Chapter 3 - The Silver Blackbird
Up close, the illusion was even more terrifyingly absolute. Damien looked from Sophie’s eyelashes to the other girl’s brow. There was a tiny, faint freckle just above the left temple—the exact identical marking Sophie bore beneath her chestnut curls. His hands, capable of snapping bone without hesitation, were trembling so violently he had to ball them into fists to keep the girls from noticing.
“Easy,” Damien murmured, forcing the gravel out of his throat, trying to summon the softest, gentlest cadence he possessed. He uncoiled one fist and placed a steady, reassuring palm against Sophie’s back, keeping her grounded, while he tilted his head toward the girl in red. “It’s alright, sweetheart. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
The girl pulled her hand back from Sophie’s cheek, clutching her stuffed rabbit tightly against her sternum once more. Her eyes darted to Damien’s broad shoulders, taking in the jagged ink visible above his open collar, the sharp cut of his jaw, and the intense, suffocating focus of his gaze. She did not cry or scream; she merely watched him with the wary, guarded intelligence of an alley cat evaluating a stray hound.
“Sweetheart…” Damien began again, his voice dropping into a low, controlled register that masked the violent tremor in his chest. “What’s your name?”
The little girl shifted her weight. As she adjusted the stuffed rabbit in her small arms, the worn cotton neckline of her dark-red dress pulled slightly to the left, exposing the delicate hollow of her collarbone.
A sharp gleam of silver flashed in the bright Chicago sunlight.
Damien’s breath caught in his throat with the force of a physical blow. Suspended from a thin, tarnished silver chain was a pendant no larger than a thumbnail: a stylized silhouette of a blackbird in mid-flight, crafted from solid silver, with a microscopic chip of black onyx set into the eye.
The world tilted violently on its axis.
Damien had designed that pendant himself five years ago. He had commissioned a master jeweler on the Magnificent Mile to cast two identical pieces from molten silver, each engraved on the reverse with a single initial and a private promise, meant to welcome his twin daughters into the world. But the night they were born at St. Jude’s Memorial, the hospital wing had caught fire in an orchestrated attack by the Marcone family. In the ensuing chaos, smoke, and blood, the doctors had handed him Sophie, wrapped in a blanket, while delivering the catastrophic verdict that her twin sister had succumbed to smoke inhalation before the crib could be reached.
He had buried an empty white casket in the Moretti family mausoleum, burying his grief beneath mountains of syndicate vengeance. He had placed the first silver blackbird into Sophie’s keepsake box at home.
May you like
The second blackbird was resting against the chest of the child sitting before him.
Damien went completely, deathly pale. His heart slammed against his ribs like a sledgehammer hitting stone. He reached out with an index finger, his knuckles raw and white, and gently nudged the edge of the pendant upward. His thumb grazed the cool metal on the reverse side. His calloused skin felt the unmistakable, microscopic groove of an engraved letter: R.
