Page 107 of The Mafia King's Lost Son
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe some part of me imagined pews of chairs in rows, something that still looked like a place where people came to find God.Stupid and naive me.The kind of thinking that belongs to the person I was before all this started.
What I see instead is chaos. Pews turned upside down and rotting, wood split and covered in dust. Broken glass scattered across the floor, making crunching sounds under our boots as we move deeper into the mess. Debris everywhere from chunks of plaster fallen from the ceiling, old hymns and jotters torn apart and scattered like a kid’s playground.
The smell is worse. It reeks of decay making my stomach turn.
We keep walking, but Viktor is nowhere in sight. With every step, unease tightens in my chest. I start to wonder if he was ever meant to be here at all, or if this place is just a distraction, a way to pull us off track while he carries out his real plan somewhere else.
I glance at Dante, and one look at him tells me he’s thinking the same thing. His expression is controlled, carefully blank, but I know him well enough to see the calculation beneath it. He’s already measuring exits, angles, possibilities.
I’m about to say it—then I see him.
Viktor is standing at the far end of the church, on the raised platform where the altar used to be. The weak morning light iscoming through the broken windows behind him, turning him into a silhouette against the grey.
And in front of him, pressed tight against his chest with a gun to his head, is Luca.
Everything else stops existing at the moment.
The men around me, the danger, the plan, all of it vanishes until there’s nothing left in the world but my son’s face. His eyes are huge and wet with tears, his cheeks red and puffy from crying, his small body shaking so hard I can see it from here.
He’s still wearing his dinosaur pajamas. The blue ones with the little T-rexes that he picked out himself because dinosaurs are his favorite thing in the whole world. The ones I pulled from the dryer three days ago and folded and put in his drawer, never imagining they’d become the clothes he was kidnapped in.
My baby. My poor little boy.Standing there terrified while a monster holds a gun to his head.
Then he sees me.
“Mama!”
The word hits and rips through me like a bullet. Every instinct I have, every maternal impulse that’s been embedded in me since the moment I found out I was pregnant, screams at me to run to him. To grab him and hold him and never let go. My feet actually move, carrying me forward without my permission, one step and then another.
But Dante’s hand closes around my arm and yanks me back.
“Not yet,” he breathes against my ear. “Wait.”
I want to scream at him and wriggle past him and every other person standing between me and my son. But I force myself to stop and think, to remember that moving blindly is exactly what will get Luca killed.
So I stand there, shaking. Watching my terrified child while I can’t do a single thing to help him.
Viktor is smiling and it’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen on a human face.
“Right on time,” he calls out, his voice bouncing off the stone walls. “I was starting to think you might disappoint me.”
Dante steps forward, positioning himself between me and Viktor. “We’re here. Let him go.”
“Did you bring what I asked for? The location?”
“We’ll trade once Luca is safe.”
Viktor laughs. The sound is hollow, mocking, completely devoid of anything human. “That’s not how this works, old friend. You don’t get to make demands when I’m the one holding all the cards.” He presses the gun harder against Luca’s temple and my son whimpers, a tiny broken sound that makes me want to tear Viktor apart with my bare hands. “Here’s what’s going to happen. Scarlett tells me exactly where Antonio hid the ledger. Then she goes and gets it. And if everything goes smoothly, maybe I let the boy live.”
“You’re not getting anything until Luca is safe,” Dante says again.
“You’re not listening.” The smile drops from Viktor’s face. “I spent fifteen years in your shadow. Fifteen years doing your dirty work while you took all the credit. Fifteen years of loyaltyyou never once thought to reward. Now it’s my turn. And your precious family isn’t going to stop me from taking what I’ve earned.
Goosebumps roll through my skin, and the hairs on my arms stand. I can feel it in the air, something’s wrong. I’m immediately on alert, and that’s when I notice the movement.
Shadows shifting in the balconies above us. Shapes barely visible in the dark corners of the side chapels and the glint of metal.
We’re not the only ones with backup. Viktor has been planning for us to come armed, positioning his men turning this church into a trap. And we walked right into it.
