Chapter 8 - The Scent of Gunsmoke and Jasmine
The gravel path crunched once more.
Damian’s hand closed instantly over the opened pocket watch and the ledger paper, his left arm tightening around Mia’s back, shielding her completely against his muscular torso. His right hand dropped beneath his armpit, his palm finding the checkered grip of his Kimber .45.
"It’s me, Boss," Luca’s voice called out from behind the rose hedge, breathless and low.
Luca stepped through the opening. His suit coat was stained with dark red clay along the right shoulder, his tie loosened, his face pale and slick with sweat.
"What is it?" Damian barked softly.
"We found the driver," Luca said, stepping closer, keeping his voice to a harsh whisper. "A quarter-mile south of the water culvert. In the drainage ditch beneath the culvert pipe."
Damian’s eyes narrowed into slits of polished slate. "Alive?"
"Barely," Luca replied, wiping a streak of road dirt from his brow. "It’s Matteo. Old Matteo from the docks."
Damian’s heart tightened. Matteo had been his father's most trusted personal driver for thirty years—a man who had vanished the night of the Skyway ambush, assumed dead or turned by the Marcone syndicate.
"He took two rounds through the lung, Boss," Luca continued, his voice heavy with grim finality. "He crawled half a mile through the briars to get the car close enough to the wall. The medics are with him now in the security garage, but he won't last twenty minutes. He wouldn't let them touch him until he knew the package reached you."
Damian looked down at Mia.
Her cheek was still pressed against his chest, her small lips parted, breathing soft, warm puffs of air against his collarbone. She had survived a car chase. She had survived an ambush on the highway. She had been pushed through a muddy culvert by an old dying soldier who had spent four years hiding her in the mountains of upstate New York.
"Take her," Damian said.
The words were agonizing to speak.
Damian slowly began to lift Mia from his lap, intending to transfer her small, sleeping frame into Luca’s arms.
The moment Damian’s chest pulled two inches away from her face, Mia reacted.
Her small hands shot out, her tiny fingers locking with surprising, ferocious strength into the black silk of his shirt. Her brow furrowed, a tiny whimper of absolute distress escaping her throat, her head tossing from side to side in search of the warmth she had just claimed.
"No..." she cried softly in her sleep, her voice cracking. "No... stay..."
Luca stepped back, raising both hands in immediate surrender. "Boss... she won't let go of you."
Damian looked at the tiny fingers twisted into his clothes. He looked at the scraped knees, the dirt-smudged cheeks, the bright red dress that had crossed a war zone to reach his stone bench.
He stopped trying to hand her away.
Slowly, deliberately, Damian adjusted his grip. He slipped his large, heavily tattooed right arm beneath her knees, supporting her legs, while his left arm curled securely around her back, pressing her small head back into the hollow of his shoulder.
Mia instantly settled. Her whimper died away, replaced by another deep, contented sigh, her face burying itself once more into the black ink of the eagle.
Damian stood up from the volcanic bench.
May you like
At six-foot-two, his broad frame towered over the manicured hedges, his muscular shoulders silhouetted against the dying gold of the afternoon sun. He carried the sleeping child with an effortless, protective grace that looked entirely foreign on a man who had spent his life dealing in death.
"Lead the way, Luca," Damian commanded. "Let's go talk to Matteo."
