Marked by the Mafia devil’s heir のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 21 - チャプター 30

The iron lever behind the concrete pedestal was rusted stiff.I threw my entire weight against it, the remaining silk of my black dress straining as my heels slipped on the bloody floorboards. The metal bit deep into my palms. With a loud, grinding screech that cut right through the wailing siren, a heavy slab of the concrete wall slid backward, revealing a dark, narrow brick tunnel that smelled of old river water and rot."Lorenzo," I panted, dropping back to my knees beside him. "It's open. Get up."He didn't move. His face was a terrifying shade of gray under the pulsing red emergency lights. His chest rose and fell in short, erratic hitches. The black silk pad I’d jammed into his shoulder was completely soaked, dripping dark crimson onto the dusty floorboards.I didn't ask him a second time. I grabbed him by the collar of his ruined white shirt and dragged his massive frame across the threshold, pulling him into the freezing dampness of the drainage tunnel.The concrete slab groun

The rain didn’t stop for the standoff. It came down faster, a solid wall of freezing water that blurred the dark line of pine trees behind my father. The river below the bank was churning, a muddy brown torrent that roared so loudly it drowned out the distant wail of the police sirens upstairs.My arms were shaking under the weight of Lorenzo's heavy silver pistol, but the front sight didn't waver from the wet yellow fabric of my father's raincoat."Alina," Arthur Moretti said. He didn't drop his hands. He didn't look afraid. He just looked deeply disappointed, the same way he looked when I brought home a bad report card in middle school. "You won't pull that trigger. You don't have the stomach to kill your own blood over a De Luca.""You don't know anything about my stomach," I spit out, blinking hard against the rain cutting into my eyes. "You haven't been around to see what I have to digest for the last five years.""I know you're a cafeteria worker who couldn't even watch a stray

The heat coming off him felt like a radiator in a dead winter.By two in the afternoon, the pale yellow sun was hitting the frosted glass window of the storage room. The air was thick. It smelled like horse liniment and the metallic tang of his sweat.I sat on the wooden stool, my hands damp as I wrung out a cold, wet rag into a plastic bucket of tap water. The black silk gown was entirely gone now. The vet’s wife had brought me a pair of oversized grey sweatpants and a faded green t-shirt that smelled like bleach. My bare feet were clean, but the skin was raw from the river clay.Lorenzo groaned. His head thrashed to the left, his short dark hair plastering against his forehead."Alina..." he muttered. His voice was a dry, cracking rasp. His fingers clawed blindly at the canvas edge of the cot, his knuckles turning a stark, bloodless white. "The gate... close the gate.""The gate is closed, Lorenzo," I said quietly.I leaned forward and pressed the freezing rag straight against his f

The rusted engine of the Chevy pickup truck had a persistent, rhythmic knock that vibrated directly through the torn vinyl seat and into my spine. Every mile we traveled away from the county line felt like a countdown. Outside the cracked window, the landscape was a blur of dead cornfields, rotting barns, and thick, white patches of morning fog that rose from the wet drainage ditches.Lorenzo’s head was heavy against my shoulder. His skin was still burning with the fever, a deep, radiating heat that seeped straight through his thin green shirt and into mine. His breathing was shallow, a quiet, rattling wheeze that hitching every time Marco hit a bump in the asphalt. His left hand remained locked around my wrist, his fingers twitching slightly in his sleep, holding onto me like I was the only thing keeping him from sliding onto the floorboards."Marco," I whispered, keeping my voice low so I wouldn't jar Lorenzo out of his drug-induced haze. "How much closer to the state line are we?"

The morning fog didn't lift. It just curdled into a thick, milky white wall that pressed hard against the cabin's frosted windows.By seven o'clock, the storm on the tin roof had dried into a steady, rhythmic drip from the willow branches outside. Drip. Drip. Drip. It sounded like a clock ticking down the hours we had left before someone noticed the rusted blue Chevy parked in the ravine.Lorenzo’s fever had finally broken just before dawn. He lay flat on the wool mattress, his face still pale under the dim light of the kerosene lamp, but his breathing was deep, clear, and empty of that wet rattle. His icy blue eyes were wide open, staring at the dark wooden rafters of the ceiling structure with a cold, terrifying clarity."You're tracking again," I said from the wooden stool.I was holding a mug of black coffee Elena had boiled on the gas stove. It tasted like burnt dirt and tin, but the heat of the mug between my palms was the only thing keeping my fingers from shaking.Lorenzo slow