Kidnapping the Assassin: The Mafia Don’s Fatal Mistake

The King of the Sky

Chapter 66

*[Cassian]*

The moment the cargo jet's wheels had left the Roman tarmac, the High Table assumed they had won. They believed gravity and altitude were impenetrable shields against a man bound to the earth. 

They forgot that the Rossi Syndicate owned the shadows, and shadows can fly. 

"Matteo!" I had roared the second the heavy blast doors of the cargo jet sealed Elara inside. "The experimental dropships! Now!" 

We didn't take commercial jets. We used the syndicate’s hypersonic stealth transports—vehicles designed for deep-insertion cartel extractions. We intercepted the High Table’s lumbering cargo plane over the Alps, flying completely dark, matching their airspeed exactly. Ten of my best men, equipped with magnetic locking boots and grappling tethers, dropped directly onto the fuselage at thirty thousand feet. 

We breached the hull. We tore the door off its hinges. 

And I stepped into the belly of the beast. 

The depressurized cabin was a screaming, freezing vortex of wind and chaos, but my eyes instantly found her. 

Elara was clinging to a heavy cargo strap near the wall, her dark combat suit untouched by the blood pooling on the floor. She had already dismantled her captors. Two Praetorian guards lay dead. Arthur was writhing on the metal grating, clutching the stump of his severed arm. 

She looked up at me, the shock on her face giving way to a profound, desperate relief. 

I didn't run to her immediately. I had to secure the room. 

The cockpit door violently banged open. Three more Praetorian guards poured into the cargo hold, their electrified blades drawn, fighting the violent depressurization to advance. 

"Kill them!" I roared over the wind to the nine syndicate soldiers standing behind me. 

My men opened fire. The heavy-caliber armor-piercing rounds chewed through the Praetorians' carbon-fiber plating, shredding them before they could even close half the distance. 

I didn't wait for the bodies to hit the floor. I deactivated my magnetic boots and sprinted across the tilted, shaking cargo hold. 

I reached Elara, wrapping my left arm securely around her waist, anchoring her to my own magnetic boots so the wind wouldn't suck her out of the open ramp. 

"I told you I wasn't letting you go back into the dark," I shouted over the roar of the turbines, pressing my forehead against hers. 

"You brought a stealth ship to a hijacking," she yelled back, a tear cutting through the soot on her cheek, a fierce, beautiful smile breaking across her face. "You're insane."

"I am completely out of my mind," I agreed, kissing her fiercely, the cold air biting at our lips. 

A ragged, agonizing cough broke us apart. 

Arthur had managed to drag himself toward the center of the hold, using his remaining hand to brace his bleeding body. His ruined face was pale, his one good eye staring at us with absolute, unadulterated hatred. 

"You think you've won, Rossi?" Arthur wheezed, blood spitting from his lips. "The High Table is everywhere. The hydra has a thousand heads. You cut one off, two more grow in its place."

I stepped away from Elara, walking slowly toward the architect of my family's suffering. 

I didn't raise my rifle. I looked down at the pathetic, broken man bleeding on the metal grating. 

"Then I will burn the hydra to the ground, Arthur," I stated, my voice dropping into a terrifying, absolute calm that carried clearly over the screaming wind. "I will hunt your new Commission. I will hunt your sleepers. I will spend the rest of my life tearing this world apart until there isn't a single shadow left for you to hide in."

Arthur laughed, a weak, gurgling sound. "You're too late. The pilots are dead. They depressurized the cabin and locked the controls on a nosedive. We are all going to die here."

I glanced toward the open cockpit. The two pilots were slumped over the yokes, cyanide capsules crushed between their teeth. Arthur had ordered a suicide dive the moment we breached the hull. 

The massive cargo jet violently pitched forward, entering a catastrophic, unrecoverable vertical dive toward the frozen peaks of the Alps. The G-force threw Arthur hard against the bulkhead. 

"He's right!" Matteo shouted from the open ramp, clinging to his tether. "Boss, the plane is going down! We have sixty seconds to extract!" 

I looked at Arthur. I could shoot him. I could drag him back to Rome and make him suffer for the terror he inflicted on my son and my sister. 

But looking at the terrified, pathetic man clutching his stump, I realized something fundamental. 

He wasn't a god. He was just a ghost. And ghosts don't deserve the dignity of an execution. 

"Let him fall," Elara said softly, stepping up beside me. She didn't look at Arthur with hatred. She looked at him with profound, absolute apathy. "He belongs in the ruins."

I nodded. 

I wrapped my arm securely around Elara’s waist, locking her to my harness. I looked at Arthur one last time. 

"Enjoy the flight," I murmured. 

I turned my back on the Weaver. Elara and I ran toward the open cargo ramp, the violent angle of the diving plane making every step a battle against gravity. 

We reached the edge. The freezing night sky rushed up to meet us, the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Alps rapidly expanding in our vision. 

"Jump!" I ordered my men. 

The nine syndicate soldiers launched themselves off the ramp, their stealth tethers zipping them violently upward toward the hovering Rossi dropship hiding in the clouds above. 

I looked at Elara, tightening my grip on her waist. 

"Ready?" I asked. 

"With you?" she smiled, her gray eyes entirely fearless. "Always."

We stepped off the edge of the falling plane. 

The wind hit us like a concrete wall. We plummeted through the freezing air for two seconds of absolute, terrifying freefall. 

Then, the heavy winch on my harness engaged. 

We were violently yanked upward, soaring away from the doomed cargo jet. 

Below us, Arthur’s plane disappeared into the thick cloud cover. Five seconds later, a massive, silent bloom of orange fire illuminated the clouds from beneath as the jet slammed into the side of the mountain. 

We were hauled into the warm, pressurized belly of the Rossi stealth transport. 

The heavy side doors slammed shut, sealing out the wind and the noise. 

We collapsed onto the metal floor, panting heavily. Matteo was beside us instantly, unclipping our harnesses, his face pale with adrenaline. 

"We got you, Boss," Matteo breathed, helping me sit up. 

I didn't answer him. I pulled Elara into my lap, wrapping my arms entirely around her, burying my face in the crook of her neck. She clung to me, her fingers tangling in the straps of my tactical vest, holding on with the desperate, profound relief of a woman who had just walked out of her own grave. 

"Lily," Elara gasped against my chest, the terrifying reality of the night crashing back down. "Is she..."

"She's alive," I promised instantly, pressing a fierce kiss to her temple. "She woke up before we breached the jet. The surgeons said the damage was entirely repaired. Leo is sitting right next to her bed."

Elara let out a ragged, shattering sob of pure relief. She sagged against me, the last of her tension finally bleeding out into the quiet hum of the stealth ship. 

I looked out the small porthole window at the dark sky rushing past. 

The war wasn't entirely over. The High Table remnants were still out there. We had a global empire to secure and an army of ghosts to command. 

But as I held my wife, listening to the steady, unbreakable rhythm of her heart, I knew one absolute truth. 

Let the monsters come. Let the shadows rise. 

The King and Queen of Rome were finally, permanently, going to rule the dark.