Chapter 7 7

Athena POV

The metallic tang of blood that Isabella so cleverly masked in her club was a suffocating reality here.

It had been three days since the dock hit. The ground floor of the abandoned Queens distillery had been partitioned with heavy canvas tarps, creating a makeshift infirmary that smelled of raw alcohol, iodine, and impending death.

I stood rigidly beside a rusted cot, watching the shallow, ragged breathing of a Valenzuela soldier who had taken two bullets during the extraction. Nonna Elena knelt at the foot of the bed, her rosary beads clicking softly in the dim light. I didn't pray. I demanded survival. *The Supremacy of Loyalty* dictated that these men bled for me; in return, I was supposed to keep them alive.

Julian stood across from me, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked beneath his skin. He had promised me a doctor. He needed to prove to my men that his protection meant something.

Heavy footsteps echoed on the concrete. Leo, Julian's most trusted Underboss, pushed through the canvas flaps. His usually stoic face was pale, twisted with a mixture of rage and defeat.

"Where is he?" Julian demanded, his voice a low, dangerous whip.

Leo shook his head, his hands curling into fists. "Dr. Alcott isn't coming. He can't."

"I told you to pay him whatever he wanted, Leo. Drag him here if you had to."

"It's not about money, Julian," Leo spat bitterly. "Alcott is bound by an ironclad contract. Alistair Kirkland bought him. The contract explicitly states Alcott is forbidden from treating anyone deemed an enemy of the Kirkland family. If he breaches it, his own family dies."

A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the infirmary, broken only by the dying soldier's wet cough.

I stared at the concrete floor, the sheer magnitude of Kirkland's paranoia washing over me like ice water. A Don who controlled the bullets was dangerous; a Don who controlled the scalpels was a god. Kirkland's power wasn't just in his soldiers; it was woven into the very fabric of New York. He was ensuring that his enemies didn't just fall-they stayed down, bleeding out in the dark.

Our *Vendetta* was no longer just a war against a rival family. We were fighting an invisible, suffocating web that choked the life out of this city.

The helplessness I felt in that infirmary festered into a desperate, clawing need by nightfall. I needed a reason to keep breathing in this toxic air. I needed a reminder of why I was fighting.

The Long Island air was biting as Derek Hobbs and I slipped past the rusted, police-taped gates of the Valenzuela estate.

It was a graveyard of my past. The grand manor had been torched by Kirkland's men three years ago. Now, it was nothing but a blackened skeleton looming under the pale moonlight. Weeds choked the once-immaculate gardens, and the scent of ash and sea salt clung to the ruins.

Derek moved like a silent shadow behind me, his hand resting on the grip of his holstered weapon. He didn't ask questions. He just guarded my back.

Relying on fragmented childhood memories, I navigated through the charred debris to what used to be my grandfather's study. The roof had caved in, and the mahogany bookshelves were reduced to splintered charcoal. I dropped to my knees, my hands sifting through the soot and debris near the baseboard.

*There.*

My fingers brushed against cold metal. I pried open the hidden compartment my grandfather had shown me when I was a little girl. Inside, miraculously untouched by the inferno, lay a thick leather tube.

My hands trembled as I pulled it out. Derek stepped closer, clicking on a small flashlight, casting a tight circle of light over the ash-covered floor.

I popped the cap and slid out the rolled parchment. Thirteen charcoal sketches.

I unrolled them slowly. The first was a four-year-old girl with a gap-toothed smile and wild curls. The next, a seven-year-old holding a wooden wooden horse. They progressed, year by year, until the final sketch-a sixteen-year-old girl with eyes that already held too much coldness, too much understanding of the mafia world.

I stared at the stranger in the drawings. I had forced myself to forget her. The Professor had taught me that nostalgia was a vulnerability, that missing the dead would only dull my blade.

But looking at the girl whose life, family, and future had been violently stolen, the ice in my veins began to boil.

"I thought forgetting them made me stronger," I whispered into the dark, not caring if Derek heard me. "But I was wrong."

This *Vendetta* wasn't just a chess game for The Professor anymore. It wasn't just about reclaiming a throne. It was for her.

I carefully rolled the sketches back into the leather tube, clutching it to my chest like a shield. The cold, perfect weapon Athena 'Nemesis' Wise had finally found her heartbeat.

"Let's go back, Derek," I said, my voice steady.

I walked out of the ruins and into the night, carrying the ghosts of my past back to the distillery, where the future was waiting to be written in blood.