Chapter 9 - The Grandfather’s Oath
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Lorenzo didn't even look at Genevieve writhing on the flagstones as Drago’s four capos swarmed into the greenhouse to drag her upright in steel handcuffs.
He dropped the smoking MP5 on its tactical sling and went straight to his knees beside the marble koi fountain, reaching down with both hands to pull Clara and Lily up into his arms.
For a long, breathless moment, surrounded by shattered glass and the scent of wet orchids and gun smoke, Lorenzo simply held both of them crushed against his chest—one large hand cradling the back of Clara’s head, the other wrapped securely around Lily’s small back.
Clara buried her face against the warm wool of his lapel, the iron composure that had carried her through seventy-two hours in a stone tomb and a firefight finally giving way to a single, shuddering sob of relief.
"You're okay," Lorenzo murmured fiercely against her hair, his pulse hammering beneath her cheek. "Both of you. It’s over."
Slowly, footsteps crunched across the broken glass on the path behind them, accompanied by the rhythmic tap of a silver-headed walking cane.
Lorenzo eased back just enough to keep one protective arm around Clara’s shoulders while turning to face Vittorio Drago.
The seventy-year-old Brooklyn Don stopped six feet away. The ruthless, terrifying patriarch who had ordered fifty hits across five decades looked down at the five-year-old girl clinging to Lorenzo’s collar—taking in her dark curls, the stubborn set of her little chin, and the exact shape of her eyebrows that mirrored his dead son Dante’s childhood portraits.
For the first time in forty years, Vittorio Drago’s cold dark eyes filled with moisture.
Slowly, with a stiff groan of his arthritic knees, the old Don lowered himself down onto one knee on the wet flagstones so he wouldn't tower over the child, laying his silver cane on the ground beside him.
"Hello, piccola," Vittorio said, his gravelly voice impossibly gentle.
Lily peeked out from behind Lorenzo’s shoulder, clutching her tattered white rabbit, and looked at the old man’s face. Then she looked down at the gold dragon ring on Vittorio’s pinky finger—the exact match to the tiny charm she had seen on her Aunt Clara’s hidden necklace.
"Are you another uncle?" Lily asked cautiously.
A rough, choked laugh escaped the old Don’s throat as he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a clean white silk handkerchief, offering it to her to wipe a smudge of soot off her cheek.
"No, little one," Vittorio whispered. "I am your Nonno. Your grandfather. And for the last five years, I thought the world had taken everything that belonged to my son away from me."
Vittorio lifted his gaze to Clara, bowing his white head with profound, old-world reverence.
"You hid her from the wolves when I was too blind to see the snake in this house," Vittorio said huskily. "And you suffered three days in the stone dark to keep my blood safe. From this hour until the day I die, the entire Drago family is at your command, Clara Santoro. Anyone who so much as looks sideways at you or this child answers to Brooklyn."
Vittorio stood up with Lorenzo’s help, his face hardening back into granite as he turned to look at Genevieve, who was whimpering on the floor between two of his capos.
"And as for the thirty-year blood feud between our families, Lorenzo," Vittorio said, extending his right hand to the younger boss. "Our blood is shared in that child now. The war is dead. What is behind that cellar wall belongs to both of us—and this woman belongs to the cellar."
Genevieve’s eyes bulged with sheer, animal terror as she looked from Drago to Lorenzo. "Lorenzo, please! I was your father’s wife! Turn me over to the police! Put me in prison! Don't put me back in that room!"
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Lorenzo looked down at the woman who had left Clara to die of thirst in the dark alongside his mother’s bones.
"My father’s widow deserves my father’s hospitality," Lorenzo said softly. "Take her down to the blue door—and take down the rest of that stone wall first so we can bring my mother out into the sun."
