Chapter 12 - Blood and Redemption
With a final, bone-crushing twist, Vincent wrenched the electronic detonator from Marco’s shattered hand and crushed the plastic casing beneath his heavy combat boot.
Marco let out a piercing shriek of agony, stumbling backward against the rusted safety cable at the edge of the gantry.
Below them, the churning black waters of the harbor crashed against the ship's reinforced hull eighty feet down.
Marco looked over the edge, the terrifying reality of his impending death finally shattering his arrogant, narcissistic delusion.
"Vincent...
please," Marco begged, holding up his uninjured hand, weeping like a cornered dog.
"We were brothers for ten years! I saved your life in Sicily!
You owe me your life!"
Vincent stood tall on the narrow catwalk, the ocean wind whipping his dark hair, the blood dripping from his shoulder staining his combat vest.
"My brother died four years ago when he tried to murder my wife and child," Vincent said, his voice carrying the weight of an executioner’s axe.
"You are just a ghost waiting for the grave."
Vincent delivered a devastating front kick to Marco’s chest, snapping the rusted safety cable behind him!
Marco screamed as his body fell backward into the empty night, tumbling eighty feet through the darkness before striking the jagged iron pylons of the harbor breakwater with a distant, sickening crash.
The dark waters swallowed the traitor whole, extinguishing his treachery beneath the Atlantic tide forever.
Vincent took a deep, ragged breath, clutching his bleeding shoulder as he looked down at the flight deck below.
The extraction Black Hawk was hovering safely, its spotlight locked onto the gantry platform.
Through the open bay door of the helicopter, Nora stood holding little Lily, both looking upward with tears of overwhelming relief.
Vincent climbed down the maintenance ladder, his boots hitting the flight deck just as the morning sun began to pierce the horizon in brilliant streaks of rose, gold, and amber.
Nora ran across the deck, throwing her arms around Vincent’s neck, burying her face into his chest as she sobbed tears of pure, unadulterated joy.
Lily wrapped her tiny arms around his leg, looking up at his bruised face with wide, shining eyes.
"You got him, Daddy!" Lily cheered, holding up her recovered plush bunny that Leo had cleaned with a sterile wipe.
"I told Mommy you were the strongest!"
Vincent dropped to one knee, wrapping both of his arms around Nora and Lily, holding them in an unbreakable, eternal circle of love.
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"I will never let you go again," Vincent whispered against their hair, weeping tears of a man who had finally found his soul.
"We are going home."
