Chapter 4 - The Safehouse in the Sky
The private elevator of the Midtown glass tower moved in complete silence, ascending forty-two floors at breakneck speed.
Inside the steel car, the air was suffocatingly tense.
Vincent stood near the control panel, his weapon drawn, watching the digital floor indicator tick upward: 38... 39... 40...
Sarah sat huddled in the corner of the elevator, wrapped in Aleandro’s heavy wool overcoat, her arms wrapped tightly around Lily. Lily was fast asleep from sheer emotional exhaustion, her small thumb tucked into her mouth, her tiny cheek resting against Sarah’s knee.
Sarah stared at Aleandro, who stood in the center of the car, tearing a strip of cloth from his dress shirt to wrap around his bleeding shoulder.
"You lied to me," Sarah whispered, her voice shaking with three years of accumulated pain and rage. "You made me think you hated me. You made me raise our daughter in a one-room apartment while you lived in a sky fortress!"
Aleandro didn't look back at her as he pulled the knot tight with his teeth.
"If you had stayed here, Sarah," Aleandro said, his voice quiet and heavy, "you would have been shot three years ago. The men who tried to kill us today have been hunting for a weakness in my armor for forty-two months. If they had known about Lily..."
He turned around, his dark eyes meeting hers. The cold facade was entirely gone, leaving behind a man raw with grief and exhaustion.
"I spent every night sitting outside your building in Sunset Park," he confessed quietly. "I paid your landlord to fix your heat. I paid the owner of Rosie’s Diner to double your wages under the guise of 'tips.' I watched you carry her up those four flights of stairs when your back was breaking. And every single night, I wanted to walk up those stairs, knock on your door, and beg you to let me hold my child."
Sarah swallowed hard, tears rising in her eyes as the puzzle pieces of the last three years suddenly clicked together in her mind. The sudden raise at work. The miracle landlord. The black SUV she had seen parked on the corner every rainy night.
"You... you watched us?" she breathed.
"I lived for those nights," Aleandro said softly, stepping closer and kneeling before her, just as he had done in the park. He reached out, his thumb gently caressing Lily’s sleeping cheek. "She asked if daddies always come home, Sarah. I heard what she asked her teacher. I heard what she whispered to her bear."
Sarah covered her mouth with her hand, a dry sob escaping her throat. "Why didn't you come home, Aleandro?"
"Because home wasn't safe," Aleandro said, his eyes darkening as the elevator chimed, indicating floor forty-one. "Until today. Today, I finish it."
He stood up, drawing his SIG Sauer once more.
"Vincent," Aleandro commanded. "Take Sarah and Lily into the secondary panic room behind the wine cellar. Seal the steel door from the inside. Do not open it for anyone except me."
"Boss," Vincent urged, his face pale with concern. "Let me go with you. Marco has his personal security team up there. You're wounded."
"No," Aleandro stated flatly. "Marco is mine. He built his career at my side. He will end it at my feet."
The elevator doors slid open to the forty-second floor.
The penthouse was dimly lit. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed the sprawling, gray skyline of New York beneath a darkening sky. Sitting behind Aleandro’s massive walnut desk, swirling a glass of twenty-year-old scotch, was Marco Bellini.
Standing around the perimeter of the room were five heavily armed mercenaries, their assault rifles raised.
Marco didn't look surprised to see Aleandro walk out of the private elevator. He took a slow, leisurely sip of his scotch, setting the crystal glass down on the polished wood with a soft clink.
"You always were hard to kill, Aleandro," Marco said smoothly, offering a sad, patronizing smile. "I told those fools in the park that a direct hit was required. But they underestimated how fast a father moves when his bastard child is in the crosshairs."
Aleandro didn't stop walking until he was ten feet from the desk. He didn't look at the five mercenaries pointing rifles at his heart. His eyes were fixed entirely on Marco.
"Why, Marco?" Aleandro asked quietly.
Marco’s disarming smile vanished, replaced by a sudden, bitter snarl that twisted his handsome face.
"Why?!" Marco barked, slamming his hand onto the desk. "Because I built this empire with you! I cleared the streets, I bought the judges, I managed the families! And what was my reward? To sit at your right hand while you played the moody, tragic king?! To watch you prepare to hand fifty billion dollars of legitimate and illegitimate assets to a three-year-old girl born to a diner waitress?!"
Marco stood up, reaching into his suit coat and pulling out a silver-plated revolver.
"You became weak, Aleandro," Marco sneered, aiming the gun at Aleandro’s head. "The moment you let that girl live, you compromised this entire organization. New York needs a leader with no heart, no family, and no attachments. New York needs me."
Aleandro looked at the silver revolver aimed at his face. Then he slowly raised his right hand—the hand Lily had held in Central Park.
"You are wrong about one thing, Marco," Aleandro said softly.
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"Oh? And what is that?" Marco taunted, laying his finger against the trigger.
"A heart doesn't make a man weak," Aleandro whispered, his eyes flashing with a terrifying, absolute dark fire. "It gives him a reason to burn the world down."
