His Mafia Rose

Caspian

The wind was howling past the branches, shaking the dry leaves as night clung in every direction that surrounded us. Genesis' father had constructed the treehouse last summer, and it creaked beneath our weight. I gripped my lean body around Genesis, attempting to keep her inside the boundary of myself. The pungent odor of smoke and faraway screams clung to us, the lingering gunpowder and blood still on our clothing.

Genesis trembled in my hold, her chest heaving with hard, quick breaths. "Caspian," she gasped, fists clenching my shirt. "They're coming." The sound of footsteps pounded below-heavy, deliberate. There were more than one. Increasingly closer. My arms wrapped around Genesis securely, my head reeling to consider what to do. I wasn't letting go. I'd fight to keep her, if it killed me.

A shout down, unpolished but level. "Caspian Graves? Genesis Moretti?"

Genesis's hold constricted, trembling tiny hands around my arm.

"My name is Matteo," the voice continued, unpolished but level. "We've come to bring you home. Your fathers are alive."

I gritted my teeth. Lies. All lies. We didn't, wouldn't believe them. "Back off," I growled, the harshness of my own voice even as fear churned in my belly. "We're not coming down."

A pause. And then another voice, gentler but once again this time, almost pleading. "We know you're scared. But we must take you somewhere safe. Your fathers are waiting."

Genesis looked at me, her large eyes crinkled in skepticism. "What if they are lying?" she breathed.

I did not answer. I did not appreciate being ambushed. We'd be discovered by the people we didn't want to be found by if we stayed. We were walking into a devil's hellfire if we left. My heart pounded at the impossible decision. Matteo breathed below. "You are capable kids. Smart kids. But you can't stay out in the woods forever. The men who arranged this are still loose."

Genesis swallowed hard, his voice all but inaudible. "Perhaps we should leave."

I hesitated. My instincts were screaming at me not to, but I hadn't even known that we had some other choice. I took a deep breath before nodding. "Okay."

Guards spread out, palms clasped together tightly, in readiness. I take the lead, hand encircling hers, to guide her down the groaning wooden stairs splintered into fragments. Stairs appeared to go on for eternity, the creaking always more audible to me. My gaze never strayed from the guards, looking for that familiar flash of deceit across their faces.

By the time we reached the ground, they brought us forward without any hesitation. Genesis and I walked hand in hand through the ravaged estate. Blood hung thick in the air, bodies and debris littering what once had been the beautiful Moretti mansion. A walk through the ruins of a bad dream, although we were quite awake.

And then a gasp.

"Genesis!"

Richard Moretti elbowed past the line of guards, his countenance white, eyes wide and bulging in a crazed relief, his face white. He elbowed past them and fell to his knees, hugging his daughter closely. "Oh, my precious child," he groaned, his voice cracking as he buried his head in her hair. His clingy arms were almost hysterical as if he feared she would drift away from his life if he ever released her.

Genesis wept against his chest, small arms wrapped around his neck. "Daddy."

My father stood next to me, rough eyes halting short as he stopped, cold gaze scanning me from head to foot. Relief sliced through his rough exterior as he moved closer. I flinched, shaking hands in front of me. And then he advanced-high stepping the distance between us in one beat, sweeping me off my feet into his arms. I hadn't even winced when he shoved me back against the front of his chest, the familiarity of his heartbeat sending me trembling back into awareness. He had his arms locked around me, immobile, as if attempting to shield me from all that had not yet happened. "You're safe now," he breathed into my hair. "You're safe."

Genesis stepped back from her father, grinning up at him, small face still aglow with a fiery smile even after what we'd just endured. "It was Caspian, Daddy," she declared, voice ringing with something very close to pride. "He picked me up and rescued me."

Richard blinked in shock. Slowly, his gaze moved to me, scrutinizing me for the first time. The quiet, shy boy he had grown up with, perhaps even wimpy, now stood before him as different.

A protector. A survivor.

My father sat across from me, already gazing at me, his expression unreadable. And then something shifted-something tiny, but irreproachable.

Pride.

For the first time in my life, I felt it. Not judgment. Not disappointment. Pride.

I was noticed; truly for the first time.

Then, my voice shattered the wholesome atmosphere. "Where's Mom?"

The words drew all the air from the room. There was a quiet vacuum that had consumed all sound, all movement, all breathing, and all that remained was unacceptable weight oppressing us. Richard and my father didn't move, their faces contorted into pain-beyond-pain masks.

"Where is my mother?" Genesis asked again, her voice small now, quivering with doubt, her brow deeply creased. She stared at each of the fathers, with a maddening hope that one would say something and calm her, something to break the deafening silence.

The two fathers said nothing.

Genesis looked about, gasping, fists tightening. She saw them before I did; I didn't understanf the terror I noticed the creeping into her features until I followed her line of sight to-

Black bags.

Lay open on the ground; filled with bloody, butchered body parts.

And then, as if summoned by some force beyond their will, two guards stepped out of the passage, their heavy boots heavy on the floor scattered with rubbish, their fresh loads of black bags carried under their arms, their shoulders bent under a load many times bigger than they were.

The guards stood in their way, their eyes staring, statuesque, their faces grim.

"What are they?" My father's voice was a growl, a rasp of gravel on metal, his words raw and husky. His stance was taut, weighed down by the tension that had only been held in check, waiting to unloose its explosive fury at any moment.

The guards faltered.

"Open them," Richard bade, his tone hard, unyielding-but trembling beside him, his hands quivering, a telling indication of the tempest raging just below his suave exterior.

A hesitation's pause. Then obedience by the guards.

The moment those zippers had been ripped open, I knew Genesis and I would never recover from today's event. Two severed heads dropped onto the gore-soaked floor with sickening finality, splatting with their hellish, wet thump.

Death-stricken, rock-hard eyes and the faces of our mothers holding their final screams frozen in time.

Genesis' scream ripped through the air, raw and loud, a gagged cry of shattered innocence. Her knees buckled beneath her and she fell, her fists pounded into her face like pushing horror away. Her fingers tore at her skin, berserk, trembling-trying to wake up, trying to flee from the nightmare fallen upon us.

I had my arms around her in two seconds, holding her tight as she rocked back and forth, her thin body distorted by sobs. I enveloped my arms tightly around her, wrapping them in a circle like it was my circle that would keep her together from in two. My chest tightened, my throat parched, but I never once looked away from my father.

He sat motionless, his own face carved of stone. No sorrow. No rage. Only the aching coldness that thought, its icy shivers crawling up my spine. Richard was not different, his own face of stone, lips compressed to an unyielding line. I glimpsed it, though-the small trembling of his hands, the jerk in his jaw muscle that pounded wildly.

And I knew.

This seemed to be nothing compared to the horrors they must've already seen.