Chapter 10 - Crashing the Cathedral
The wind howled through the shattered stained-glass frames, blowing cold rain across the altar. Clara lay gasping on the floor, her cheek pressed against the wet stone, staring up in stunned disbelief.
She recognized Daniel instantly. The sunken cheeks, the fierce eyes—the man she had spent six agonizing months bringing back from the edge of chemical obliteration was standing upright, breathing the sea air.
And next to him stood the man from the streets of Brooklyn. The giant who looked like Daniel, but moved with the terrifying, lethal grace of an apex predator.
"Andrew..." Cassian stammered, raising his snub-nosed revolver with trembling hands. "Wait! We can talk about this! We're blood! Everything I did was for the family! Uncle was weak—he was going to give the maritime contracts to the Callahans! I preserved our legacy!"
"You put my brother in an animal cage for nine years," Andrew said. His voice was so quiet, so devoid of human warmth, that the temperature in the stone room seemed to plummet below freezing. "You made me mourn a ghost. And then you tried to murder an innocent child."
Cassian’s eyes darted frantically toward Clara, then back to the gun in his hand. A manic, desperate twitch seized his jaw. "Her? She’s a nobody! Her daughter is dead by now anyway! You’re going to throw away our family empire for a penniless nurse and her brat?!"
Clara let out a choked, dry sob from the floor, curling into a ball as Cassian’s words pierced her like daggers.
"Ivy is alive," Andrew said, not looking away from Cassian’s face.
Clara’s head snapped up.
"She is in Daniel’s bed at my estate," Andrew continued, his tone cutting through Clara’s despair like sunlight through leaded glass. "She drank hot chocolate. She ate warm soup. And she gave me a contract to bring her mother back."
Cassian realized he had zero cards left. In a final, suicidal spasm of panic, he swung his revolver away from Andrew, pointing it directly down at Clara’s head to take her with him.
Crack!
Andrew didn't even raise his rifle to his cheek. His sidearm cleared the leather holster and fired in a single, fluid blur.
The heavy hollow-point round took Cassian’s right wrist, disintegrating the bone and sending the revolver spinning into the shadows. Cassian shrieked, falling to his knees and clutching his mangled arm against his chest, screaming in agony.
Andrew walked forward. His heavy combat boots clicked rhythmically against the stone floor, stepping over broken glass, discarded bullet casings, and pools of rainwater.
He reached the altar and stood over his cousin.
"Andrew, please!" Cassian sobbed, blood pouring through his fingers. "Mercy! The family code—we don't kill our own blood! You took an oath to our grandfather!"
"The oath died the second you drugged Daniel," Andrew whispered.
Andrew reached down, grabbed Cassian by the throat with one hand, and hoisted him off the floor like a ragdoll, slamming him against the stone communion table. Cassian choked, his feet dangling in the air, his eyes bulging as Andrew’s grip tightened like a hydraulic vice.
"You wanted Clara’s signature to take the empire," Andrew said, his face inches from Cassian’s terrified features. "You will get nothing. You will have no grave. No marker. No one will ever speak your name in this city again."
Andrew drew his tactical combat blade with his left hand.
He didn't make a spectacle of it. With a swift, brutal jerk of his forearm, he drove the blade deep under Cassian’s ribs, angling upward into the heart.
Cassian gasped once, his body going rigid, his eyes rolling back into his head.
Andrew held him there for five seconds until the trembling stopped, then let go. Cassian’s body dropped heavily onto the flagstones, silent and lifeless, beside the ruined marriage papers.
Andrew wiped the blade clean on his cousin's silk tie, sheathed it, and turned around.
Clara was sitting up against the altar rail, her hands shaking uncontrollably, her chest heaving as tears of shock, relief, and exhaustion poured down her face.
Andrew knelt down in front of her.
Up close, she looked fragile, battered, and utterly exhausted, yet her hazel eyes possessed a fierce, unyielding dignity. For all his ruthlessness, the Don of Brooklyn felt a sudden, profound hesitation in her presence.
He reached out and gently sliced the plastic zip-ties that still bound her wrists together.
"Are you hurt, Clara?" he asked softly.
Clara looked at his blood-splattered hands, then up into his stormy gray eyes. She didn't see a monster. She saw the man who had answered the impossible prayer of a seven-year-old child.
"My daughter..." Clara choked out, her voice breaking. "Ivy... is she really safe? You’re not just saying that to keep me calm?"
Andrew reached into his breast pocket. With slow, careful movements, he pulled out the crumpled five-dollar bill with Daniel’s bloody writing on the back. Next to it was the small, tarnished silver key on the pink shoelace.
He held them out in the palm of his hand.
"She gave me this to hire me," Andrew murmured, a rare, faint smile touching his lips. "And she told me to tell you that the monsters only win if good people look away."
Clara grabbed the silver key, pressing it against her heart, and collapsed forward into Andrew’s chest, weeping uncontrollably.
May you like
Andrew froze for a second, unaccustomed to anyone daring to touch him, let alone lean on him for shelter. Then, slowly, he wrapped his heavy wool coat around her shivering shoulders and lifted her into his arms.
"Marco," Andrew said, carrying Clara toward the shattered doors. "Burn this place to the waterline. We’re going home."
