Chapter 7 - The Bloodline Lock
The air in the room became impossibly thin.
I instantly stood up from the armchair, stepping back toward the stone fireplace, pulling Logan tight against my shoulder, my body forming a physical wall between my son and the men in the room.
“No,” I said, my voice sharp, hard, and unyielding. “No. Absolute not. You are not touching my son with a needle. You are not putting him into your war.”
Alessandro didn't raise his voice. He didn't move from his chair. He simply watched me with a look of deep, melancholic understanding.
“Catherine,” he said gently. “I am not your enemy.”
“You are a mob boss!” I shouted, my tears finally spilling over my cheeks in a hot, furious stream. “You run drugs! You run gambling! You carry guns and kill people in hospital corridors! I brought my son to work because I couldn't afford a babysitter, and now you’re telling me he’s a key to a government conspiracy!”
“I am a man who lost his son to the same monsters who are hunting yours,” Alessandro replied, his tone low, quiet, and filled with a raw, brutal honesty that stopped my shouting cold. “Do you think Vanguard will leave Logan alone if you walk out that door? Do you think they will let a three-year-old boy with David Winters’ DNA live out his life in a basement apartment?”
He stood up slowly from his chair, using his cane for support, and took two slow, measured steps toward me.
“The moment Vanguard realizes David didn't have the micro-chip on him when they cornered him at the railyards,” Alessandro said, stopping five feet away, “they will sweep Baltimore for every person carrying his blood. They will find you. They will take Logan to a private laboratory in Virginia to extract his DNA by force, and then they will bury both of you in an unmarked grave beneath a concrete highway.”
I sank against the stone mantelpiece, my body shaking so hard my teeth rattled together.
He was right. I knew he was right.
The quiet, safe world I had tried so desperately to protect—the world of fourteen-dollar-an-hour cleaning jobs, three-day chicken soup, and light-up sneakers—was a illusion. It had been destroyed the moment David made his choice two years ago.
I looked down at Logan’s sweet, sleeping face. His tiny eyelashes rested against his pale cheeks, his small fingers still holding the felt brim of Captain Bear’s hat.
He was three years old. He deserved a sandbox, a tricycle, a home with a yard, and a father who picked him up after school.
He did not deserve to be hunted by men in grey tactical suits.
“Is David alive?” I asked, looking up at Alessandro, my voice breaking. “Tell me the truth. On your dead son’s memory... tell me if David is alive.”
Alessandro met my gaze without flinching.
“I believe he is alive,” Alessandro said softly. “Because David Winters knew that if he died before he reunited with his family... he would be leaving you alone in the dark. And a man like David does not give up until he sees his wife and son one last time.”
I closed my eyes, taking a long, deep, shuddering breath that felt like breathing in broken glass.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the back of my sleeve.
When I opened my eyes, the terror was still there, but beneath it, something new had locked into place. Something cold, hard, and terrifyingly clear.
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The same instinct that had made me kick a seventy-pound trash bin into a gunman’s knees at Johns Hopkins was now taking complete control of my mind.
“Get the needle, Frank,” I said flatly.
