Page 71 of The Mafia Bloodline
Runa’s eyes tracked the baby, worry and wonder braided together. “Will he be safe?” she asked, voice small.
“He will be safer than the world lets anyone be,” I said, but I could feel the lie in the edge of my promise. Safer, yes. Untouchable? Nothing in this life stayed untouched. Still, the vow came out the same, hard and true. “I will die before they take him.”
She laughed then; a tiny, wet sound that tried to be brave. She leaned toward me, pushing away the lines of pain with a hand that trembled only slightly. I caught her wrist and pressed my thumb into her pulse alive, steady and real. For a second I letmyself picture a life that wasn’t a battlefield: a stubborn babe at our feet, laughter in rooms that used to be wilted with danger. It was a fairy tale, and we’d earned the right to tell it our way.
The doctor murmured instructions about the feedings, checkups, how to spot complications, and my voice translated into promises I would keep. Nurses came and went. Gideon texted updates on perimeter sweeps. Ivan reported guard rotations. Even when the world insisted on the grinding business of survival, it was arranged for us like clockwork.
And still, when it came time to leave, I hesitated. Leaving felt like stepping away from a cliff edge. The baby cried once, small and immediate, and Runa reached out as if I might hand him back forever. I kissed my Runa’s forehead, tasting salt and something that felt like an anchor.
“Go,” she told me in the softest voice. “I want you to go. Finish what you have to do.”
It was a permission and a leash all at once. I wanted to refuse. Instead, I nodded, the motion small and terrible.
When I finally rose, Lucien and Roman were already waiting by the door, faces schooled into the masks we wore before battle. Viking clapped me on the shoulder like he was trying to hammer courage into my bones.
I left with them, each step away from that bed a small, tearing thing. In the corridor I stopped once, turned, and watched through the glass as Runa looked down at our son. I felt something new tether me to the ground. The fire I’d promised would be a furnace, not a lullaby.
I took one last breath and then walked out, carrying the name of our child inside me like a live coal.
The meeting room smelled of old leather and colder things, a map pinned on the table, tablets and phones glowing like little stars of business and blood. My brothers sat around the table, each a different kind of danger: Roman, a calm mountain; Lucien, precise and hungry for logic; Viking, coiled and ready to snap; Draugr, the silent hammer. Even my absence would have been felt as a missing limb, but tonight I was here, shoulders set like stone.
We didn’t waste time on small talk. There wasn’t time for it. The baby’s name still hung in my chest, warm as a tremor, and every other thought bent toward the shape of a hunt.
Roman folded his hands, eyes dark and tight. “Caesar has air under his feet,” he said. “He slipped out. That was expected. But expected or not, he’s a rat with claws in our bone now. We take him tonight or we cut off his reach for good.”
Viking slammed a fist on the table, the sound like thunder. “I will take the plane. Now. I’ll tear the sky apart myself if I have to.”
Draugr’s face didn’t change. “He has handlers. He moved like someone with an exit strategy. He’s not traveling alone. We need to expect a protector detail, a network. We also need to expect traps.”
Lucien had already been tracing routes, his finger gliding across satellite feeds and flight manifests. “He paid with cash, and private registration,” he said. “He’s on a short hop, disposable flight. We can track it, but the ground nets have to be set before it touches down. He’ll try to vanish into a hole if we let him.”
I felt the coal in my chest burn hotter. It wasn’t just legal territory on that line of ink, Caesar had hurt people we loved. He had slipped the leash. He had put a target on Runa and on our child.
Roman’s gaze landed on me and something like permission passed between us. “Volken,” he said, plain and hard. “You stayed. You’ve watched. If anyone needs to know the fury of a burned man, you do. We’ll collar this clean. Viking, Draugr you take the plane. Find him. End this fucking thing where he hides.”
Viking’s grin was a blade. “Hell yes. We’ll find that fucker and make him pay.”
Draugr nodded once. “We go now.”
Lucien looked up at me. “I’ll run the data stream. Roman, you hold the network here. Volken you stay near Runa. We don’t move unless you give the nod.”
I wanted to tell him no. I wanted to tell them all that I would walk the fire with them, that five months or a hundred fights wouldn’t keep me from dragging Caesar’s head back to the house on a pike. But Runa’s face tired and brand new and trusting with our son stopped the movement in my throat. The doctor’s orders echoed behind my every step: no stress. No running headfirst into night while the child was still so small.
So, I nodded, hard. “Go,” I said. “Find him. Burn him. Don’t bring him back.”
Viking rose like a coiled spring, his laughter a short, cruel thing. Draugr shouldered a jacket, and his men fell in with them, silent and precise. Roman touched each of their shoulders in a quick, businesslike blessing. Lucien already had his fingers on the pad, burning lines of data into the night.
They moved like hunters who’d been doing it since before most nations had names. Their exit was a choreography of violence. Viking clapped me once, a hard, brotherly blow to the back, andthe world steadied because it always did when blood moved with focus.
When they left, the empty room felt suddenly enormous. I stayed a moment longer, feeling the echo of my son’s heartbeat like a vow. I drew it down into my chest and locked it there. Then I walked to the window, watched the dark city breathe beneath the lights, and made a promise that was quieter and harder than anything I’d ever said aloud.
If Caesar returned, I would find him. I would be the fire that scorched anything that dared reach for them.
The engines started in the distance; the first line of the hunt took wing. I stayed behind because I had to, and that waiting was its own kind of war.
When the call came hours later, Viking’s voice on the line, brief and sharp, there would be news, and it would be either a step closer to endgame or the start of something I didn’t want to imagine. For now, the house slept, guarded and humming with the quiet preparations of men who had learned to live in the shadow of their own tempers.
I wrapped my coat more tightly around my shoulders and, for the first time since this all began, let the weight of the live coal inside me shift into heat that would not be wasted. The brothers had flown into the night, and when they returned, we would burn the world for those who had threatened our world.
