Geno Lucaino's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Geno set the sealed letter on the examination table and stepped back from it. The wax seal looked darker in the afternoon light, and he didn't want to know yet what the letter said or who had sent it. He wanted to think about the cat instead, or the inventory he needed to update, or anything else that felt ordinary. But the crash at the back door shattered that choice. Geno spun toward the sound and saw the storage room door swing open hard enough to crack against the wall. His half-brother stumbled through it, one hand pressed against his ribs, the other braced on the doorframe. Blood soaked through Kaine's shirt and ran down his arm in lines that dripped onto the floor. His face was pale and his breathing came in short gasps. "They took it," Kaine said. "The certification. I don't have it anymore." He looked past Geno toward the front windows. "And they're coming. Maybe two minutes behind me." Geno moved without thinking. He grabbed Kaine's arm and pulled him toward the small stone storage barn behind the clinic—a place patients never saw, where he kept feed and supplies and tools he didn't need often. The building had thick walls and a heavy door that locked from inside. Geno half-carried his brother across the yard, leaving a trail of red footprints in the dirt. He shoved Kaine through the barn door and followed him in, then pulled the door shut and dropped the iron bar across it. The space smelled like grain and old wood and now blood. Kaine slid down against the wall and closed his eyes. Geno crouched beside him and pressed his hands against the worst of the bleeding. "What did you do?" he asked. Kaine opened his eyes and looked at him. "I chose her," he said quietly. "And now we're both paying for it." Outside, Geno heard voices—low and deliberate, moving closer. Through a crack in the barn's shuttered window, he saw two figures in dark coats standing at the clinic's front gate. One of them had a large black wolf on a chain, and the animal's head was low and scanning. The man beside it held something that looked like official parchment. They weren't leaving. Geno felt his hand move toward his vest pocket, toward the watch, but he stopped himself. His grandmother had written about stillness, about love finding him when he stopped running. But this wasn't running. This was standing between his brother and the people who wanted to take him. Geno pulled his hand back and kept pressure on Kaine's wound. Whatever came next, he'd chosen it the moment he opened that door.