Chapter 33 The Blood We Carry.

Chapter 33 The Blood We Carry.
Aria’s POV

The tide licked at my boots, cold and insistent, as if the sea itself wanted to wash the soot from my skin. I sat on the damp sand with the journal closed in my lap, its leather cover warm from the dying sun.
Enzo’s hand was still in mine, salt crusting the places where our fingers intertwined.
Behind us, the sirens rose and fell like a wounded animal. Palermo was in lockdown, the quarry explosion already a legend on every radio frequency.
Lucia knelt a few paces away, tearing strips from the hem of her shirt to bind Marco’s arm tighter. His head lolled against a driftwood log, lips moving soundlessly.
Fever had painted him the color of old parchment. “Hold still, idiota,” Lucia muttered, threading a needle with fishing line from the emergency kit. “You’re not dying on my watch.”
Marco’s eyes fluttered. “Jennie…” The name slipped out like a prayer. “Tell Jennie… I tried.” Lucia froze, needle hovering midair. Her jaw tightened. “You’ll tell her yourself, Marco.
Stop talking like a martyr.” I shifted closer, sand grinding between my teeth. “Jennie’s your sister?” She already suspected who Jennie was. Lucia didn’t look up.
Lucia tied off the stitch with a yank, causing Marco to hiss. “She’s in Catania. Or was. Luca has been maneuvering her with the precision of a chess piece.
Enzo’s grip tightened on my hand. “Leverage?” “Insurance,” Lucia corrected.
“Marco crossed Luca once. Jennie also follows to pay interest.” Marco’s head rolled toward me. “Promise… held.” I swallowed the salt in my throat. “I remember. You’ll keep it. We’ll find her.” We now have two people to rescue: that's my mom and Marco's sister.
The journal felt heavier suddenly, as if it had absorbed every promise we’d made in blood and fire. I flipped it open again, tracing the forged birth certificate with a fingernail named Aria Moretti.
The name looked alien, like a dress I’d never tried on. Enzo watched me. “You want the story or the silence?” “Story,” I said. “I’ve had enough silence to last three lifetimes.”
He exhaled through his nose, staring at the horizon where the last sliver of sun bled into the water.
“That's if it’s true; we’re half-blood, different mothers and same bad luck.” Enzo said.
“My father told me pieces when I was fifteen. He said your mother was the only woman he ever lost sleep over. She was pregnant when she left Palermo.
He thought she’d come back. She didn’t.” I waited. The waves filled the gaps. “She landed in Messina,” he continued. “Married a De Luca, who's your father, distant and paper only.
The family controlled the registries in half of Sicily. One forged document and you became Aria De Luca, heir to a name that meant nothing. Luca’s relatives saw the opening years later.
Started grooming you like a prize mare.” I laughed, a sharp and ugly sound. “So I’ve been a ghost in my own life.” “Worse,” Enzo said. “A puppet with the wrong strings.”
Lucia snapped the medical kit shut. “Philosophy later and the Coast Guard’s sweeping the shoreline. Drones at two hundred feet. We’re lit up like Christmas if we move.”
I looked up. Sure enough, searchlights stabbed across the water and white beams carved the dusk. A news chopper thumped overhead, its belly camera blinking red.
My phone was dead, but I could imagine the alerts: MAJOR EXPLOSION NEAR PALERMO QUARRY. SUSPECTED MAFIA ACTIVITY. REWARD FOR INFORMATION.
Marco stirred again, weaker. “Jennie… cathedral…” Lucia’s head snapped toward him. “What cathedral?” But he was out, chest rising shallow and fast.
I opened the journal to a random page and a folded sheet slipped free, landing face-up in the sand. I snatched it before the tide could claim it. GPS coordinates.
Handwritten in my mother’s elegant script. "38.0812° N, 13.2936° E. If the empire falls, burn the throne. If the children live, break the crown... Mum." Beneath the church in Monreale, there is another vault.
Enzo read over my shoulder. “She always did like riddles.” Lucia was already on her feet, scanning the beach. Monreale is twenty kilometers inland.
We’re on foot with a half-dead man and every cop in Sicily looking for us.” “Fishing boat,” I said, nodding toward a weathered skiff half-buried in dunes fifty meters down.
“Tide’s coming in. We drift south, cut inland at Cefalù. No roads and no cameras.” Enzo stood, wincing as his leg buckled. “And Jennie?” “We find her after,” Lucia said.
“Or we use her. Luca’s sentimental about family. It’s his blind spot.” I folded the note and tucked it inside the journal, then inside my jacket, next to my heart, where the lies had lived too long.
“Survive first,” I said. “Labels later.” Enzo’s eyes met mine, stormy and exhausted. “If it’s true, we’re half-siblings,” he said, testing the word like a blade.
“Doesn’t change what we...” “It changes everything,” I cut in. My voice cracked. “I’ve had your mouth on mine, Enzo. Your hands on my... like your...” I couldn’t finish.
The thought of blood shared in more ways than one made my stomach lurch. He stepped closer, sand crunching. “Then we burn that bridge when we’re safe. Not before.”
Lucia slung Marco’s good arm over her shoulder. “Less incest and more movement.” We dragged the skiff into the shallows. The wood was splintered but seaworthy.
Enzo took the oars; Lucia steadied Marco in the bow. I sat amidships with the journal in my lap and the shotgun across my knees. The engine coughed to life on the third pull, a miracle.
We slipped into the current, hugging the dark coastline where the searchlights couldn’t reach. Lucia fiddled with a cracked handheld radio, twisting the dial until a voice crackled through: “…Luca De Luca confirmed alive. Repeat, the wolf is in the wind.
Rafe is mobilizing assets. Priority target: Aria Moretti strikes De Luca. Alive preferred. Bounty of two million euros. Journal is the secondary objective…”
The voice cut to static. Enzo’s jaw clenched. “They think we still have the drive.” “They want the journal more,” I said quietly. “It’s the last copy.” We drifted in silence and the only sounds were the slap of waves and Marco’s ragged breathing.
The plan crystallized between us without words: 1. Monreale before dawn. 2. Decode whatever my mother left in that church vault. 3. Find Jennie... leverage or redemption, depending on the day. 4. No phones and no cards, just ghosts only.
The helicopter came without warning. Its spotlight sliced across the water, pinning us like insects. Enzo killed the engine. We froze, four shadows in a wooden coffin.
The beam swept over us and paused, then moved on, searching farther out to sea. I exhaled shakily, "That's too soon." A red dot appeared on the journal in my lap.
Not on Enzo and not on the boat, but on the book itself. Someone wanted the truth alive… more than they wanted us dead. The laser danced, steady and patient, as the helicopter banked back toward us.