Chapter 3 - The Bloodline Ledger
The silence returned, but this time it was suffocating.
Vincent stared down at the child. Slowly, deliberately, he sank down onto one knee, his expensive wool trousers pressing against the rain-slicked marble.
At eye level with the little girl, the resemblance was unmistakable. She had Leo’s sharp, intelligent brown eyes and the faint cleft in her chin. But beneath her torn sleeve, visible now in the brighter light of the living room, were yellowing bruises in the shape of heavy fingers.
Emma looked at Vincent. She didn't shrink away from his size, nor from the cold authority radiating off him. Slowly, her small, trembling hand reached out from beneath her coat and pressed a cold, metal object into Vincent’s open palm.
It was an antique brass pocket watch, its glass face cracked down the middle.
Vincent felt a sudden, violent jolt in his chest. He knew that watch. His father had given it to Leo Vane forty years ago when they were both young men running errands for the old neighborhood bosses. Inside the back casing, carved with a pocket knife, were the words: Trust is bought with blood.
"Uncle Vincent?" the little girl whispered. It was the first sound she had made since entering the penthouse. Her voice was tiny, raspy from smoke and dry terror. "Papa said you were the only monster who would protect us from the bad men."
Vincent closed his fingers over the watch until the metal edges bit into his skin.
He stood up slowly. The air around him seemed to thicken with a dark, terrible purpose. The weary corporate chief executive was gone; in his place stood the man who had seized control of the city’s underground with cold, methodical violence.
"Tony," Vincent said softly.
"Yes, Boss?"
"Lock down the building. Private security protocol Alpha. Nobody comes up those elevators. Nobody leaves the basement parking. If a stray dog comes within fifty yards of the entrance, I want to know about it."
"On it," Tony said, pulling his phone from his pocket and rushing toward the security room near the foyer.
"Marcus."
"Sir?"
"Take Miss Chen and the girl to the master suite on the top floor. Have the house physician come up through the service elevator. I want the child checked for injuries, fed, and rested."
Sarah stepped in front of Emma defensively, her arms crossing over her chest. "I’m not leaving her side."
Vincent looked at Sarah. For the first time, he saw her not as a potential threat, but as a woman who had walked straight into the lair of the city’s most dangerous predator because a dying man had asked her to save a child. She had no body armor. She had no weapon. She had only her uniform and a sense of duty that should have belonged to a saint, not a night-shift nurse in a city built on corruption.
"You won't have to leave her side, Miss Chen," Vincent said, his voice softer than Marcus had heard it in ten years. "My penthouse has four private security perimeters. You are safer in that bedroom than anywhere else on this continent."
"And what are you going to do?" Sarah asked, her dark eyes searching his face.
May you like
Vincent adjusted his cuff links, his expression settling into a mask of pure, unyielding stone.
"I am going to call my cousin," Vincent said. "And then I am going to tear his empire down to the bedrock."
