Chapter 2 - THE BLOODLINE PROTOCOL
The paper trembled in my hands under the sudden flash of red emergency lights.
Sirens wailed inside the walls, a deep, rhythmic pulse that made my teeth ache. Outside, semi-automatic gunfire chewed through the courtyard masonry. Glass shattered on the lower level, followed by the harsh, metallic bark of suppressed rifles.
"Selene. Put it down. We move now," Stellan ordered. His voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the chaos like a straight razor.
I didn't move. My eyes scanned the second page.
It wasn't a standard hospital birth record. It was a genetic succession analysis issued by the Torrence Trust Registry.
*SUBJECT: Fern Marrow.*
*PATERNAL MATCH: Stellan Adrian Cross (99.98%).*
*HEIR STATUS: Sole Living Direct Lineage to the Cross-Torrence Syndicate.*
*ESTIMATED ASSET VALUE UPON MAJORITY: $4.2 Billion.*
My knees went hollow. Stellan wasn't just a brutal Chicago crime lord. He was the head of an empire, and my daughter—the baby who spent six weeks in an incubator with underdeveloped lungs, the baby I washed in a plastic basin because the water in my apartment was rusty—was the sole inheritor of a blood-soaked fortune.
"Why is this dated three days after she was born?" I asked, my voice shaking uncontrollably. "I never gave anyone permission to take her blood."
"Because if my uncle’s people had run the test first, they would have thrown her into the Chicago River before she took her first breath," Stellan said, stepping between me and the floor-to-ceiling windows. He pulled a matte-black Glock from his waistband, checked the chamber in one fluid motion, and racked it. "I forged her neonatal death record in Cook County. I gave you a false address under the Marrow name. I kept you hidden in plain sight."
"You let me starve, Stellan!" I screamed over the wail of the alarms. Fern shrieked, clutching my collar with tiny, white-knuckled fists. "I couldn't afford her nebulizer! I walked three miles in December because the bus pass expired!"
"Because the moment money moved into your account from any untraceable wire, their financial algorithms would have flagged you!" His eyes flashed with a feral, agonized fury. "Every dollar you earned here was clean. Every shift you worked kept you under my thermal grid. I had three snipers on your rooftop every night while you slept, Selene. You think you survived that neighborhood on luck?"
Before I could answer, the security chief, Vance, shouted, "Breach on the grand staircase! Heavy plates! They're using flashbangs!"
A blinding white concussion blasted through the hallway. The mahogany doors of the office splintered inward with a deafening crack.
Wood shards sprayed the air. Stellan moved with inhuman speed, throwing his entire body over me and Fern. He dragged us down behind the reinforced steel barrier of his oak desk just as high-caliber rounds tore through the leather chairs where I had sat ten minutes earlier.
Fern was screaming so hard she choked, her lips turning a faint, terrifying shade of lavender.
"Her lungs," I gasped, tears burning my eyes. "Stellan, she can't handle the smoke. Her medicine—"
"Vance, suppress the landing!" Stellan roared, raising his weapon over the edge of the desk.
He fired four controlled double-taps. Outside the door, two men in unmarked tactical armor collapsed with wet thuds against the marble floor. Stellan grabbed my arm, yanking me to my feet. His grip was iron, but his touch never bruised.
"Under the desk. The floor panel. Crawl!"
I dropped to my hands and knees, cradling Fern tightly against my ribs. A three-foot-square section of parquet flooring had swung downward into a dark, illuminated shaft. A steel service ladder dropped twelve feet into an underground maintenance tunnel.
"Down, Selene! Now!"
I scrambled through the opening, my boots hitting the rungs. I slid the last six feet, landing hard on the concrete floor below, my back taking the brunt of the impact to protect Fern. Above me, Stellan fired three more rounds into the corridor, kicked an iron lock into place, and dropped down beside us.
The heavy steel trapdoor slammed shut above our heads, followed immediately by the dull thud of explosive breaching charges detonating against the upper floor.
The underground tunnel was cold, smelling of damp limestone and industrial oil. Stellan reached out, his hand trembling as he brushed Fern’s cheek. The blood on his knuckles was drying, dark and crusty.
Fern whimpered, reached out, and grabbed his thumb.
Stellan stopped breathing for two full seconds. His gray eyes softened into something fractured and profoundly human.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, so quietly I barely caught it over the distant hum of the mansion's ventilation fans. "I'm so sorry, Selene."
"Who is doing this, Stellan?" I demanded, holding my baby tight. "Who is trying to kill my child?"
"Not kill her," Stellan said, pulling a radio from his tactical belt. "They don't want to kill her. Under the Torrence Trust bylaws, if I die, my estate reverts to the syndicate board—unless I have a recognized heir. If they take Fern alive, they appoint a guardian. They control the board. They control the empire."
He looked down the long, dark concrete tunnel.
"And the man leading them is my half-brother, Julian. He's the one who paid the girl to drug your champagne two years ago."
My blood turned to ice. "What?"
Stellan's radio crackled to life with static. A woman's voice came through, calm, polite, and sickeningly familiar.
"Mr. Cross? Don't bother taking the river tunnel. We’ve already sealed the dock."
I froze. It was Mrs. Thornbury.
The sweet, grandmotherly woman who gave me extra sandwiches to take home after my shifts.
Stellan’s jaw locked. He brought the radio to his lips. "Thornbury."
May you like
"She's a lovely baby, Stellan," the old woman said through the speaker, her voice dripping with ice. "Julian is waiting at the exit. Bring her up, or we flood the tunnel with gas."
***
