden because the baby wasn't supposed to survive the birth.
With a swift cut, I spliced my phone’s custom diagnostic signal into the exposed copper wire, feeding a looped, perfectly stabilized 135-BPM heart rate back into the vault’s control board. The red warning light above the steel door stopped flashing. It turned a solid, sickly yellow.
The manual lock groaned. The hydraulic pressure released with a long, hiss of white steam.
I threw my weight against the heavy vault door, forcing it open inch by inch.
The smell inside was terrifying—a mixture of ozone, metallic blood, and stale milk.
In the center of the windowless room, suspended from four heavy chains hanging from the concrete ceiling, was an acrylic incubator. Inside lay a tiny, newborn infant wrapped in a blood-stained towel.
And chained to the wall beneath it, her hands raw and bleeding, her body pale as bone, was Grace.
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Her eyes slowly lifted toward me, glassy and unfocused. She cracked her dry, split lips, trying to form a word.
“Matteo...” she rasped, her voice barely a whisper. “Don't... don't touch him...”
