— SYLUS —
She lies motionless under those harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital room the machines continue to operate at their slow, mechanical rhythm faint beep... beep... beep as my chest rises so subtly that I end up looking for the movement, counting the seconds between breaths. She looked so small in that bed, lashes resting against her cheeks, pale lips. When I look at her face closely, it is still, cold, and serene in a manner that terrified me, as if she has drifted to some place far beyond my reach, into an endless quiet depth where my voice cannot follow.
For the first time in my life, I am standing in front of something that neither money, power, nor violence can touch. I extend my hand and softly sweep the stray hair from her cheek.
With each second that goes by, my heart breaks a bit more. My thoughts spiral back to who was responsible for all of this?
Who-
The phone vibrates against my pants as I look at it. It's Alex as I go out into the corridor, closing the door properly behind me before I reply.
"What happened?" The voice was cold, indifferent, and like that of a stranger.
"We found something," Alex says. "There was blood on one of the glass shards at the scene. It isn't hers."
My brow wrinkles. "Whose is it?" A pause, followed by a sigh that was thick with static.
"We are still holding the report. DNA profiling is a time-consuming process, Sylus. We'll find out soon... for the moment, we have to wait."
I ended the call without saying goodnight and stood there in the noisy glow of the fluorescent lights, carefully going over the thought.
Blood that isn't hers...
It meant that Ella retaliated... it means that somewhere out there, at this moment, there is somebody who has her mark. A wound which she has already avenged without being aware of it.
I look through the narrow window in her door at the small shape lying in the bed.
"Well done, Mio Amore." A dark and hungry feeling writhes in my chest.
"Now let me put an end to it." I placed my hand over the glass, closing my eyes to control the rage coursing in my veins.
"Let me show the world what happens when they touch what belongs to Morano's."
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Six days passed in a blur as I stayed by her bed day and night, praying to gods that I do not believe in and negotiating with a universe which has never once responded. We hope, we wait, and then we repeat the same thing the hours merge one into another until the calendar has no significance left there's nothing but numbers as she sleeps.
The report is that Hyunwoo and Alex have her....The person who injured Ella has been caught and is breathing, waiting for me in a warehouse on the edge of the city.
Tonight I shall bring to an end what they began. I tilt my head over her bed and place a kiss on her forehead, staying there with my lips pressed against her cold skin.
"I'll be back soon, my love," I say in a low, clear voice, speaking directly into her ear as if by getting close enough I can make sure that some part of her picks it up.
"Wait for me and when I return... you'll need to be awake."
I kiss her knuckle once more and then place my ring on her finger. It is my most precious ring. A promise made of gold... "The person who touched you will have to suffer, and I will make sure they wish to be burnt alive rather than suffer so miserably."
The hardest thing I have ever done in my life is to leave her in this hospital bed. My boots rub against the marble as I walk down the hallway, exiting the hospital building behind. When the night air reaches me, cold, sharp, and indifferent against my skin, I settle into the car.
The engine grows loud as the city drops away behind me the highway goes on and on in front of me, black and golden with street lights streaking the view in the night sky, and at first there's only the sound of the road and the promise of blood lying at the end of it.
I looked in the rearview mirror then I had two cars, two cars behind me.
At first I tell myself it's nothing...just late-night drivers, a coincidence. But when I press the gas they do the same and the gap remains, deliberate and patient, as if it's hunting us.
They're trailing me my instinct was right after all.
I reach over and find the gun on the passenger seat, then lower the window, lean out into the wind which is howling, and fire at the tire of the leading car. The sound of the shot bounces off the asphalt and the car swerves, although it does not stop.
"Fuck. Missed it." A second car moves up next to me. There's a muzzle flash as a bullet goes through my window, the glass scattering over my seat. I bend down, turn the wheel to keep to my course, and fire back through the broken frame, the wind ripping at my coat and the night wailing inside the car. A sudden bluster comes from ahead, from the lane coming ahead of me, and my front tyre blows out.
The wheel is pulled from my hands. The tyres screech against the road as the car skids and spins, the world rushing by in a blur of headlights and black sky.
Crash...
I hit the highway railing and the metal screamed. Steam popped out from the hood and the engine began to tick before it died. For a moment, all there is is silence, just the warm, slow flow running down my face. I glance at the steering wheel and see that the leather is stained with blood where my forehead hit it. I can see them stopping behind me through the crack in the windscreen. Doors opening & people stepping out into the dark. I take the gun off the seat. As soon as I move, a pain shoots down through my skull, sharp, white-hot, and it blurs the edges of my vision as I push the door open and step out of the wreckage into the cold night air.
Ten men. They had formed a loose circle around the car, their weapons glinting with light under the soft fluorescent highway light knives, bats, and one shotgun held loosely across a broad chest. Are they members of a rival mafia or hired killers? It makes no difference.
They're standing between me and Ella. The last thing before the night ends I wanna see her again.
I shot, aiming, ducking away as they reached in before I knew a blade grazed out from my left side as I twist, grasp his wrist, and drive my elbow straight through his nose the cartilage breaks with a wet crunch, and then I spin him so that he runs into the path of the second attacker. They collided with each other. I hit the second man's kneecap with a kick, and he's screaming before he reaches the asphalt.
The steel makes a sound in the night air as I pull the rod out of the side mount of the car. The rod becomes part of my arm a streak of chrome and violence. I swing it in a harsh arc, and it hits a jaw; I could feel the bone break all the way up to my shoulder. Then another one swings at me with a bat. I dive under the swing, drive the rod into his ribs, crack-crack-crack, breaking at least three ribs, and end it with a knee to the temple.
Four down. Pain shoots across my back as someone hits me with a pipe while I was busy. The world goes dizzy, and I stagger, taste blood, and then, using the impulse I have, roll over the hood of my broken car and end up on the other side with the gun aimed.
There are two shots and two men fall, grabbing their legs. Six down. The one holding the shotgun lifts it up. He's too slow. I throw the steel rod like a spear as it spins end over end and hits him right in the throat. He gurgles and drops the gun, then bends down to his knees.
The remaining one charges at me like a bull, coming low and quickly, and knocks me into the railing. My head jerks backwards against the metal, and stars burst across my sight. His hands then close around my throat, narrowing down to one point, my windpipe being pressed by his thumbs, the roaring in my ears, and the wet heat of blood flowing into my eyes.
I don't have any air left to scream, so I just smile. The shard of glass remains in the car door frame, and my hand reaches for it. Sharp and is dripping with my blood. I drive it into his side once, then twice, and again, until he stops gripping it and slips down the rail, leaving a red streak on the steel.
Silence. Pin-drop silence, just the sound of waves crashing against the cliff and me? Standing among ten bodies, breathing heavily, my coat torn, my blood mixing with theirs on the asphalt. Blood dripping down my head and arm onto the concrete road.
These ten men were sent to keep me from reaching that warehouse. That means whoever is waiting for me there... they were frightened that I would find it. I picked up the rod, walked slowly to the nearest car, which was still running, looking for the bullets before I could react to the footsteps, a sharp sting between my ribs.
A cold, sharp knife pierced through muscle, diving deeper, tearing through the muscles as sharp pain shot throughout my body, my hand gripping harder on the rod until my knuckle turned white.
Fuck....
One of the ten was playing dead. I didn't turn around. I drove my elbow into his throat, pushed him away from the blade, and shot him twice before he fell to the ground. I pressed my hand onto the wound, the wet slit had already soaked my shirt, with warm blood as it seeped through my shirt and dripped from my fingers.
At that moment I heard the sound of engines; two more cars were approaching quickly, and their headlights were cutting through the darkness.
Certainly, more men were approaching; the silence was shattered by gunfire. As I picked up the gun shooting towards the approaching cars walking backwards, taking each step carefully as one bullet hits a tyre and the car swerves sideways, another strikes directly into the chest there's a scream and the man collapses. Another-
Click. Click.
Empty.
There were no more rounds of the bullet left for the rest of them.
"Fuck."
The heel of my shoe came down on loose stone. Behind me there was nothing. I look over my shoulder and see the edge of the cliff and below it the sea, black and furious, beating itself against the rock walls again and again as if it had a grudge. The headlights focusing directly onto me as the cars came to the halt and the sharp smell of blood mixed with metel and gunpowder was left in the night air.
Given that I'm injured like this, bleeding almost to death, with no weapon and no car, I can't win this fight. But winning wasn't even the first thing I'd wanted.
Staying alive is.
I dial Alex while using one hand and lean my back against the last rock before the drop, and at that moment he answers as a bullet goes through my shoulder. The pain was breaking into my body my knees give way but I manage to get the words out, with blood splattering the phone:
"Peligro. Localízame rápidamente, cerca de la autopista, con el GPS del coche."
The next shot echoes for a moment everything goes still as I feel cold air hitting me like a tide as I, weightlessly, look up at the endless night sky, the cold wind screaming past my ears, and the scowling faces of the men looming over the edge above me growing smaller, smaller and smaller before I knew the water engulfed me. Time breaks down as each second stretches out into an eternity of howling wind and my blood spilling out of me in dark ribbons, tearing from the wound in my side and the hole in my shoulder, and soaking the night as cold water crashed against my wounds.
Ella.....
My prayer now is simply her name even if it was my last moment, I only wanted her in my mind. For six days I knelt by her side, talking to gods that I don't believe in, and they didn't reply because I was praying in the wrong direction. She is the only deity worthy of the weight of a bowed head not money, not the empire I've built at the cost of my blood. I had promised to come back soon, and all I am giving her is a body that the tide will not return intact. I left my ring on her finger and my heart beside it, and what good is a god who abandons his one and only worshipper? If I die here she will wake up all by herself...
The fury of it is hotter than the blood flowing out of me. I didn't etch my name into this city's darkness merely in order to be washed away by water. She has not allowed me to die...and since everything that I am belongs to her, death has no say in the matter.
The effect had ripped the air from my lungs an intense, complete cold overwhelms me and total darkness falls around me. Salt pours into the injury in my shoulder and the pain bursts white behind my eyes.
I kick. Once.... Then twice.
The pain was a living presence that made my shoulder cry out, and my side tears open further, but I kick once more, pulling my hands upward through the dark even though they won't completely close, my lungs are already burning, and my vision is dotted with stars that have nothing at all to do with the sky. The surface doesn't seem to be coming any nearer or perhaps it is coming closer it's difficult to tell. It's harder to think. The cold has now reached my bones and is slowing down everything the only remaining thought left was a silent vow I was making to her.
"Wait for me, my love, I'll be back soon.... Mio Amore....Ella."