Chapter 34 - The bloodline bargain
The rain washed Moretti’s blood into the black waters of Pier 44. Lorenzo stood at the edge of the dock, watching the ripples disappear into the tide.
Luca jogged up, holding a secure satellite receiver. "Boss, we swept the entire perimeter. Moretti’s yacht was empty, but we found something in the ship’s navigation log. A cargo vessel registered to Vance Consortium—the *Leviathan*—slipped anchor from the deep-water harbor twenty minutes ago."
Lorenzo turned around. His mother was sitting on an equipment crate, holding a dry wool blanket around Sophie’s shoulders. Sophie’s fever had broken, but she looked pale and exhausted, her head resting against Donna Rossi’s shoulder.
"Who was aboard the *Leviathan*?" Lorenzo asked.
"Victor Vance is aboard," Luca answered, his jaw tight. "And Dr. Jonathan Clark. They have a mobile bio-synthesis laboratory set up in the lower hull. But Boss... they didn't just take lab equipment."
Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed into slits of ice. "What else did they load onto that ship?"
Luca swallowed hard. "During the raid on Saint Jude Sanitarium, Jonathan Clark didn't just escape. He raided the city’s municipal water treatment reservoir on his way to the harbor. He loaded four hundred gallons of the Lazarus activator aerosol onto the ship’s automated dispersal system."
Sophie’s head snapped up. She pushed herself up from the crate, her voice cracking with pure terror. "The aerosol... if it's released over the metropolitan bay during high tide, it won't just affect me. The compound was tailored to my genetic sequence, but in raw, uncalibrated concentrations, it's a lethal neuro-degenerative plague to anyone without the matching carrier gene!"
"Jonathan is going to hold the entire city hostage," Donna Rossi said, her voice shaking with rage. "He’ll demand total immunity and complete surrender from the syndicate, or he wipes out two million people."
Lorenzo walked over to Sophie, kneeling before her. He took her cold, scarred hands into his own, kissing the bruised knuckles.
"How do we stop the dispersal, Sophie?" Lorenzo asked softly.
Sophie looked into his dark eyes, tears welling in her lashes. "The dispersal valve is linked to a master bio-metric lock on the ship’s bridge. It can only be disarmed by one of two people: my father... or me. My blood is the encryption key."
"Then we board that ship," Lorenzo said, standing up and drawing another fresh magazine from his vest. "We hunt them in the middle of the sea."
"Boss, the Coast Guard and the Navy have cordoned off the bay under Vance’s federal directive," Luca warned. "No civilian or private boat can get within three miles of the *Leviathan* without being torpedoed."
A slow, ruthless smile spread across Lorenzo Rossi’s lips. It was the smile of a predator who had spent his entire life defying laws, borders, and governments.
"Who said anything about a boat?" Lorenzo murmured.
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He turned toward the eastern skyline, where the searchlights of the Rossi family’s private heavy-lift transport helicopters were already thundering over the industrial docks.
👉 A mid-sea airborne assault begins—can Sophie survive boarding her father's floating fortress?
