Kidnapping the Assassin: The Mafia Don’s Fatal Mistake

The Velvet and the Kevlar

Chapter 63

*[Elara]*

I didn't run. Running implies a loss of control. I moved with the terrifying, mechanized fluidity of a steel trap snapping shut. 

The heavy biometric door of the subterranean armory slid open before I even reached it, recognizing my retinal scan. The air inside tasted distinctly of cold iron, gun oil, and dormant violence. 

I reached around to the nape of my neck and pulled the hidden zipper of my black velvet gown. The heavy, expensive fabric pooled around my bare feet on the polished concrete floor, leaving me in nothing but silence and silver scars. 

Ten years. I had spent a decade convincing myself that the armor belonged in a museum. I had convinced myself that I was finally allowed to be soft. 

I was an idiot. 

I grabbed a black, form-fitting combat suit from the metal rack and pulled it over my shoulders. The familiar, suffocating restriction of the Kevlar vest settled over my ribs. It felt like a burial shroud. 

The armory door hissed open behind me. 

I didn't turn around. I strapped the twin thigh-holsters to my legs and slid the bone-white ceramic daggers into their sheaths. 

"Leo told me," Cassian’s voice vibrated through the quiet room. 

He didn't ask if I was okay. He didn't offer empty assurances. I heard the heavy, metallic *clack-clack* of an assault rifle bolt being racked. 

I turned around. 

My husband had stripped off his tuxedo jacket. He wore a heavy tactical plate carrier directly over his tailored white dress shirt, the cuffs rolled up to expose his scarred forearms. The silver at his temples stood in stark contrast to the absolute, pitch-black murder burning in his eyes. 

He wasn't trying to stop me. He was gearing up to bleed with me. 

"They hit the surgical ward," I stated, my voice entirely devoid of inflection. The Viper had completely isolated the terrified sister, locking her in a dark box at the back of my mind. If I felt the panic right now, I would paralyze. "Nine said it was an extraction team. Highly coordinated."

"Leo is upstairs in the server room with Nine," Cassian said, tossing me a loaded submachine gun and three spare magazines. I caught them flawlessly, locking the magazine into the receiver. "They are hacking the city's traffic grid. If a rat scurries across Rome tonight, my son is going to track its heat signature."

"If they get her out of the country, Cassian..." My voice cracked. A single, treacherous fracture in the ice. "If they take her to Moscow"

Cassian crossed the armory in two massive strides. He grabbed my face, his calloused thumbs digging fiercely into my cheekbones. 

"They aren't taking her anywhere," he vowed, his breath ghosting over my lips. "I don't care if I have to shoot every plane out of the sky over Italy. We are bringing her home."

The intercom on the wall suddenly crackled to life. 

*"Mamma. Papa."* Leo’s voice was strained, thick with the frantic tapping of a keyboard in the background. *"I have them. They didn't take the highways. They used the underground maintenance tunnels connected to the hospital's sub-basement. Three heavily armored transport vans."*

"Where are they heading, Leo?" I demanded, pressing the comms receiver into my ear. 

*"Leonardo da Vinci International,"* Leo reported, his breath hitching. *"Private hangar sector four. Papa, air traffic control shows an unsanctioned heavy cargo jet idling on the tarmac. They’re bribing the tower to clear a runway for an emergency takeoff in twelve minutes."*

Twelve minutes. 

It was a thirty-minute drive to the airport through city traffic. 

"We can't drive," I looked at Cassian, the math instantly finalizing in my head. "We won't make it."

Cassian didn't flinch. He hit the intercom button. "Matteo! Prep the syndicate helicopter on the roof. We leave in sixty seconds."

We didn't take the stairs. We sprinted to the private elevator, riding it directly to the rooftop helipad. The night air whipped violently around us as the massive rotors of the Rossi chopper spun up to a deafening roar. 

We climbed into the back cabin, Matteo already at the controls. 

"Airfield! Sector four! Burn the engines, Matteo!" Cassian roared over the headset. 

The helicopter banked sickeningly hard, tearing across the Roman skyline. Below us, the ancient, glittering city blurred into streaks of yellow and white. I didn't look out the window. I stared at the metal floor plates, meticulously checking the safety mechanisms on my weapons over and over again. 

*Twelve minutes.* 

If that plane lifted its wheels off the tarmac, Lily was gone. She was a civilian. A surgeon who spent her days saving lives. She wouldn't survive the brutal, freezing cages of a Bratva interrogation black-site. 

"Two minutes out!" Matteo yelled through the headset. "Boss, the hangar doors are open! The vans are parked on the tarmac. They're loading a stretcher onto the cargo ramp of the jet!"

"Put us down directly between the vans and the plane," Cassian ordered, unbuckling his crash harness. He grabbed the heavy sliding door of the chopper, ready to throw it open. "We cut off their boarding path."

The helicopter descended violently, the stomach-dropping plunge rattling my teeth. 

Through the windshield, the massive silhouette of the idling cargo jet came into view, its turbines whining with a deafening, high-pitched scream. Floodlights illuminated the tarmac. 

Matteo flared the chopper, hovering ten feet above the concrete, creating a massive, blinding storm of rotor wash that forced the Russian mercenaries on the ground to shield their eyes. 

Cassian threw the side door open. 

We didn't wait for the skids to touch down. 

We dropped the ten feet, hitting the concrete rolling. I came up on one knee, my submachine gun instantly raised, the laser sight cutting through the prop-wash. 

"Hold your fire!" Cassian suddenly roared over the comms, throwing his arm out to physically block my barrel. 

I froze, my finger millimeters from compressing the trigger. 

The prop-wash cleared. The floodlights illuminated the mercenaries standing on the cargo ramp of the jet. 

They weren't wearing the heavy, fur-lined coats or tactical tracksuits of the Russian Bratva. 

They wore pristine, blood-red cloaks over dense carbon-fiber plating. 

Standing at the top of the ramp, holding a terrified, gagged Lily by her hair, was a massive figure wielding a humming, electrified blade. 

My blood turned completely to ash. 

It wasn't a Russian extraction team. Viktor hadn't just been a distraction; he had been a pawn manipulated by a much older, much darker enemy. 

The Praetorian Guard hadn't died in the Swiss Alps. 

And they had just dragged my sister straight back into hell.