Chapter 26
Lorenzo Valenti sat in his wheelchair, staring out at the rain slicked city with a jagged smile cutting into his scarred skin.
?The report on his desk confirmed the strike had missed Aiden Thorne, but it had claimed a far more monumental prize, it hit the Wraith. Anna, the unbreakable shield of the Thorne empire, was dying in an ICU.
?"Perfect," Lorenzo hissed to the empty room. "Magnificent."
?This wasn't a failure, it was a perfect orchestration.
For years, the Thornes had held an untouchable monopoly over the shipping corridors.
Now, Lorenzo saw a grander design. He was going to pit the Rossi family and the Thorne empire against one another in a total war.
While Enzo and Aiden tore each other apart, Lorenzo would pull the strings from his chair and reap the benefits from the ashes.
?Miles away, idling in the driver's seat of a nondescript sedan, Aiden Thorne gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turned white. His expensive charcoal suit was still stiff and ruined by the dark, rust colored stains of his Anna's blood.
?His modified encrypted phone illuminated, displaying a single set of glowing geographic coordinates. It was the last known location of the shooter.
?Aiden didn't call Marcus. He didn't need backup.
The sheer, volatile adrenaline pulsing through his veins had surpassed the threshold of pain or caution, it had rendered him completely invisible to the concept of fear.
He shifted the car into drive, the engine roaring to life as he tore through the fading evening light toward the outskirts of the city.
?The location was a secluded, atmospheric little lounge tucked neatly behind a historic brick warehouse, the perfect kind of hidden retreat where people escaped when they wanted to completely tune out the noise of the bustling city.
?Aiden slid through the heavy wooden door with a lethal, ghost like grace.
He didn't draw a weapon yet. He simply walked straight to the bar, his presence radiating an immediate, sub zero shift in temperature that caused the low level criminals in the booths to instantly freeze.
Aiden caught the eye of the trembling bartender and gave a single, microscopic nod toward the exit.
?The bartender didn't ask questions. In this city, everyone recognized the towering stature and the terrifying aura of the Aiden Thorne. Within a minute the only sound remaining was the haunting hum of the jukebox fading into the background.
?Sitting in a dark corner booth, a man kept his head lowered, his fingers nervously spinning a glass of cheap whiskey. When the absolute silence of the room finally registered, the man slowly lifted his gaze.
?His eyes met two voids of absolute, unforgiving black.
?The man froze, the color draining from his face as a suffocating panic seized his chest.
?"Marco," Aiden uttered, his voice a flat, dead frequency.
?Aiden knew him instantly. Marco was a premier, top tier black ops assassin explicitly contracted to the Rossi family syndicate.
It was a detail that should have bred confusion in a lesser mind, Aiden knew for a fact that Enzo Rossi and his sister, Vanessa, owed their very lives to Anna.
The debt was immense. To strike at the Thorne family now made zero tactical sense.
?But Aiden wasn't there to ask questions. He wasn't there for an interrogation, a trial, or a dramatic exchange of "why." He already knew exactly who was at the top of the food chain, and Marco was merely the tool that needed to be broken.
?Before Marco could even reach for the concealed firearm beneath his jacket, Aiden's hand blurred.
?Thud.
?A suppressed round tore through Marco's right kneecap, shattering the bone into a useless pulp of marrow and cartilage. A strangled, agonizing scream began to form in Marco's throat, but it was abruptly cut short by a second, calculated shot.
?Thud.
?The second round pierced directly through his groin, inducing a level of white hot, blinding agony that caused the assassin's eyes to roll back into his skull, his body seizing violently against the booth. He was drowning in his own nervous system's shock.
?Aiden stood over him, his face completely expressionless, staring down at the writhing hitman as if he were looking at a stray insect.
He didn't utter another word. He raised the barrel of the weapon, aligning it precisely with the center of Marco's sweating forehead, and pulled the trigger a final time.
?The body went completely slack. Aiden turned on his heel and walked out into the rain, not bothering to call a cleanup crew or wipe his prints. He was a man possessed, a force of nature moving toward a singular, catastrophic conclusion.
?Back at the Thorne Medical Wing, the silence was vastly more painful than the chaotic violence taking over the city streets. The corridor outside the Intensive Care Unit was illuminated by a harsh, clinical white glare that made everyone look skeletal.
?Mia and Leo stood on their tiptoes, their small, trembling hands pressed flat against the thick, cold observation glass.
Inside the sterile room, Anna looked like a fragile ghost of the fierce woman who had become their safe place.
Her athletic, powerful frame was completely submerged beneath a labyrinth of transparent medical tubes, monitors, and the heavy, rhythmic, mechanical hum of a ventilator that was forcing air into her punctured lungs.
?"Why is she so still, Uncle Marcus?" Mia whispered, her voice tiny and cracked, her warm breath leaving a small circle of fog on the glass window. "She looks like she's just sleeping real deep... but the big machines are making all the noise for her."
?Leo didn't answer his sister. He didn't cry.
Instead, he just stared unblinkingly, his small jaw set in a rigid, unforgiving line that looked terrifyingly identical to his father's.
He slowly extended his index finger, tracing the distant, blurry outline of her unmoving hand through the double paned glass.
?"We promised we'd be good, Mommy," Leo murmured, his voice so quiet, so devoid of childhood innocence, that Marcus barely caught the audio over the hum of the hospital infrastructure.
"We won't leave our toys out. We won't make you mad. You just have to wake up so we can show you we kept the promise."
?Marcus turned his face toward the wall, his chest tightening as his own eyes stung with a rare heat.
He was a seasoned soldier, a man who had watched empires fall, but looking at two broken children trying to bargain with a piece of glass for their mother's life was a sight that tore his soul to shreds.
?While his family stood vigil, Aiden Thorne was a blur of lethal productivity, methodically dismantling his enemies' entire operation piece by piece.
?Inside the maximum security tier of the state penitentiary, a sudden cellular blackout hit. Simultaneously, the security cameras experienced a hardware malfunction, leaving the guard stations completely blind for exactly four minutes.
When the monitors flickered back to life, no struggles had been recorded. Yet, inside their locked cells, Lorenzo Valenti's two sons were found dead with their throats neatly opened. The prison staff remained entirely mute, offering absolutely nothing to the investigators.
?But Aiden wasn't finished. Using deep-cover informants embedded within rival networks, he easily obtained Vanessa Rossi's precise schedule.
?As Vanessa exited a downtown boutique flanked by two bodyguards, Aiden materialized from the crowd.
With effortless, terrifying precision, he neutralized both guards with swift strikes before they could even react.
To casual bystanders, it simply looked like a woman being quickly escorted into a sleek black SUV by an acquaintance.
?Within twenty minutes, Vanessa was secured in one of the heavily reinforced, soundproofed holding cells deep within the subterranean basement of the Thorne estate.
"Let me go! Aiden, my brother had nothing to do with this!" Vanessa screamed, thrashing against the steel restraints anchoring her to the chair.
?Aiden stood at the threshold, looking down with dead eyes as he adjusted his blood stained cuffs. "Your brother's man pulled the trigger. That's the only reason I need."
?He turned to the guards outside. "Keep her safe. If anyone in this compound lays a hand on her, make sure you have a ticket straight to Mars before I get back. Am I clear?"
?The mercenaries shivered, instantly straightening. "Yes, sir."
?Aiden refused to prey on women for leverage like old world syndicates. He was a father with a daughter, his war was with the monsters who ordered the strike, not the innocent family they left behind.
?Meanwhile, across town in Enzo Rossi's private executive office, the air was thick with tobacco smoke. Enzo sat behind his desk, his glass trembling as he processed the catastrophic news
Marco had hit the wrong target.
?Enzo had nothing against Anna and owed her a profound debt for saving his family, but intent mattered nothing in the mafia.
In the eyes of the underworld, his asset had just brought down the Thorne Queen.
He poured another drink, his mind frantically racing through defense plans, knowing a storm of biblical proportions was heading straight for him.
?But before he could mobilize his men, he had a final piece of business to settle with the man who had driven him into this corner.
?An hour later, Enzo stood inside Lorenzo Valenti's fortified study, his fingers tightly gripping the antique silver locket. Lorenzo sat across from him in his wheelchair, an insufferable, smug expression plastered across his wrinkled face.
?"The coordinates," Enzo demanded, his voice dropping into a dangerously low, tight register. He didn't even bother to look at Lorenzo, his eyes were glued to the silver metal in his hand. "Give me the location Valenti."
?Lorenzo didn't answer immediately. Instead, he let out a dry, raspy laugh that echoed uncomfortably against the oak paneled walls. It was a sound that made Enzo pause, his eyes slowly shifting away from the locket to lock onto the withered, crippled Don.
?"You do know he'll be coming after you right now, don't you?" Lorenzo asked, his eyes gleaming with a sick, twisted amusement.
?Enzo didn't flinch. He kept his gaze fixed on the older man, a sudden, cold realization beginning to bloom in the back of his mind as he looked down at the photo of his aunt nestled inside the locket.
?"You planned this," Enzo whispered, the realization turning his blood to ice.
?Lorenzo chuckled, leaning forward in his wheelchair, his hands folding neatly over his lap. "Of course I did, you arrogant boy. But I wasn't just planning a simple hit. I was leaning entirely on the beautiful reality of you going to absolute war with the Wraith."
?"Yeah?" Enzo's voice was dangerously quiet now, his knuckles turning white as he pocketed the locket. "And why the hell is that, Lorenzo?"
?Lorenzo stared at him intently, the madness in his eyes completely unveiled. "Because, Enzo... I wanted to see who was truly the strongest between the two Rossis fighting for this city."
?The words hung in the air like a poisonous gas. Enzo froze, his breath catching in his throat as the literal meaning of the sentence began to sink into his consciousness, heavy and terrifying.
?"What... what did you just say?" Enzo asked, his voice shaking with a sudden, primitive dread.
?Lorenzo's smile widened. "Haven't you been spending years searching for someone, Enzo? Haven't you spent millions trying to find the last remaining piece of your aunt's broken bloodline?"
?Lorenzo reached into his inner breast pocket, his fingers slowly pulling out a grainy, weathered photograph taken inside the training camp over a decade ago. He tossed it carelessly onto the mahogany desk.
?"Congratulations, Enzo," Lorenzo sneered, his voice dripping with venomous satisfaction. "You didn't need coordinates. You just gunned down your long lost cousin."