184 When Manhattan’s Most Feared Crime Boss Found His Traumatized Daughter Asleep in My Waitress Apron, He Thought I Was a Stranger—Until He Discovered My Secret Past Was the Only Key to Saving His Missing Wife / Chapter 38 / 100

Chapter 38 - Bloodline

The interior of *The Northern Star* smelled of heavy marine bunker oil, sea brine, and stale tobacco.

The narrow companionway was lit by dim red emergency lights, the steel bulkheads humming with the steady, violent vibration of the ship's main diesel engines. The freighter was preparing to get underway; the deck beneath my boots was already rolling slightly as the mooring lines were loosened on the dock below.

I moved down the central corridor, the heavy pistol raised, my senses dialed to an agonizing frequency. Every creak of the hull, every hiss of the steam pipes sounded like an ambush.

From the lower hold, down a steep set of steel stairs, I heard the sound of voices.

"Uncle Carlo, the dock is burning," a man’s voice called out, panicked and breathless. "Someone hit the security perimeter. Sal and Frankie aren't answering their radios."

"Then cut the lines and cast off," a cold, calm voice replied from the darkness of the hold. "We don't need the trucks. The manifest is already aboard, and the federal broadcast will keep the coast guard busy in the harbor for the next six hours."

"What about the woman and the girl?"

"They stay in the chain locker until we clear international waters," Carlo said, his tone as light as if he were discussing cargo pallets. "Then we open the sea valves. It's time this family stopped having loose ends."

I reached the bottom of the stairs, stepping into the massive, echoing cavern of the forward cargo hold.

The space was filled with rows of wooden shipping crates, secured with heavy steel straps. In the center of the hold, beneath a cluster of overhead industrial work lamps, stood Carlo Castiglione.

He was in his late seventies, wearing an immaculate charcoal cashmere coat over a tailored gray suit, his silver hair neatly combed back. He held a silver-headed walking stick in one hand, looking more like a retired diplomat than a man who had spent forty years directing executions across three continents.

Flanking him were three heavily armed men in black tactical gear.

And tied to two steel pillars ten feet behind him were Vittoria and Mia.

Mia’s face was streaked with soot and tears, but she wasn't crying anymore. She had her small teeth set, her eyes burning with the exact same ferocious, unyielding defiance I had seen in her father's face twenty minutes before he shoved me into that subway tunnel.

Vittoria looked up as my boots hit the concrete floor of the hold.

My sister.

Twenty years of separation, twenty years of mourning a ghost, dissolved into a single second of absolute, terrifying reality. She was thinner than I remembered, her dark hair streaked with silver at the temples, a deep, jagged scar running from her left cheekbone down to the collar of her worn wool sweater. But her hazel eyes—my eyes, Mia's eyes—were wide, burning with an agonizing mix of terror and disbelief.

"Sarah..." Vittoria whispered, her cracked lips barely forming the syllables. "No... Sarah, run."

"She can't run, my dear," Carlo said, turning slowly to face me, his walking stick clicking lightly against the steel deck plates. He didn't look surprised. He smiled, a thin, aristocratic smirk that sent a chill straight down my spine. "Sarah has always been predictable. Just like her father. Loyal to a fault, right up until the moment it gets her killed."

I leveled Dante’s pistol directly at the center of Carlo’s forehead.

"Let the girl go, Carlo," I said, my voice steady, vibrating with a venom I hadn't known I possessed. "The marshals have your files. The broadcast didn't just expose Croft. Miller’s task force had every shell corporation, every bank in the Caymans, every dock worker you bought off."

Carlo chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "Special Agent Miller is floating in a drainage ditch in Long Island City, Sarah. And even if he weren't, the Department of Justice doesn't have jurisdiction outside the twelve-mile limit. Once this ship enters open water, those files are nothing more than toilet paper."

He tapped his cane on the deck, and the three armed guards stepped forward, raising their weapons.

"You brought the drive, didn't you, Sarah?" Carlo extended his gloved left hand. "Be a good girl and hand it over. If you do, I might let you and your sister share a cabin instead of the chain locker."

"I have the drive," I said, reaching into the pocket of my apron.

Carlo’s eyes sharpened, greed flickering behind his polite mask. "Bring it here."

I pulled my hand from the pocket.

I wasn't holding the magnetic storage drive.

I was holding Dante’s spare magazine—and the heavy brass lever of an industrial emergency bilge release that I had unbolted from the companionway wall on my way down the stairs.

"Sarah, no!" Vittoria screamed, realizing what I was standing next to.

To my left, partially hidden by a stack of engine components, was the ship’s primary fuel manifold—an exposed junction of high-pressure diesel lines feeding the twin turbines below.

I didn't fire at Carlo.

I fired three rounds directly into the cast-iron valve housing of the manifold.

The metal cracked with an explosive shriek. High-pressure diesel fuel erupted into the hold like a black geyser, spraying across the hot engine casings, hitting the overhead work lamps with a violent sizzle.

"Kill her!" Carlo shrieked, all his aristocratic composure vanishing into blind panic.