Chapter 8 - THE SACRIFICE
“Sofia, no!” Elena screamed, lunging forward.
Luca grabbed his sister’s waist, dragging her back behind the cover of the rusted boxcar. He was trembling violently, his strength failing, but his grip held firm.
“Let her go!” Elena sobbed.
“She’s buying us time,” Luca gritted out. He looked at me. “Nurse. Tell me you have something in that bag to wake me up.”
I looked at his pale, sweating face. “I have epinephrine. But giving it to you in your condition could trigger cardiac arrest.”
“Do it.”
“Luca, no—”
“Do it!” he commanded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his real watch. The heavy leather and steel piece he had worn every day for eleven years. He wrapped it tightly around his fist like brass knuckles. “I am not letting my sister die twice.”
Out in the open, Sofia stood perfectly still in the harsh glare of the headlights.
A tall man in a tailored camel-hair coat stepped forward from the line of gunmen. Vitiello.
“Well, well,” Vitiello sneered. “The ghost of the Romanos. I heard rumors you survived the lake, Sofia. You caused me a lot of trouble tonight.”
“It’s over, Vitiello,” Sofia said loudly. “Frank is dead. The police are already on their way to the warehouse. If you kill me now, you’ll never get the shipping ledgers.”
Vitiello laughed. “I don’t need the ledgers if the entire Romano bloodline is wiped out. Where is the boy?”
“He’s not here.”
“Liar.” Vitiello raised his pistol, pointing it directly at her chest. “I’ll ask one last time. Where is Marco’s bastard?”
Behind the boxcar, I jammed the syringe into Luca’s thigh and pushed the plunger.
Luca gasped, his eyes flying wide open as the adrenaline hit his system like a freight train. Color rushed back into his face. He grabbed a discarded iron pipe from the tracks.
“Stay with the boy,” Luca told Elena and his mother.
Then, he stepped out from behind the train.
“Vitiello!” Luca roared.
Vitiello spun around.
In that split second, the screech of police sirens filled the air. Not just one. Dozens. The flashing red and blue lights illuminated the perimeter of the railyard from every direction.
Vitiello’s men panicked, lowering their weapons and looking for an escape route.
“Who called them?” Vitiello snarled, turning back to Sofia.
“I did,” a voice said from the shadows.
A man stepped out from behind the sedans. He was wearing an EMT jacket, holding a radio.
I gasped.
I knew him. He was the paramedic who had driven the ambulance to the estate hours ago.
“CPD is closing the perimeter, Don Vitiello,” the paramedic said calmly. “Drop the weapons.”
Vitiello bared his teeth. He raised his gun toward Sofia. “I’ll take one of you with me.”
A gunshot echoed through the yard.
But it didn't come from Vitiello.
Vitiello dropped his gun, clutching his shoulder, and fell to his knees.
Luca stood twenty feet away, a smoking pistol in his left hand. The watch wrapped around his fist glinted in the police lights.
“Nobody touches my family,” Luca said.
May you like
The police swarmed the yard, screaming for everyone to get on the ground. Vitiello’s men surrendered instantly.
Luca dropped his weapon and fell to his knees as his heart finally gave out.
