Youngest Heir

Ashes to Ashes

They had been waiting nine long months of suspense. Not knowing anything more than the youngest was on its way. They were waiting for that first cry, the following laughter, the small hands and the large eyes.

They were not expecting the panic. The sudden darkness, or rather dimness due to it being 4pm in summer, as the lights went out, the machines, the monitors. This in itself was not what went wrong, there were other complications already causing uproar when the blackout struck.

Marco Giovanni held back his fear for the sale of his five sons as he was cast out of the hospital room while midwives and obstetricians and doctors and nurses bustled and ordered. And the door swung closed before them.

The boys could hear when there mother stopped screaming. When the doctors stopped ordering. When the metal stopped clanging the feet stopped pounding.

Their father, towering over them but unstable as he held five children around his legs, never took his eyes from the door. Even as it became silent. The silence that echos down white chambers and fills a room with a fear to breathe, to move, to break that sacred quiet. The unnatural quiet.

A quiet that stretched for too long.

Until Marco had to break it.

"Lorenzo." The first muttering echoed, too loud, seemingly spreading throughout the waiting room and down the corridors. The oldest boy looked away from the door. "Look after your brothers."

It was unfair to ask this 10 year old boy to do such a thing. To be left alone with four children too scared to cry. But Marco ushered the second oldest, Dante, to stop clutching his pants in those small hands as he hid behind his father. He pealed Xavier and Xander's arms away from his legs where the twins hugged so tightly. And he passed Matteo, only 4, to Lorenzo. All while watching the door.

"Turn away."

Marco never looked back to see that Lorenzo, turning his siblings' faces away from the door with his free hand, still watched.

Marco never heard the boy as his breath turned to lead and tears dropped onto Matteo's head. He had collapsed in the open door, hands shaking as one rose to his mouth, the other to clutch at his broken heart, teary vision blurring white walls and red floors. It wasn't the bodies on the ground that bothered him, the twisted corpses and slit throats were rather tame to his eyes. It was the bed that made him wail. Gasping, desperate, heavy in the returning silence. She lay on there, stomach torn from the emergency c-section and eyes blankly staring at the open side door and the bloody bootprints.

Carmen. He stubbled up and over to the bed. Her belly swollen, legs sprawled and arms weakly clinging to the mattress. Her face was pale, warm and sweaty, smelling of blood and salty tears. Her hair frazzled and lips chapped. Her throat slit.

Marco screamed for help, desperately pressed the call button even though the machines' lights were all dark. Even though there was no pulse. Even though that silence had lasted too long. Even though, the rest of his children had turned their eyes towards the carnage and begun to cry out.

Lorenzo crumpled to his knees, crying Matteo pressed into his chest as he stared at the floor, quiet tears and unseeing eyes as he shook with sobs. Dante ran to his mother, shaking her arm with such desperate vigour but not even his father noticed. Xander ran down the hall, tripping over his untied laces as he searched for help, or escape. Xavier just stood there and watched his family fall apart. It was supposed to get bigger. Stronger.

Later, they would notice that the baby was stolen. And no one was left alive to learn anything about the child at all.