Chapter 27 - The Price of Blood
Clara scrambled to her feet, ignoring the blood trickling down her temple from a flying splinter. She raised her service pistol with both hands, her arms shaking violently.
"Let her go!" Clara screamed, her voice cracking with the fury of a cornered tigress. "Let my daughter go, or I swear to God I will put a bullet through your skull!"
The lead mercenary laughed, shifting Lily to one arm while leveling the muzzle of his submachine gun directly at Clara’s chest. "Step aside, woman. The boss wants the girl alive, but he didn't say anything about the mother."
Before the mercenary could pull the trigger, a dark, lethal shadow dropped from the shattered ceiling beam directly above them.
It was Lorenzo.
With the terrifying momentum of a falling boulder, Lorenzo slammed both boots square into the mercenary’s chest, driving the man backward through the broken doorway of the nursery with bone-crushing force. The submachine gun clattered uselessly across the scorched hardwood floor.
The second mercenary spun around, raising his rifle to fire at Lorenzo, but Marco rounded the corner, his tactical rifle barking twice in rapid succession. The mercenary jerked violently and collapsed lifelessly against the wall.
Lorenzo stood amidst the wreckage of the nursery, his chest heaving, his clothes torn and stained with soot. He looked down at the first mercenary, who was pinned beneath his boots, gasping for air through crushed ribs.
Slowly, Lorenzo leaned down, grabbed the man by the collar of his tactical vest, and hauled him off the floor with one hand.
"Who sent you?" Lorenzo whispered. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried the absolute, freezing weight of an executioner.
The mercenary coughed up a spray of blood, a defiant grin crossing his lips beneath his tactical mask. "You... you think you won because you cleared the house? Look at the security monitors, Moretti. The entire estate is mined. We didn't come to steal the ledger... we came to bury it."
Lorenzo didn't hesitate. He drove his fist into the man's jaw with such brutal force that the mercenary went instantly limp, slumping to the floor like a broken doll.
Clara rushed past them, dropping to her knees beside the crib where Lily sat crying in the corner, miraculously unharmed beneath a heavy overturned mattress that had shielded her from the blast. Clara scooped her daughter into her arms, pressing the little girl’s face against her shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably.
"I've got you, my baby. I've got you," Clara wept, rocking her back and forth.
May you like
Lorenzo walked over to them, kneeling down to wrap his arms around both of them, his broad frame shielding them from the smoking ruins of the room. But his dark eyes remained fixed on the shattered window overlooking the courtyard below.
The war wasn't over. It had just entered its final, most dangerous phase.
