Chapter 48
Chapter 48: The Blood of the Covenant
Enzo’s weapon didn't shake, but the world around it seemed to dissolve into gray static. The woman he loved, the mother of his child, the survivor he had spent a year protecting—she was the shadow that had haunted his family since the beginning. The contract hadn't been forced upon her; she had been the currency that bought his brother's execution.
"Enzo," Harper whispered, stepping closer to him, her hands raised, her palms open. "I didn't know. I swear to you, I didn't know who Nathan was. I was a child hiding in the dark."
"A child who knows how to write a ledger," Leo interrupted, his voice dripping with malicious satisfaction. "She’s a Whitcomb, Enzo. It’s in her blood to betray the people who protect her. Her father traded her to save his skin, and she traded your brother to save her mother. It’s a family tradition."
Enzo slowly lowered the Sig Sauer, his gaze dropping to the floorboards where the water from his boots had pooled into a dark, reflective circle. The silence stretched for what felt like an eternity, the rain outside pounding against the glass of the conservatory like a thousands of fingers demanding entry.
Then, without a word of warning, Enzo turned the weapon away from Harper and pointed it directly at his uncle’s head.
"My brother died because he broke the rules of the syndicate," Enzo said, his voice dropping into that low, terrifying register that signaled an absolute, irreversible decision. "But my wife survived the rules you built. Nathan didn't die because of a phone call from a sixteen-year-old girl; he died because you put a price tag on a human soul before she was old enough to speak her own name."
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Thud.
The suppressed weapon spoke once. Leo DeLuca’s head snapped back, his silver pocket watch slipping from his fingers and clattering against the marble hearth, its glass face shattering into a hundred miniature fragments. The Architect of the Covenant was dead before his port glass could hit the floor.
