Chapter 20: Bloodline Severed
The smell of copper was overwhelming, cutting through the garage’s stale perfume of oil and wet concrete. Gio gurgled, a wet, final sound. His hands, which had so reverently assembled the rifle hours before, clawed weakly at the handle of the combat knife buried in his throat. Then they fell still.
Alex watched the light leave his eyes. She’d moved on instinct, a flash of steel in the flickering half-dark. He’d reached inside his jacket too slowly, his suspicion confirmed a fatal second too late. He’d known. Known she was the leak, the variable, the infection in Toni’s ranks.
Now he was just weight, sagging against the glossy black flank of the Bentley, painting it with broad, dark strokes.
She braced a foot against his chest, wrapped her fingers around the knife’s grip, and pulled. It came free with a sick, soft sound. She wiped the blade clean on the sleeve of his own jacket, methodical, then on hers for good measure.
Toni hadn’t moved. She stood five paces away, a silhouette under a buzzing neon sign that cast her face in shifting washes of cold blue and sickly pink. Her expression was unreadable. She looked from her cousin’s slack face to the knife in Alex’s hand.
“He made a call after you left the room,” Alex said, her voice echoing flatly in the cavernous space. “To a number with a Sicilian prefix, not one of yours. He said ‘the Irish is confirmed.’ He was setting up a intercept. For me.”
Toni absorbed this. Her gaze flicked to Gio’s jacket pocket. “Check it.”
Alex knelt, avoiding the spreading pool, and fished out the phone. She thumbed it open, found the recent call, and held it up.
Toni stared at the screen for a long moment. Something hardened in her face, a final door slamming shut. When she looked back at Alex, her eyes were clear, blazing with a ferocious pride. “He knew too much,” she murmured, almost to herself. Then, louder, “He was my mother’s favourite nephew. She’ll weep.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex said, and meant it, though she wasn’t sure for whom.
“Don’t be.” Toni closed the distance between them in three sharp clicks of her heels. She stepped over Gio’s outstretched leg without a downward glance, as if it were a piece of discarded rubbish. Her hands came up, grabbing the blood-speckled lapels of Alex’s leather jacket. She yanked her forward, off balance, and kissed her.
It was nothing like the kiss in the safe house. This was a claim, bruising and absolute, sealed with the taste of violence. Toni’s tongue was demanding, her teeth scraping Alex’s lip hard enough to threaten a break. Alex met it, her own hands coming up to tangle in Toni’s hair, the knife still clutched loosely in one fist, its cool flat pressing against Toni’s back.
When Toni broke away, they were both breathing hard. “You are… spectacular,” Toni breathed, her forehead resting against Alex’s. “You see the threat and you eliminate it. No drama. No questions. Clean through the temple, clean through the throat.” She laughed, a short, sharp sound. “My beautiful, deadly weapon.”
Alex leaned into the touch, the praise a drug more potent than any she’d known. The last thread, truly cut now. There was no Six, no Brennan. And now, no one in Toni’s inner circle who doubted her. She had paid for her entry in blood, again.
“He was family,” Alex stated, testing.
“And family can betray you fastest of all,” Toni said, finally releasing her jacket to smooth the leather. “This is the only law. Loyalty. You showed him more loyalty by giving him a quick end than he showed me by plotting behind my back.” She looked past Alex at the body. “Gio always was a sentimentalist. Thought blood trumped sense.”
“What now?”
“Now, we don’t leave him for the rats.” Toni pulled out her own phone, snapped a quick picture of Gio’s face, and typed a rapid message. “Paolo will clean it. A tragic car accident on the A4 tomorrow. Grieving cousin, heartbroken boss.” She put the phone away. “Get in the car. You’re driving. I need to think.”
Alex walked around to the driver’s side, sliding into the Bentley’s buttery leather interior. The engine purred to life, a quiet testament to luxury. Toni slipped into the passenger seat, staring straight ahead as Alex navigated out of the garage and into the Hague’s sparse night traffic.
After ten minutes of silence, Toni spoke, her voice softer now. “He was right, you know. About one thing.”
Alex kept her eyes on the road. “What?”
“You are confirmed.” Toni turned to look at her, the city lights washing over her face. “Not as the Irish infiltrator. As mine. You’ve passed every test. The ultimate one most of all.” She reached over, her hand resting on Alex’s thigh. “So, no more safe houses. No more separate rooms. You come home with me. To Sicily.”
The word hung in the air. Home. It wasn’t Derry. It wasn’t a London flat owned by a shell corporation. It was a vineyard-covered mountain, a fortified villa, a world of shadows and old stone.
“Is that an order?” Alex asked, a faint hint of her old wryness returning.
Toni’s thumb stroked a slow circle on her leg. “It’s an invitation. The only one I’ll make. Come home. Meet the rest of the family. See the sun. Help me run what’s mine.”
Alex thought of grey skies and green hills, of a life spent in service to a flag that had used her as a pawn. She thought of a balcony, and a clink of ice, and the warm weight of the woman beside her.
“Alright,” she said, simple as that.
Toni smiled, a real one, that reached her eyes. “Good.” She settled back in her seat. “Now, step on it. I want to be in the air before that body gets cold. I need to tell my mother about her nephew before the police do.”
Alex pressed the accelerator. The car surged forward, a silent predator gliding through the sleeping streets. In the rearview mirror, the garage vanished into the dark. Ahead, the road to the private airfield stretched out, a black ribbon leading south, to the sun, to the sea.
To home.