Chapter Twenty-Three SANTINO #2
The door burst open. Chiara Ventura, now Moretti, stormed in like a hurricane wrapped in silk and fury. Her blonde hair was disheveled, eyes red-rimmed and blazing. Leo straightened, stepping toward her, but she brushed past him, gaze locking on me.
“Where is she?” Chiara demanded, voice cracking with raw desperation. “Tell me you have something, Santino. She’s my sister. My little sister. I can’t… I won’t lose her to this madness.”
She looked every bit the protective older sister who had once tried to shield Aurora from their father’s world. Now that world had swallowed her whole. Leo placed a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off, stepping closer to me.
I met her eyes. The words tasted like ash, but she deserved the truth. They both did.
“She’s pregnant,” I said quietly, the admission slicing through the room like a blade. “With my child.”
Silence crashed down. Chiara’s face went pale, then flushed with a mix of horror and fierce determination. Leo’s jaw tightened, his serpent-calm fracturing for a split second.
“Pregnant,” Chiara whispered, pressing a hand to her mouth. Tears welled but didn’t fall. “Oh God, Aurora… She’s carrying your baby and Sergio has her.”
The revelation galvanized the room. Orders flew faster. Men moved with renewed urgency. Chiara demanded to be part of the search, refusing to be sidelined.
“She’s my blood. I know how she thinks. If there’s any chance she can signal us…”
Leo didn’t argue. He simply pulled her against his side, murmuring something low in her ear that seemed to steady her. The desperation in the air thickened. A pregnant woman in the hands of a broken, vengeful ghost. Time was no longer a luxury.
Hours blurred into a storm of dead ends and near-misses. I stood at the edge of the room, staring at the feeds without seeing them, when a rare quiet moment settled. Leo approached, handing me a glass of whiskey. I took it but didn’t drink.
We stepped out onto the shadowed balcony overlooking the cliffs. The sea crashed far below, restless and black under the moon. For a long minute, neither of us spoke.
Leo broke the silence first, voice low. “I never enjoyed it, you know. What happened to Angelo.”
I stiffened, the old wound tearing open. Snakes. Blood. My twin’s body on cold concrete. I said nothing, letting the rage simmer.
Leo continued, staring out at the water. “It was war. He was coming for my family. For Chiara. I did what I had to do to protect what was mine.”
He paused, exhaling slowly. “But you understand, don’t you? I did it for my wife. You’d do the same for Aurora in a heartbeat.”
I didn’t deny it. The truth sat heavy between us. For Aurora, for our child, I would slaughter anyone.
Even blood. Even family.
Leo sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Does she feel the same way? Or is she still fighting the cage you put her in?”
The question hit deeper than I expected. Aurora’s fire, her defiance, the way she had run even while carrying my child. The way she melted under my touch at night but pulled away by morning. I stared at the waves.
“She’s mine,” I said roughly. “And I’m hers. Even if she hates me for it right now.”
Before Leo could respond, the door behind us slammed open. Marco strode out, expression grim but eyes sharp with purpose.
“We have a location,” he said. “One of Sergio’s loyalists broke. An abandoned house deep in the northern woods. He’s there. With her.”
The glass shattered in my hand. Blood mixed with whiskey on the stone floor.
I was already moving, the devil fully unleashed.
Sergio’s time was up.
The northern woods swallowed us whole. Trees clawed at the sides of the SUVs as we roared down the narrow, overgrown path, headlights slicing through fog and darkness. My heart hammered like a war drum.
Every second without Aurora felt like a knife twisting deeper in my chest. She was pregnant. Carrying my child. And that broken ghost had her.
The abandoned house appeared like a cancer on the landscape, all rotting wood, ivy strangling the walls, shattered windows like empty eye sockets. Dim, flickering light glowed from within. We killed the engines and moved in fast.
Leo’s men struck first. The Serpent was merciless efficiency incarnate.
Two of Sergio’s guards stepped out from the shadows near the porch.
Leo dropped the first with a suppressed shot to the throat before the man could raise his rifle.
The second tried to shout a warning, but Leo was on him in a blur, knife flashing across the jugular in one clean slice.
Blood sprayed across dead leaves as the man crumpled.
More gunfire erupted from inside. Leo’s team cleared the perimeter with ruthless precision, short, controlled bursts that cut down Sergio’s remaining loyalists.
Bodies hit the ground with wet thuds. I didn’t stop to count them.
I kicked in the front door, wood splintering violently, and stormed inside.
The interior reeked of damp rot, mildew, and the copper tang of old blood. Flickering candles cast grotesque, dancing shadows across peeling wallpaper and dust-covered furniture. A broken, off-key wedding march hummed from somewhere deeper in the house.
I moved through the hallway like death itself, gun raised. Then I found him.
Sergio stood at the far end of a dim sitting room, a nightmare made flesh.
The left side of his face was a horror show, thick, puckered scar tissue twisting his mouth into a permanent snarl, one eye milky and blind, the other burning with unhinged madness.
Fresh claw marks bled down the ruined cheek.
He looked like something that should have died months ago but refused to stay in the grave.
Horror slammed into me. This was what I had created. One bullet at an altar had turned a cold, controlled man into this demented, disfigured shell.
“Where is she?” I growled, stepping forward.
Sergio’s ruined mouth twisted into something resembling a smile. “My bride? She’s waiting for our wedding night, Devil.”
He lunged without warning.
We crashed together like two beasts in a cage. Sergio was feral, fueled by madness and pain. His fist connected with my jaw, snapping my head back. I tasted blood. I drove my elbow into his ruined face, feeling scar tissue split further under the impact. Warm blood sprayed across us both.
He screamed, a wet, animal sound, but didn’t fall.
He tackled me into a rotting bookshelf, wood and old books crashing down around us.
We rolled across the floor, fists flying, elbows smashing, knees driving into ribs.
He bit my shoulder like a rabid dog, teeth sinking deep.
I roared and slammed my forehead into his nose, cartilage crunching.
Flames from overturned candles began licking at curtains and old rugs. Smoke thickened the air.
“You took everything!” Sergio shrieked, clawing at my eyes. “My face! My life! My Aurora!”
I pinned him momentarily and drove my fist into his throat. He gagged but headbutted me hard enough to split my brow. Blood poured into my eyes. We smashed through a doorway into another room, trading brutal, sloppy blows that would have killed lesser men.
I was winning on skill and rage, but his madness made him unpredictable. He grabbed a shard of broken glass and slashed at my side, opening a burning line across my ribs. I caught his wrist, twisted until bone snapped, and slammed him into the wall.
Leo burst in behind me, gun raised, face twisting in horror at the sight of Sergio. The Serpent had seen many monsters, but this broken thing seemed to genuinely shock him.
Sergio laughed through blood and tears, slumping as the fight drained out of him. The madness cracked, revealing the shattered man beneath.
“Kill me… or don’t. She’ll never be yours. Not really.”
I released him, breathing hard, covered in blood. “He’s yours, Leo. Finish it.”
I turned and left the room as Sergio broke down completely, sobbing, muttering about weddings and purity and the baby that should have been his. A pathetic shell of the man he once was.
“Aurora!” I shouted, voice raw as I searched room after room. Empty. All empty. Panic clawed at my throat. Where the fuck was she?
A single gunshot cracked through the house from the direction I had left.
Sergio was dead. Good.
Then I heard it.
A soft, broken whimper from behind a locked door at the end of a narrow hallway.
I didn’t hesitate. I slammed my shoulder into the door once, twice. Wood splintered on the third hit and the door exploded inward.
The sight that greeted me nearly brought me to my knees.
Aurora was chained inside an old, rust-ringed bathtub filled with water. Her lips were blue, her body trembling violently. Heavy iron manacles locked her wrists to the sides of the tub. She was naked, soaked, and barely conscious, but her hands still tried weakly to protect her stomach.
“S-Santino…” she whispered, voice hoarse and shaking.
I crossed the room in two strides, dropping to my knees beside the tub. “I’m here, baby. I’ve got you.”
I tore the chains free with pure fury, then lifted her out of the ice water and crushed her against my chest. Her skin was like ice. She sobbed weakly into my neck as I carried her out of that hellhole, wrapping my jacket around her shivering body.
“You’re safe,” I murmured against her wet hair, voice breaking. “Both of you. I swear it.”