CHAPTER SEVEN: THE FORTRESS WARDEN(Sienna)

mountain wind hit my face like a slap the second my boots sank into the snow.

Radek didn't offer a greeting, and he certainly didn't offer a hand. He just jerked his jaw toward the rear of a massive armored transport idling inside the gate, its exhaust churning gray clouds into the whiteout.

"Keys on the roof. Step away," he ordered. His voice was flat, gravelly, and stripped of anything remotely human.

"I’m Dr. Vance," I said, my teeth wanting to chatter as the icy draft stung my raw skin. I forced myself to stand tall, burying the tremor in my chest. "Jaxson Cole’s board-appointed lead specialist."

"I know who you are," Radek cut in, not even looking me in the eye.

He gestured to two guards who immediately swarmed my small Skoda. They didn't just check it; they ripped into it. I watched in silent horror as they pulled out the trunk carpet, tossing my personal belongings into the slush, before running heavy magnetic scanners along the undercarriage.

"Here, you’re just an unverified security variable," Radek added coldly.

He shoved me toward a heated, stainless-steel screening bay built directly into the guardhouse. The sharp smell of bleach and warm metal hit me, but it did nothing to take the chill out of my bones.

For fifteen agonizing minutes, Radek personally oversaw a methodical, humiliating check. My medical coat was run through a portable X-ray unit. My physical kit was systematically gutted every scalpel, every roll of athletic tape, every sealed vial of anti-inflammatory solution unzipped, inspected, and logged onto a heavy digital clipboard.

When his rough, gloved hand closed around my personal tablet and encrypted backup phone, my heart plummeted. I took a sharp step forward.

"Those contain confidential patient files," I pleaded, my voice tight. "From my practice in Kraków. I need those to treat him."

Radek didn't hesitate. He tossed the phone into a lead-lined case and snapped a heavy padlock shut over the top with a sickening clack.

"No outside devices on estate grounds," he said, keying the lock tight. "You’ll use the internal network terminal provided in your quarters. Everything logged. Everything monitored."

He stepped closer, his broad frame blocking out the overhead fluorescent light and casting a long shadow over me. Up close, the faint, bitter smell of cheap tobacco and cold ozone clung to his coat. His steel-gray eyes scanned my face, digging for a crack, a hesitation, any subtle sign of deceit.

"Let me make something entirely clear to you, Doctor," Radek said, his voice dropping an octave into a low, absolute threat. "My job is to keep Jaxson Cole alive. Make one wrong move near his files, or try sending unauthorized updates back to your uncle in Kraków, and you won't leave these mountains."

He held out a black plastic keycard. I snatched it from his hand, refusing to break eye contact, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing me shrink back.

"I came here to do my job, Radek," I whispered, the lies tasting like ash on my tongue. "Nothing else."

He didn't answer. He simply swiped his own card against the heavy steel door at the back of the bay. It slid open with a deep, pneumatic hiss, releasing a fresh blast of freezing mountain air.

Beyond the threshold lay the inner compound, surrounded by the jagged, snow-capped peaks of Zakopane. And standing twenty yards away, framed by the swirling blizzard, was Jaxson.

My breath hitched in my throat.

He wasn't in uniform. He wore a long, dark coat pulled tight against the cold, leaning heavily on a carved wooden cane. His jaw was set in a hard, defensive line, his dark hair dusted with frost. But it was his eyes that stopped me dead in my tracks.

When his gaze locked onto mine, the air left my lungs entirely. There was no warmth in his stare. No relief. Only a razor-sharp, dangerous suspicion that mirrored Radek's.

Jaxson took a slow, deliberate, painful step toward me, the snow crunching loudly under his boot. He paused, his heavy gaze raking over my face, searching for something I desperately hoped he wouldn't find.

"You're late, Dr. Vance," Jaxson said, his deep voice carrying over the roar of the wind, laced with a bitter edge.

He stopped just a foot away, leaning over his cane, his shadow swallowing me whole. He reached out with a gloved hand, his fingers stopping mere inches from the collar of my shirt, right where my uncle's wire was taped against my collarbone.

"Let's see if you're actually here to save me," Jaxson murmured, his eyes narrowing into deadly slits, "or finish what you  started in Kraków."