Chapter 6 - THE RISEN BROTHER
The entire room went dead silent.
Even the two mercenaries lowered their gun barrels by an inch, their eyes darting toward the doorway in sheer, unadulterated disbelief.
For two years, the medical world had said Mateo Moretti would never walk again. For two years, he had been trapped in a wheelchair, labeled a vegetable by doctors and written off as a corpse by his enemies.
Yet here he was. Standing. Shaking from head to toe, his knuckles white as iron around the rubber grips of the crutches, his legs trembling beneath a pair of dark wool trousers, but standing.
Evelyn pressed her hand over her mouth, a choked sob of triumph escaping her lips. “Mateo...”
Dominic didn't look back. His eyes remained fixed on Vincent, though a profound, tectonic shift occurred behind his dark gaze.
“You... you can't stand,” Vincent stammered, his face losing its color as he stared at the man he had left for dead in the wreckage of the rail yard. “The spine... the doctors said—”
“The doctors didn't have Evelyn,” Mateo rasped. His voice was cracked, unused for twenty-four months, rough as grinding stones, but it filled the study with a presence that commanded the room. “And you... you didn't check the chart close enough, Vincent.”
Mateo took one agonizing, trembling step forward into the room. The metal tip of his crutch struck the hardwood floor with a sharp clack.
“You thought I was just lying there,” Mateo continued, his breathing heavy, sweat dripping from his chin. “You thought I couldn't hear you plotting with Thomas in the hallway while the nurses were at lunch. You thought my body was broken, so my mind was broken too.”
Vincent backed up against the edge of the desk, his hand dropping toward the holster beneath his armpit. “Shoot him!” he screamed at the mercenaries. “Kill him!”
Neither mercenary moved. In the underworld, betrayal was common, but fighting a man who had literally risen from the dead to reclaim his honor carried a supernatural terror that no paycheck could override.
Dominic didn't give them a second to think.
In a blur of motion, Dominic drew his Beretta and fired twice.
Bang! Bang!
Both shots struck the mercenaries' weapons, blowing the submachine guns out of their hands in a shower of sparks and shattered steel. Before the men could scream, Dominic was across the room, driving the butt of his pistol into the first man’s temple and delivering a devastating roundhouse kick that sent the second crashing through the mahogany bookshelf.
Vincent whipped his pistol out of his holster, swinging the barrel toward Mateo. “Then I’ll finish what we started at the rail yard!”
“No, you won't,” a voice hissed beside him.
Before Vincent could pull the trigger, Evelyn slammed the heavy iron letter opener down across Vincent’s wrist with all the strength she possessed.
A sharp, cracking sound echoed through the room as bone met steel.
Vincent shrieked, dropping his pistol as his hand went limp.
Dominic was on him instantly. He grabbed Vincent by the throat, lifted his feet entirely off the floor, and slammed him against the reinforced glass of the balcony doors with a force that cracked the double-pane window.
“You tried to kill my brother,” Dominic whispered, his face inches from Vincent’s bulging eyes. “You tried to destroy my family. And you thought you could walk away.”
Vincent clawed frantically at Dominic’s hands, his face turning a deep, dangerous shade of purple. “Dom... Dom... please... we’re family...”
“We were never family,” Dominic said coldly.
He threw Vincent across the room like a broken doll. The traitor hit the edge of the desk and crumpled to the floor, gasping for air, clutching his shattered wrist.
Dominic didn't look at him again. He turned slowly toward his brother.
Mateo was still standing, his legs shaking violently, holding himself up on the crutches with every ounce of willpower he possessed.
Dominic walked across the ruined room, stopping just inches from his twin. The cold, ruthless crime lord looked at Mateo, and for the first time in two decades, tears spilled over his dark lashes, cutting clean tracks through the blood and soot on his cheeks.
Dominic dropped to his knees right there on the blood-stained carpet, burying his face against Mateo’s chest, his broad shoulders shaking with the release of two years of unmourned grief.
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Mateo let out a ragged breath, lowering his head to rest his cheek against Dominic’s dark hair, his one hand letting go of a crutch to rest heavily on his brother's shoulder.
Evelyn stood quietly by the door, watching the two brothers hold each other amidst the wreckage of an empire. She wiped a tear from her own cheek, feeling the profound, unbreakable weight of what they had just survived.
