Chapter 2 - Blind Faith
"What did you do to her eyes?" Dante roared, stepping past Elena and lunging toward Grace.
Elena’s wooden staff swept upward in a blinding blur. The strike caught Dante’s forearm with bone-shattering force, knocking the suppressed handgun out of his grasp. The weapon clattered against the stone floor, skidding beneath an iron wine rack. Dante spun, drawing a combat knife from his boot in a single fluid reflex, but Elena was already in guard, the tip of her staff inches from his throat.
"I gave her what your arrogance took away," Elena said, voice chillingly steady. "A veil from the Nightshade bloom. The effect lasts forty-eight hours. It silences the distraction of sight so the ears can map the room."
"She’s nine years old!" Dante bellowed, chest heaving as the tip of the oak pole hovered at his jugular. "She’s a child, not an assassin!"
"The cartel does not count years, Boss," Elena retorted. "The man who breached your perimeter wasn't a mercenary looking for cash. He was a Viper scout. He didn't come to kill your children. He came to inspect them. To verify if your bloodline carries the resonance."
Dante froze. His knife remained poised, but the fire in his veins turned to ice. "Resonance? That's myth. Propaganda from the old families."
"Then why did your daughter duck before I swung the staff?" Elena challenged.
Behind them, Grace stood motionless. Then, without a word, she spun the staff across her back, catching it in her left hand, and thrust the blunt tip backward without looking. The end of the wood slammed into the neck of a wooden cask behind her, precisely piercing a cork bung. Deep red wine spurted outward like a severed artery.
"Grace," Dante whispered, horrified.
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"Father," Grace spoke, her milky eyes pointed at the wall, yet her head tilted toward his boots. "Your left knee is injured. You're favoring your right heel. And there is someone standing outside the cellar window."
Before Dante could turn, the high arched window shattered inward, raining glass upon the barrels as three red laser dots painted the stone wall behind them.
