Chapter 6 - The Shadows Speak
I spun around so fast my shoulder slammed hard against the stone doorframe, but I didn't feel the pain.
“Grace?” I breathed out, my voice cracking with a desperate, terrified hope.
From beneath the metal frame of the bed, a hand reached out—a hand so thin, skeletal, and bruised that the skin looked like translucent parchment stretched tightly over sharp, jagged bones.
I dropped to my knees on the cold concrete, ignoring the dampness seeping through my trousers, and gently scooped that frail hand into both of mine.
“Grace... tesoro, I’m here. I found you. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry...”
Slowly, agonizingly, a figure rolled out from the shadows beneath the bed.
It was Grace. But it was a ghost of the vibrant, beautiful woman I had married. Her long, dark hair was matted and streaked with gray; her cheeks were hollow, her eyes sunken deep into dark, bruised sockets. Her floral dress hung off her frame like a shroud on a skeleton.
And her stomach was completely flat.
She wasn't pregnant anymore.
“Dante...?” she whispered, her voice like dry autumn leaves scraping across pavement. Her dry, cracked lips parted in disbelief. “You... you came back.”
“I came back,” I choked out, tears finally breaking free, spilling hot down my cheeks as I pulled her trembling, feather-light body into my arms. “I swear to God, Grace, I didn't know. My mother... she told me you ran away. She left your ring in the crib—”
At the mention of the baby, Grace’s entire body went rigid. A violent, animalistic sob tore itself from her throat, and her skeletal hands clamped onto the lapels of my jacket with supernatural strength.
“She took him, Dante,” Grace sobbed, her voice breaking into a piercing shriek of pure maternal agony. “Your mother... she came down here while I was in labor. She brought a doctor—that bastard Alistair. They held me down on this bed. They cut my baby out of me while I was screaming, Dante! They took my son away before I could even hold him, before I could even hear him cry!”
The world around me exploded into a roaring sea of red.
My mother hadn't just imprisoned my wife. She had stolen my child. She had butchered our son out of her own sick, paranoid delusions of bloodline purity and control.
“Where is he?” I demanded, my voice dropping into a terrifying, dead calm that held more menace than a loaded gun. “Grace, look at me. Where is our son?”
Grace shook her head frantically, tears streaming in torrents down her hollow cheeks. “I don't know... they took him upstairs the second he was born. Your mother said a bastard child of a woman with 'no pedigree' had no place in the Rossi dynasty. She said she was sending him away to be raised by a loyal family in Switzerland where he would never know who his real mother was.”
I gently laid Grace back down against my rolled-up jacket, standing slowly to my feet.
As I stood, my shadow stretched long and dark across the concrete walls of the dungeon.
May you like
I reached inside my jacket, pulling out my heavy, matte-black Glock 19. I pulled back the slide with a crisp, metallic clack, checking the loaded chamber, and let the safety click off with a sharp, final snap.
“Stay here, my love,” I whispered, pressing a kiss to her cold forehead. “I am going to get our son back. And then, I am going to burn this entire empire to the ground.”
