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Russo Blood Debt2
Novelix
Completed
Five years after taking over the Vitali Family, I thought the blood debt was finally behind me. Then my daughter, Alba, was kidnapped and shipped across the Mediterranean in a refrigerated container. The trail led straight to Nikos Drakos, the ruthless Greek Don who controls the Port of Piraeus. But instead of hurting her, he saved her life. Now someone inside his organization is using his routes to come after my family, and neither of us knows who to trust. To get my daughter home alive, I may have to work with the one man dangerous enough to challenge me.
Chapters (3)
第1章
Five years after I inherited the Vitali Family, Aurora Wing opened its third maternity center.
Alba was five.
She was the first abandoned newborn registered under the foundation, and the only child who had ever walked into my office without knocking.
That morning, she stole a strawberry from my breakfast plate and left for school with two guards.
At 8:17, Matteo entered the library without knocking.
“The school car never arrived.”
I stood.
He placed three photographs on the desk.
The first showed the armored car under an overpass.
The second showed both guards dead in the front seats.
The third showed Alba’s red backpack on the road.
“No ransom call,” Matteo said. “No message.”
“Traffic cameras?”
“Erased from three intersections.”
“Ports.”
“We’re checking.”
I removed the Vitali ring from my finger and handed it to him.
“Seal every private runway from Florence to Naples. Nobody leaves Italy with a child.”
My phone rang.
A distorted voice said, “Don Vitali, your daughter is already at sea.”
The call ended.
Matteo traced it for eleven seconds.
“Burner. Bari.”
A shipping manifest appeared on his tablet.
One refrigerated container had left Bari under a false medical license.
Destination: Piraeus, Greece.
Owner of the receiving terminal: Drakos Maritime.
Matteo looked at me.
“Nikos Drakos controls that port.”
I put the ring back on.
“Prepare the plane.”
第2章
The container reached Piraeus before sunrise.
It never reached the buyer.
Nikos Drakos received the alert when his port security found three dead smugglers beside a refrigerated truck.
He arrived with twelve men.
The container lock carried a counterfeit Drakos seal.
He shot it off.
Inside, six wooden crates stood beneath a false wall.
The first five held medical equipment.
The sixth moved.
Nikos pulled the lid open.
Alba sat inside with tape around her wrists and a silver emergency pendant around her neck.
She kicked him in the shin.
“Good,” he said. “You still have strength.”
She tried to bite his hand.
He cut the tape and stepped back.
One smuggler rose behind him with a knife.
Alba pointed.
Nikos turned and fired once.
The man fell.
Blood crossed Nikos’s left sleeve.
Alba stared at it, then pulled a cartoon bandage from her pocket.
She pressed it over the tear in his shirt.
“That will not stop a bullet,” he said.
“It wasn’t a bullet.”
Nikos looked at the Vitali pendant.
“Your mother is Serafina Vitali.”
Alba held his gaze.
“My mother finds people.”
“So do I.”
He carried her out of the container.
At the terminal gate, his consigliere approached.
“Don Drakos, a Vitali aircraft requested emergency clearance.”
Nikos handed Alba to the female doctor waiting beside the ambulance.
“Open the private runway.”
“And the child?”
“She stays under my protection until I know who used my port.”
第3章
My plane landed at Nikos Drakos’s private runway with eight armed men.
His soldiers waited beside black vehicles.
Nobody lowered a weapon.
Nikos stood at the front in a white shirt with dried blood on one sleeve.
“Where is my daughter?” I asked.
“Safe.”
“That was not the question.”
He turned toward the villa.
I drew my gun and placed the barrel against his chest.
Twenty rifles rose behind him.
Eight rose behind me.
Nikos looked down at the gun.
“You entered my country, landed on my runway, and pointed a weapon at me.”
“You kept my child.”
“I removed her from a shipping container.”
“Return her.”
A door opened behind him.
Alba ran across the courtyard.
“Mama.”
I holstered the gun and caught her.
A doctor followed with a blanket and medical file.
“No fractures,” the doctor said. “Mild dehydration. Sedatives in her blood. No other injuries.”
Alba pointed at Nikos.
“He shot the bad man.”
Nikos adjusted his cuff over the bandage she had placed there.
I held Alba against my side.
“Thank you for saving her.”
“You are welcome.”
“We’re leaving.”
“No.”
My men moved.
Nikos raised one hand. His soldiers stayed still.
“The kidnappers used a route known only to six people in my organization,” he said. “Until I identify the traitor, every road out of this estate is exposed.”
Alba tightened both arms around my neck.
I faced him again.
“You saved my daughter.”
“Yes.”
“Do not mistake that for permission to keep her.”
