Chapter 17 - The Ashes of the Past Two days later, the Indiana facility at St. Jude Orphanage burned to the ground.
Standing in the freezing rain beside the smoldering ruins of the underground lab, Dante watched the black smoke curl up into the gray sky. Marco Ferrante was gone—not dead by a bullet, but left to wander the desolate Indiana marshlands with nothing but the clothes on his back and the knowledge that his grand conspiracy had completely disintegrated around him. A man like Marco, stripped of his power, his ledgers, and his status, was already dead in the underworld.
Dante turned back to his armored SUV, where young Leo sat in the passenger seat, quietly reading through the original family ledgers recovered from the facility's master server.
"You didn't kill him," Leo said without looking up as Dante slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door against the wind.
"Killing a traitor is easy, Leo," Dante replied, shifting the vehicle into gear and turning back toward the Chicago highway. "Making him watch everything he built turn to ash while he remains alive is far more permanent."
Leo closed the ledger and looked over at his father. For the first time since they had met in the freezing slush of the February street market, a genuine, human smile touched the corner of the boy's mouth—a mirror image of the man driving the car.
May you like
"What happens now?" Leo asked.
"Now," Dante said, his eyes fixed on the horizon where the glittering skyscrapers of Chicago rose against the storm clouds, "we rebuild the house. From the foundation up."
