THE JUDAS LINEAGE

The sky was laden with clouds that promised rain but cried none, an illusion even the skies preserved their breath in anticipation of knowing what was to follow. There was a heavy silence as Luca grasped the steering wheel of the matte-black vehicle, his eyes falling on the ravaged map on the dashboard. The motor hummed happily as it swept down the dirty road to the outskirts of town and through the collapsing factory on the border. Bianca rode next to him, relaxed and taut, her bright eyes fixed on the road in front of them. "Close," Luca growled, letting the car idle as the skeletal outline of the warehouse district came into sight on the horizon through the deepening dark. "She mentioned building seventeen. Some abandoned logistics center that collapsed years back." Bianca looked over at the GPS and nodded. "This is a building no one has lived in for ten years," she said, her voice low but unyielding. "Too quiet." Finally, something that made sense. Luca guided the car off the road and into half-hidden gully behind dense cover bushes. He killed the motor and turned to Bianca. "Walk the rest of it. Quietly." They stepped out, boots crunching dry leaves. Bianca shoved into her jacket, pulling out a Glock with suppressed finish. Luca uncocked his SIG Sauer, chamber checked, before slipping it into his thigh. "Ready?" he asked. Bianca nodded once more. "Always." They crept like phantoms among the wreckage, stooping and into the shelter of worn crates and broken machinery. Luca crawled to the top of a hill that looked down on seventeen and searched around for a pair of binoculars. She scanned with them. There she was. Adraine. She stood feet away from the side entrance of the building, laughing—laughing—with a group of gun-wielding men. Her attitude was easy, her smile huge, her arms flinging free as she gesticulated. Her eyes had no fear in them, her voice no desperation in its tone. Luca's gut clenched. "That doesn't sound like a woman whose brother is being held for ransom," Bianca whispered, crouching beside him. "No," Luca growled. "It doesn't." The memory of the phone call last night lingered in his mind. The voice of Adraine had trembled with terror, begging for rescue. "They have Raphael, Luca. Please… I believe they will kill him!" Luca did not want to know the reality to be announced before he went in to remove his little brother. But now, seeing Adraine smile on the enemy's face, bitter reality slapped him. "She was lying," he snarled. "She was staking us out." Bianca's body went rigid. "We must go. Immediately." They were walking away, their footsteps reluctant and quiet, but already they had been denied by fate. Luca's phone rang—a cold, icicle ring—brusquely in the strained quiet. He struggled to silence it, but in vain. "Over there!" someone yelled. There was shooting. Bullets snapped into the wall behind them, shredding bark and concrete. Luca caught Bianca's elbow and sprinted, weaving around stacked shipping crates and curved steel beams. "This way!" he yelled. Bianca dropped bombs, silently and methodically, killing one of the shooters who'd climbed the scaffolding. "They have at least six men that I can see!" "South exit, circle!" Luca yelled, leaping back from a lick of flame that scorched the cuff of his jacket. They forced ahead through wreckage, the clanging boots and yelled commands behind them. The station was a maze, and they knew they had seconds, maybe less, to continue their luck. "This was a rescue," Bianca growled, and they gathered around two scaly hulls. "Now it's a fucking betrayal," Luca growled. His heart racing not with fear, but with searing pain of betrayal. "She sold us out." There was a flash grenade that blew behind them somewhere, lighting the sky like a second sun for a moment. Luca wrapped his arms around Bianca, keeping her close as the blast ran through the metal awnings. As the flash died, they were running once more, panting air and battered legs. Luca's head was not filled with bullet but Adraine—his own flesh and blood, his cousin. The girl he had battled school bullies with as a child, the girl who had cried on his shoulder when her father had passed away. How could she? They at last smashed through a ripped fence into a briar thicket of thorns. The limbs concealed them for an instant, and Luca waved Bianca to proceed slowly. They crouched behind the bush and waited. The gunfire receded into the distance. "I believe we shook them," Bianca panted. "For the moment," Luca growled. "We cannot return to the car. They will locate it." 'We'll have to loop around, take the river path," she suggested. 'I know the terrain. We'll be covered by forest." Luca nodded, but his mind was still spinning. He looked back toward the warehouse, barely visible now through the trees. 'I don't get it. Why would she do this? What's the gain? She's family." Bianca confronted him, her face set in stubbornness. "Family is always the first to turn against. Or maybe she was offered something. Or maybe she reached her first before someone else. Blackmail. Money. Power. Something." "I thought she was being truthful," he growled, half under his breath more than Bianca. "She was so terrified on the phone. She begged." "She was acting," Bianca told him. "That was an act. A very good one, but an act nonetheless." Luca leaned against a rock, fingers in his face. "If she lied to us about Raphael, then—" He didn't finish the statement. Bianca set her hand on his shoulder. "Then we don't sleep until we locate him. The real place. We dig, and we burn those who are responsible." Luca's fists were tight. "I swear on my blood, I'll make her pay for this." They lay concealed in the thick bush for nearly an hour, until the noise of boot and hounds was heard no more. Then they emerged and rode on, along the river bank, the wood gliding past them like an old friend. Thus thinking to himself, as he rode, was Luca's way. Did Raphael live? Did Adraine betray him? And above all—the why? The justifications would never be simple. But Luca would never waver at a betrayal. Not when they came from his own kin. "We're returning to the city," Bianca announced as they topped a muddy hill. "Send word to Enzo. If anyone in the underworld finds out someone with ears and eyes to report it, it's him. Perhaps we can follow the men with guns. Follow the money." "Yup," Luca said, his tone colder than ice. "And we'll be tracking Adraine. I want every move she makes monitored. If she breathes funny, I want to know." Bianca gave him a sidelong look. "When we see her again. what are you going to do?" Luca's expression grew hard as rock. "She betrayed our name. Betrayed our blood. If she's turned, then she's not family." They drew out onto a dirt road past midnight. On the horizon, city limit smoldered with the weak light of a piece of smoldering coal. The most difficult part wasn't the ambush. It wasn't even killing Raphael's life. It was the taste of betrayal—a pain no bullet would ever match. Luca cast a glance at Bianca. "We get Raphael. No matter how many we gotta fight through." Bianca nodded. "And Adraine?" Luca's eyes had turned cold now, free of the warmth that normally resided there. "She made her choice." They walked in silence with the stinging lash of night wind on their backs like ghostly whispers. Behind them stood the warehouse complex looming in silence under moonlight—an empty mausoleum of smoke, lies, and betrayal.