Page 45 of The Mafia Bloodline
For a moment, the room went silent. The tension stretched taut, an invisible thread between fury and restraint.
Lucien broke it first, his tone calm but sharp. “Roman’s right. You’re too close to this. Caesar will use that. You’re unpredictable when it comes to her.”
I slammed my hand down on the table hard enough to splinter the wood. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t fucking know what’s at stake? That woman is my life, and that traitor, our uncle, nearly took her from me!”
Roman didn’t flinch. He stepped closer, voice dropping to a deadly calm. “Then think like a Dragic, not a man in love. You go in first, you put everyone at risk. Caesar’s expecting you to lead the charge. He’ll be waiting.”
The words tore at me because they were true. But that didn’t make them easier to swallow.
Draugr, ever the voice of reason, rumbled quietly, “We’ll move as one. No one breaks formation. We take Caesar alive if we can, he’s the key to understanding how deep this demon alliance runs.”
Viking snorted. “Alive? You can try. I’m ripping his fucking throat out.”
Lucien’s mouth twitched in grim agreement. “You’ll have to get in line.”
Roman’s voice pulled us all back to focus. “We hit his compound tomorrow night. Dockyard District, Warehouse Forty-Nine. Draugr, you and Viking will take the east approach. Lucien, you and I will take west. Volken…”
“I’m not sitting this one out,” I snapped.
He met my gaze head-on, unflinching. “No one’s asking you to. You take the front with me. But you follow command.”
I hesitated, then gave a curt nod. “Fine.”
Roman looked around the table, his tone final. “We move at sundown. No mercy. No hesitation.”
The brothers nodded, silent but united.
And for a moment, just one, the world stilled again. Not with peace, but with purpose because the Dragic bloodline was preparing to bleed for what was theirs, and as I stood there, surrounded by my brothers, the rage that had been burning inside me since the attack sharpened into something lethal.
I could almost hear Caesar’s laughter echoing in my mind, see his smug, treacherous face.
But tomorrow, that laughter would end. Tomorrow, I’d make sure of it.
***
At dusk the house moved in efficient silence with men sharpening edges, checking mags, loading trucks, voices clipped and businesslike. There was no swagger, no pretence of casual bravado. We were soldiers dressing for war.
I dressed slow, every motion measured. Black tactical trousers, heavy boots, the long coat that hid the lines and scars beneath. Colt and the others came to me for final checks; weapons balanced, communications synced, entry charges and flash rounds packed. Gideon ran the perimeter last-minute and reported clean. Draugr glared at a schematic one more time. Lucien and Roman moved like two shadows of the same animal, entirely in step.
“Remember the plan,” Roman said once, voice low and final. “Split approach. No lone runs. No pride plays. We take him, or we take what he’s left.” He looked at each of us in turn, then stopped on me. “Volken, you’ll cover our flank. You see anything off, you call. We move to the secondary extraction.” His stare was iron. “You’re not a bull in a china shop tonight.”
I swallowed that particular part of my pride and nodded. I’d done worse things than hold back for the family.
The convoy rolled out, engines low and disciplined. We took the back roads, the old dock district, where salt and rust mixed with the sour tang the city carried like a secret. Warehouse Forty-Nine sat like a jagged tooth against the water, corrugated iron black and impossible. We parked two blocks out, slipped through shadows in small teams. Draugr’s boys took the east approach; Roman and Lucien fanned wide on the west. My team moved like a living wall, Colt and Jericho watching the rear, Troy at the front. Radio chatter was a whisper; the night swallowed our words.
We hit the compound hard and fast. Metal cried under ours boots, the main gate a paper thing defeated by a charge in less than a breath. Inside, we moved like a storm. We are precise, practiced, and downright brutal. Rooms cleared. Cells opened. Men found and made to talk before they could think. We were thorough; we were merciless. For every second the warehouse held breath, our anger fed the silence.
But when we reached the inner sanctum the room where the intel and the leader were supposed to be, it was empty.
A cold, clinical void. Chairs overturned, papers scattered like the memory of a life, chains burned and snapped. Nothing. A few hastily extinguished candles, the faint smell of sulphur still lingering in the corners. Someone had left in a hurry, or had been warned. The screens in the security room were smashed, the log wiped. There was a single thing left behind, and it burned straight through me: a scrap of fabric with Caesar’s sigil stitched in crude thread, laid over the table like a mocking invitation.
My blood went hot with a rage so clean it hurt.
We scoured the place until the night whispered away. The air grew heavier with every step, filled with the stench of blood, oil, and sulphur. The deeper we searched, the clearer it became that this wasn’t just an empty warehouse, it was a stage that had already seen its show and been cleared before the audience even arrived.
We found two scrawny henchmen cowering in a drainage trench behind the main loading bay, their trembling hands raised before anyone even spoke. They smelled of sweat and demon ash.
Lucien questioned them first, voice low and surgical, words cutting cleaner than any blade. One broke almost immediately, babbling about a drop at the pier, something about crates that were never meant to arrive, a misdirection meant to pull us off Caesar’s scent. The other tried to lie, and Draugr made sure he didn’t try again.
