Chapter 5 - The Blood Debt Paid
The night air inside the old glass greenhouse was freezing.
Rain pattered against the cracked glass panes above, dripping onto the overgrown ferns and rusted iron plant stands. Mama held me tightly under a thick canvas tarp in the corner, her arms wrapped around my shivering shoulders.
Every few minutes, the muffled thud of explosions and distant gunfire echoed from the main house two hundred yards away.
"Is Mr. Moretti going to come back?" I whispered, clutching the gold pocket watch against my pink sweater.
"I don't know, baby," Mama wept softly into my hair. "I don't know."
Suddenly, the wooden trapdoor in the greenhouse floor creaked open.
Mama gasped, reaching for a rusty garden trowel on the shelf beside us.
A tall figure stepped out of the dark hole, wet with rain and blood. He was breathing heavily, his tactical vest scorched, holding his left arm tightly against his ribs.
It was Alejandro.
"Mr. Moretti!" Mama cried out, dropping the trowel.
Alejandro stumbled forward, sinking onto an old wooden bench beneath a broken grapevine trellis. His knuckles were raw, and his dark hair was plastered to his forehead by rain, but his eyes were clear and fierce.
"It is done," Alejandro rasped, catching his breath. "Lorenzo... and his lieutenants... will no longer be attending family meetings."
He held up a black satellite phone.
"I’ve summoned Capo Santino and three hundred loyal soldiers from the South Side district. They have secured the perimeter gates. Villa Moretti is ours again."
He looked down at me, reaching out his right hand. "My watch, little lion?"
I ran over to him and carefully placed the gold watch back into his blood-stained palm. "You kept your promise!"
"I always keep my promises," Alejandro said softly. He closed his fingers around the gold casing, then looked up at Mama.
"Elena," he said gravely. "The news of what happened tonight will spread through the underworld by sunrise. Lorenzo’s allies in New York and Miami will know that a maid’s daughter saved my life, and that Vance tried to kill her for it."
Mama’s face drained of color. "Are... are we in danger?"
"As long as you are treated like servants, yes," Alejandro said firmly. "Traitors target what they consider weak. That is why, effective immediately, your life as a maid is over."
"What do you mean?" Mama asked, bewildered.
Alejandro stood up, ignoring the pain in his side, and looked down at us with the absolute authority of a king conferring knighthood.
"Tomorrow morning, at the emergency assembly of the Moretti Family Commission, I will publicly announce my debt," Alejandro declared, his voice cutting through the patter of the rain. "Emma will be formally named as my goddaughter and protected ward of the Moretti syndicate. She will have her own security detail, her own doctors, and full access to the family trust."
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"Mr. Moretti... we can't accept that!" Mama gasped. "We’re simple people—"
"You are no longer simple people, Elena," Alejandro interrupted gently, touching my cheek with his thumb. "Your daughter gave up her last breath of safety to give me mine. In my world, blood debts are paid in blood... but debts of mercy are paid in gold and absolute protection. You are family now."
