Chapter 14: The Interrogation

Vespera

The smell came first. It wasn't the sterile bite of the upper floors or the clean scent of rain off the mountain. It was the smell of wet stone, old rust, and copper hanging heavy in the still air.

My collarbone throbbed with every step down the concrete staircase, a dull, fiery pulse beneath the fresh bandages, but I didn't slow down. Up in my suite, the broken glass from the balcony had been swept away, but the cold draft remained. So did the quiet. And in that quiet, I couldn't breathe.

At the end of the corridor, beneath the dim buzz of a single bare bulb, a heavy steel door stood half-open.

I stopped at the threshold, my hand resting against the cold iron frame to steady myself.

Inside, the room was tiny, windowless, and lit by a harsh overhead floodlight angled sharply down. Tied to a wooden chair in the center of the space was a man in a grease-stained driver's uniform. His lip was split, his head hanging low, his chest heaving in ragged, wet breaths.

Standing over him was Kasimir.

He had rolled his shirt sleeves up to his elbows, revealing the corded muscle and pale scars of his forearms. His knuckles were bruised, smeared with fresh crimson that wasn't his own. He didn't look like an executive. He didn't look like the man who had gently tucked my hair behind my ear in the dark hours of the morning.

He looked like an Executioner.

"I will ask you once more, Marcus," Kasimir said, his voice terrifyingly quiet, devoid of any human heat. He stepped closer, his shadow swallowing the slumping man completely. "Who paid you to alter the route out of the Bayerischer Hof?"

The driver spat a mouthful of red onto the concrete floor, his body trembling violently. "I told you... I don't know names! It was a maritime relay... out of the Hamburg docks. Lindner’s people! They said... they said if I left the south gate unlocked, my family’s debt in the harbor district would be wiped clean."

Kasimir reached down, his fingers gripping the man's hair and pulling his head back brutally until their eyes locked. "Soren Lindner doesn't leave his signatures on street-level drivers. Try again."

"It was Lindner!" the man sobbed, his voice cracking with pure terror. "I swear to God! The instructions came on an encrypted Lindner Maritime frequency! The green-and-gold emblem was on the drop-box in the dock master’s office! Check the logs!"

Kasimir’s hand tightened, his jaw setting into a hard, unforgiving line. He raised his right fist, his body tensing to strike again.

"Stop it!"

My voice cut through the damp room like a blade.

Kasimir froze. Slowly, he turned his head toward the doorway. The brutal, unhinged coldness in his mismatched eyes didn't vanish; it flickered, shifting as he looked at me standing there in my loose silk robe, my face pale against the harsh light.

"Get back upstairs, Vespera," he growled, his voice a low, warning rumble. "This is no place for you."

"You're going to kill him before he tells you the truth," I said, stepping fully into the room despite the sickening twist in my stomach. The sight of Kasimir’s bloody knuckles made my skin crawl, a sickening conflict tearing through my chest. This monster was the same man who had shielded my body with his own.

"He just gave me the name," Kasimir said coldly, releasing the driver's head so hard the man slumped forward against his restraints. "Soren Lindner. It matches the shipping routes we intercepted last week."

"It's too clean," I said, my eyes scanning the trembling driver, watching the way his chest hitched, the way his hands twitched against the ropes.

"What are you talking about?" Kasimir asked, stepping between me and the chair, his broad frame blocking my view as if trying to protect me from the very violence he was inflicting.

"Look at him, Kasimir," I whispered, pointing a trembling finger past his shoulder. "He said the drop-box was in the Hamburg dock master’s office, stamped with the Lindner Maritime emblem."

"Yes. Soren’s primary hub."

"Soren Lindner retired that emblem three years ago," I said, my voice growing steady as the detail clicked in my mind a piece of corporate history buried deep in my father's old shipping ledgers. "When Lindner Maritime restructured after his father's death, they rebranded everything in blue and silver. The green-and-gold emblem was scrapped. The only person who still holds legal access to the old archived stationery and retired dock master offices..."

I looked up, locking my eyes with Kasimir’s dark, shadowed gaze.

is your grandmother."

Kasimir went entirely still. The ambient hum of the overhead light seemed to grow deafening in the heavy silence that followed. He turned slowly, looking back down at the weeping driver, the reality of my words sinking into his chest like a lead weight.

The hit hadn't come from an outside enemy. The setup hadn't been Soren Lindner’s revenge. It had been planted by Greta Adler to point us directly into a war with Hamburg while she cleared out the trust reserves.

Before Kasimir could speak, Jonas burst through the heavy steel door, his face pale and slick with sweat.

"Herr Adler," Jonas gasped, his hand resting on his sidearm. "We have a problem at the front gate."

Kasimir didn't break his gaze from mine, but his tone sharpened instantly. "What is it?"

"It’s not an attack," Jonas whispered, his eyes darting nervously toward me. "It’s a federal convoy. The Bavarian State Police just breached the outer perimeter with a warrant signed by the High Council."

Jonas swallowed hard, his voice barely audible over the hum of the light.

"They're here to arrest you for the murder of Vespera's father."