Chapter 5 Blood in the Water

The storm that had been quietly gathering over Manhattan finally broke with violent resolve. Thunder cracked across the skyline, echoing like gunfire between the glass towers. Rain slashed the pavement in sheets, a relentless cascade of fury, as if the city itself sensed the war that now whispered through its alleys.

Damon Creed stood at the top floor of Creed Tower, watching the deluge through reinforced glass. He hadn't slept - again. His phone buzzed, but he didn't look at it. His eyes were focused on a dark van idling across the street, its presence unmarked by the passing crowd. Surveillance confirmed it had been parked there since midnight.

"They're watching," he muttered.

Julian entered behind him, soaked despite the umbrella.

"Luca's men hit the safe house in Brooklyn. Casualties. Two dead. Rina's alive. Celeste wasn't there."

Damon turned slowly. "Then they're getting bolder."

Julian hesitated. "They left a message."

Damon raised an eyebrow.

"What kind of message?"

Julian handed him a photograph - printed, not digital. Damon studied the image. It was Celeste's old school photo, marked with a red X. Below it, scrawled in Italian:

"La Regina deve cadere."

The Queen must fall.

Damon crushed the photo in his fist.

---

Celeste sat in a dimly lit corner of the Gotham Library archives. A laptop open before her, a flurry of code and decrypted Vatican documents flashing across the screen. Old alliances. Hidden names. Blood oaths. Most of it dated back decades - some longer.

But then she found it. A name.

Elias van Drayden.

Former head of Vatican security. Disavowed. Disappeared. Rumored to have gone rogue.

Her father's secret banker. The one who managed the silent accounts, the ones not even the Church could trace.

A new message buzzed onto her encrypted signal.

Rina: We've been compromised. Pull out. Get to Creed. Now.

Celeste didn't hesitate. She slammed the laptop shut, shoved it in her bag, and slipped out into the rain.

A man followed two paces behind her, too slow to be an accident. She turned sharply at the crosswalk. He paused, tried to look away.

She bolted.

The chase was immediate. Her boots splashed through puddles, bag clutched to her chest as she veered through traffic, nearly clipped by a yellow cab. Horns blared. The man - fast, trained - kept pace.

But Celeste wasn't untrained.

She slipped into the underground, weaving through the crowd, and ducked into an unmarked service door. It slammed behind her. Lock clicked.

She exhaled hard.

Rina stepped from the shadows inside.

"I told you. It's not safe to move alone."

"He almost had me," Celeste said. "I found a name. Drayden."

Rina's expression turned cold. "That's a ghost."

"Then let's raise the dead."

---

In a cavernous wine cellar beneath Creed Tower, Damon met with an unlikely ally - a former MI6 strategist named Ezra Kline, now deep in the shadows of international espionage.

"Drayden's not just a banker," Ezra said, pouring a glass of vintage red. "He's a historian. A bloodline cataloger. He knows who belongs to what. And who owes who."

Damon's voice was tight. "And he's working with Giancarlo?"

"Worse. He's funding the resurrection."

Damon slammed his glass down. "I need to find him. Now."

Ezra slid a folder across the table. "He surfaces every few years in the Black Alps. Switzerland. Off-grid, encrypted compounds. If you're going, you'll need the girl."

Damon narrowed his eyes. "Why?"

Ezra's look turned grim. "Because she's not just Moretti's daughter. She's the key."

---

Later that night, the rain ceased. The air hung heavy.

Celeste arrived at Creed's private airstrip outside the city. Damon waited at the foot of a sleek black jet, coat flapping in the wind. The runway lights cast a dim glow over the scene.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"To find a ghost," he replied.

She climbed the stairs without another word.

---

Switzerland. Black Alps.

The cold bit like knives. Snow fell in slow, deliberate flakes as the jet landed at a discreet terminal. Armed escorts met them, silent and masked.

Celeste watched the landscape from the armored vehicle.

"You trust this Ezra?" she asked.

"I don't trust anyone. I measure use."

She nodded slowly. "What's mine then?"

Damon looked at her. "You are the axis. The one everyone wants - alive or dead."

They arrived at a secluded villa carved into the mountain.

Inside, fires blazed. Men with hardened eyes flanked every doorway. At the center - a man in a black suit with silver hair, sipping tea.

Elias van Drayden.

"Ah, Miss Moretti," he said without standing. "You look just like your mother."

Celeste stiffened. "You knew her?"

"I knew what she ran from. And what you inherited."

Damon stepped forward. "We're here for information."

Drayden raised a brow. "And I'm here for leverage."

"What do you want?" Celeste asked.

Drayden smiled coldly. "Your loyalty. And your silence."

"I'm not my father's puppet."

"No," he said softly. "You're his weapon."

---

In the hours that followed, secrets spilled like blood. Drayden laid out the entire network: the black funds, the arms trades, the stolen relics buried in Vatican catacombs. And the final plan - codenamed "Sangue di Dio" - Blood of God.

"Giancarlo wants to destabilize the Holy See," Drayden said. "Collapse faith, resurrect fear. If he does, the old families will rise again."

Damon's face was stone. "And what's her role?"

"To unite them - or destroy them."

A beat of silence.

Celeste stood. "Then I'll choose destruction."

Drayden smiled faintly. "Be careful. Kings fall quietly. Queens are burned."

---

They left before dawn.

In the jet, Celeste stared at her reflection in the window.

"You knew all this," she said. "Didn't you?"

Damon nodded slowly. "I knew parts. Now I know the endgame."

She looked at him. "And what's that?"

His eyes met hers - cold steel and rare truth.

"War."

---

Back in Manhattan, the first of the bombs went off.

The Creed Foundation's downtown annex exploded in a column of fire and twisted steel, raining glass over six blocks.

Casualties unknown.

The message clear.

You cannot protect the Queen.

But Celeste Moretti was done hiding.

She was born of ruin. Raised by shadows.

And now, she would become the fire.