Chapter 6 - CALLING IN THE BLOOD
Inside Silas Thorne’s cabin, the air was warm, rich with the smell of wood-tar, stewed venison, and wet dog fur.
The cabin was a fortress built of massive, unpeeled white pine logs that had stood against North Country winters for sixty years. High on the walls hung antique snowshoes, iron beaver traps, and gun racks holding a half-dozen heavy hunting rifles.
For twenty-four hours, Luca slept like a dead man on Silas’s horsehair sofa near the massive fieldstone hearth.
Ramona stayed beside him, cleaning his wounds with Silas’s home-brewed grain alcohol, feeding him warm broth when he stirred, and resting her head against his good hip when exhaustion finally overtook her. The two puppies had taken over a corner of the hearth, sleeping contentedly on an old bear-skin rug, their bellies full of boiled venison scraps.
On the third morning, as the sun broke bright and cold over the river canyon, Luca woke up.
He sat up slowly, without the agony that had shadowed his movements for the past three days. His strength was returning, the deep, resilient iron of his body finally reclaiming his muscles.
Silas sat at the oak kitchen table, cleaning a double-barreled shotgun with an oiled rag. He looked up at Luca with a cold, shrewd glare.
"You're Luca Falco," Silas stated, not as a question, but as a fact. "The mob boss from up north."
"I am," Luca said, his voice deep and steady as he swung his legs off the sofa.
"Julian Falco’s men burned Ramona’s cabin three days ago," Silas said, slamming the shotgun breech shut with a sharp CLACK. "They’ve got twenty mercenaries sitting at the Frost Valley crossroads, paying fifty dollars a head to any local poacher who can bring them her snowmobile."
Luca’s face went instantly dark, his eyes turning into two black coals of lethal intent. He looked at Ramona, who was sitting near the window, quietly mending her coat with a heavy needle and thread.
"He tried to take her house," Luca whispered, his fists clenching until his knuckles turned white. "He tried to murder a widow who had nothing to do with our war."
"She’s got plenty to do with it now," Silas grunted. "She saved your hide, boy. Which means Julian won't let her walk away alive even if you hand yourself over on a silver platter."
Luca stood up. He was taller than Silas, broad and dark against the warm wood of the cabin walls. "Do you have a radio, old man?"
Silas squinted. "I got an old shortwave military transceiver in the back room. Uses a ninety-foot wire antenna stretched between two pine trees. I use it to listen to the Canadian weather bands."
"Show me," Luca ordered.
Five minutes later, Luca was sitting in Silas’s back workroom in front of a heavy, gray steel radio unit from the 1970s. The vacuum tubes inside glowed a warm, amber orange, humming with high-frequency static.
Luca adjusted the heavy brass dials with practiced precision, stepping through frequencies until he hit a private, encrypted military band reserved for the border logistics operations of the Falco syndicate.
He picked up the heavy bakelite microphone, pressed the side bar, and spoke three words in rapid, fluent French:
"Rouge Sept. Le Faucon est en vie." (Red Seven. The Falcon is alive.)
Silence filled the small room, broken only by the hiss of static.
Then, through the speaker, a voice broke through—rough, trembling with pure, unadulterated shock and emotion:
"Boss?! Mon Dieu... Boss, is that you?! Julian told the Council you were at the bottom of Black Spruce!"
"Julian lies," Luca said, his voice cutting through the static like a steel blade. "Listen to me, Henri. How many of our old guard are still loyal in Montreal?"
"All of them!" the man named Henri shouted back over the radio. "The old captains refuse to work with the cartel! Julian has locked down the main estate in Saint-Jérôme with thirty hired mercenaries, but the border crews are waiting for a sign!"
"Then give them their sign," Luca ordered, leaning into the microphone, his eyes blazing with absolute authority. "Assemble thirty men. Full gear. Broad-track snowmobiles and heavy armor. I am at Miller’s Ford on the Black River, four miles north of Frost Valley."
"We can be there in three hours, Boss!"
"Bring everything we have, Henri," Luca commanded softly. "Because today we purge the North Line."
He released the microphone bar, the static returning to its low, steady hiss.
Luca turned around. Ramona was standing in the doorway, leaning against the wooden frame, her hand resting on the lever of her carbine. She had heard everything.
"They're coming here?" she asked quietly.
"In three hours," Luca said, stepping toward her. He reached out, his hand gently grasping her waist, pulling her close against his chest. "By nightfall, Julian will be dead or in chains. And this war will be over."
Ramona looked up into his dark, fierce face—a face that now carried the full weight of the syndicate king he had been born to be.
"And what happens to you after nightfall, Luca?" she asked, her voice carrying a rare, fragile vulnerability. "Do you go back to Montreal? Back to your marble estate and your iron sights?"
Luca stared down at her, his fingers tightening around her waist, his chest rising in a slow, deep breath.
"I thought that was what I wanted," Luca murmured, his mouth hovering just an inch from hers. "I thought my life was in Montreal. But then I went under the ice... and a woman with a game sled pulled me back into the world."
He kissed her—a slow, deep, possessive promise that tasted of woodsmoke and absolute devotion.
"I'm coming back here, Ramona," he whispered against her lips. "I'm going to build you a new house. A bigger house. Right where the old one stood."
Before Ramona could answer, a high, sharp whistle tore through the air outside the cabin—followed instantly by the heavy, explosive thump of a mortar shell striking the high snowdrift twenty yards from the porch.
BOOM!
The entire cabin shook, snow cascading down the stone chimney, shattering the glass in the front windows.
Julian hadn't waited for the three hours. His scouts had triangulated the shortwave radio transmission the second Luca went on the air.
"INCOMING!" Silas roared from the front room, racking his shotgun. "THEY'RE AT THE TREE LINE!"
Luca grabbed Ramona, throwing his body over hers as a hail of heavy automatic gunfire began to shred the pine walls of the cabin.
"They brought the whole crew!" Ramona yelled over the deafening roar of bullet impacts.
May you like
Luca pulled his 12-gauge from the table, his dark eyes burning with absolute, lethal fire.
"Then let's give them a welcome they'll never forget," Luca roared, holding Ramona’s hand tight as they prepared for the Battle of Frost Valley.
