The Blood Oath’s Ten-Year Silence Chapter 02

The Blood Oath’s Ten-Year Silence Chapter 02

I drove back through the driving Sicilian downpour to the Falcone estate in Corleone.

The estate was a seventeenth-century fortress of golden limestone, surrounded by high ramparts, razor wire, and century-old olive groves. In the south wing rested my quarters—the private apartments our late mother had decorated with hand-painted fresco ceilings and an arched balcony overlooking the vineyard.

As I walked down the marble hallway, two guards in black tactical suits were already carrying out my mahogany bookshelves.

Matteo stood in the doorway of my bedroom, a freshly lit Cohiba cigar between his fingers. Lorenzo was leaning against the doorframe, still wearing his shoulder holster, watching the movers with satisfaction.

Carmela was already inside, trailing her manicured fingers over the antique velvet vanity, giggling as she looked out at the rain-swept valley.

“You took your time getting back from Taormina,” Lorenzo said, blocking my way with his broad shoulders. “Good. We’re leaving for the Capri yacht club tomorrow morning. Before we board, Carmela needs to move her things into this suite. The southern exposure is better for her frail lungs.”

I stopped on the threshold.

My late mother’s rosary hung from the bedpost. My leather gun belts and brass reloading bench were already boxed up by the door like garbage.

“The south suite was deeded to me in Mother’s will,” I said calmly. “It has been my home since I was four years old.”

“Mother’s will was written before Father found out he had another daughter,” Matteo cut in, exhaling a thick cloud of blue cigar smoke into my face. “Carmela spent nineteen years sleeping on a damp mattress in a Palermo basement while you lived like a princess behind bulletproof glass. She deserves the sun. You can take the basement quarters beside the armory.”

Carmela turned around, her eyes widening with rehearsed dismay. She pulled her silk cardigan tighter around her shoulders. “Matteo, no… I don’t want Elena to hate me even more… If my being here makes her angry, I can just stay in the servant’s annex…”

“You are a Falcone, Carmela,” Matteo said, his tone turning fiercely protective. “You do not sleep in the servants’ annex. Not while I am Don.”

He turned back to me, his jaw set into ruthless granite. “Hand over the master key to the southern wing, Elena. Don’t make me have Lorenzo search your pockets.”

I looked at Lorenzo. The man whose life I had saved in the vineyards when five assassins cornered us in the dark.

I looked at Matteo. The brother whose fever I had tended when he took a poisoned knife in Naples.

For nine years, I had been their shadow. Their executioner. Their shield.

I reached into my leather jacket.

Lorenzo’s hand twitched toward his holster, his eyes flashing with paranoid hostility. “Watch your hands!”

I didn’t draw a blade.

I pulled out the heavy bronze antique key to the south wing, carved with our family’s falcon crest, and held it out on the flat of my palm.

“Take it,” I said softly.

Matteo frowned. His brow furrowed in suspicion, searching my face for the fury that usually ignited when our family traditions were violated.

“What is this?” Matteo asked, his voice low and dangerous.

“The key,” I replied, meeting his gaze without flinching. “Take the bedroom. Take the terrace. Take the frescoes and the vineyard view. It’s all hers. I won’t be sleeping here tonight, or any night after.”

Lorenzo let out a sharp, disgusted sneer.

He lunged forward, slapped the bronze key from my palm, sending it clattering across the marble floor until it struck the baseboard.

“Stop with the pathetic theatrics, Elena!” Lorenzo barked, his face inches from mine. “You think you can play the silent, mistreated martyr and make Matteo feel guilty? You think if you storm out into the storm for two days, we’re going to beg you to come back and run the syndicate?”

Matteo stepped forward, grinding his expensive leather Oxford shoe over the bronze key, scratching the family crest against the marble.

“You’re thirty years old, Elena,” Matteo said, his voice dripping with icy contempt. “Without the Falcone name, you’re just another common assassin with a police record in four countries. You have no husband. You have no friends. You have nowhere else in Sicily to go.”

He pointed a manicured finger toward the iron gates in the distance.

“Walk out if you want. Sulk in the dark until your pride runs out. When your cash runs dry and you realize the world outside wants your head on a spike, you’ll come crawling back to this doorstep on your knees. And when you do… you will kiss Carmela’s feet before I let you back inside.”

I looked down at the scratched key beneath his shoe.

“Understood, Don Matteo,” I whispered.

I turned around, walked down the marble hallway, and did not pick up a single box.