MasukChapter 110: The Lake HouseThe road narrowed the closer they got to the lake, gravel giving way to packed dirt threaded between trees so dense the morning light barely made it through. Mikhail sat forward in his seat, watching the treeline with the concentration of someone trying to match a memory to a landscape."Slower," he said. "It should be close now."Victor eased off the gas. The lake appeared between the trees first, pewter-colored under the low sun, and then the house low, stone, deliberately unremarkable, the kind of place built to be driven past without a second look.No cars in the drive. No lights.Victor felt something in his chest tighten before his mind had finished cataloguing why. Empty was better than occupied by the wrong people. Empty was also, possibly, too late.He parked well back from the house, out of sight of the windows, and looked at Mikhail. "Stay in the car.""I want to help.""You have helped. You got us here." Victor's voice was gentler than he meant
Chapter 109: The First LeadThey regrouped at a hotel outside the town closest to the wall, a small enough place that Damien had booked out half the rooms under names that weren't theirs. Nobody had slept. Nobody looked like they were going to.Damien set his laptop up on the desk and called Hale, who answered on the second ring, still in New York, still Damien could tell from the light behind him hadn't left whatever room he'd taken this call from since the first one at two in the morning."You look worse than I feel," Hale said, "which is saying something.""Talk to me," Damien said, dropping into the chair. Liora sat on the arm of it, her hand resting on his shoulder, the two of them having found, sometime over the last several hours, a way to occupy the same space without needing to say much.On the screen, Hale angled his laptop so they could see the second monitor behind him, three windows of data stacked across it. "Volkov has three confirmed holdings outside the property you
Chapter 108: The WallVictor reached the wall a little after four in the morning, Mikhail directing him from the passenger seat with the quiet, exact confidence of a boy who had walked this road once already tonight and wasn't about to get it wrong twice."There," Mikhail said. "That's the gate. She said, she'd be here.Victor pulled the car onto the shoulder and killed the engine. The road was empty. No Elena. No sign anyone had been standing anywhere at all, just a long stretch of pale gravel running along a stone wall too high to see over, and a silence that had the particular quality of silence after something has already happened.He got out slowly. Mikhail followed, quicker, already moving toward the spot he remembered, and Victor let him, watching the boy crouch down at the base of the wall like he was checking his own memory against the ground."This is where she was," Mikhail said. "I'm sure of it."Victor crouched beside him. The gravel here was disturbed scuffed in a patter
Chapter 107: Victor and MikhailVictor let the boy finish the orange juice before he asked anything else. his heart beat had never been this fast, anxiety and fear warring for dominance in him, but he had to stay calm to be able to get the answers to his questions."Better?" Victor asked.Mikhail nodded. He'd stopped swaying in the chair, some of the color back in his face. Up close, in better light, Victor could see the boy's feature his eyes were green the color of moss and hair a curly brown, he looked well taken care of, except for his worn out cloth he was ok."Tell me about her," Victor said. "Not the message. Her. How is she."Mikhail considered the question with more care than most adults gave it. "She's strong," he said finally. "She doesn't cry where people can see. She taught me English from books she wasn't supposed to have. She taught me how to watch a room and know who is dangerous and who is only loud." He paused. "She draws. All the time. Buildings. She doesn't know s
Chapter 106: DamienDamien was awake when Hale called, which was not unusual. nowadays everything seems to rob him of sleep.He was in the study. Liora was asleep upstairs, or had been the last time he checked, curled on her side with one hand under the pillow the way she always slept, like she was braced to grab something at short notice. He'd stood in the doorway for longer than necessary before coming down here. He did that most nights now. Looked at her before he let himself stop looking at anything.The phone lit up. Hale.Hale didn't call at two in the morning unless something had moved."Say it," Damien said, no greeting, because Hale didn't need one and neither of them had ever wasted time on the parts of a conversation that weren't information."She called me." Hale's voice was doing something Damien had rarely heard it do, which was shake, very slightly, under the professional flatness. "Elena. Four minutes ago, my personal line. She said her name. She confirmed things only
Chapter 105: The MessageVictor hadn't slept. He rarely did anymore, not really, just closed his eyes in a chair for a few hours and called it rest.So when the knock came, he was already standing before he registered deciding to stand.Two AM. Nobody knocked on a hotel door at two AM with good news.He crossed the room, checked the peephole out of habit more than caution, and stopped.A boy.Small, dark-haired, maybe ten years old, standing alone in the hallway with his hands shoved in his pockets and his shoulders pulled up around his ears like he was bracing for the door not to open.Victor opened it.The boy looked up at him and didn't flinch, which told Victor something before a single word passed between them. Children who had been taught to fear men didn't hold eye contact like that. This one had been taught something else."Are you Victor Lang?" The accent was faint, French underneath something else. Russian, maybe, worn down."Yes."The boy pulled a folded piece of paper from
Chapter 8: ExposureThe lotion bottle had about three weeks left.Liora thought as she stood in front of the bathroom mirror at 8AM, pressing the pump slowly, watching the pale cream curl into her palm. Lavender and strawberry. She'd been using it for a while. had Bought it from a small vendor at a
Chapter 7: Withdrawal Damien Voss was exhausted. Not the dull kind of exhaustion coffee could fix. Not the manageable sort that came after long meetings and longer nights. This was sharper. More dangerous. The kind that sat behind his eyes and made every sound in the room feel like pressure ag
The elevator doors opened and Liora stepped out into a place that didn't feel like somewhere people actually lived. The place screamed luxury from top to bottomThe floor-to-ceiling windows. Marble that reflected the city back at itself. The kind of silence that costs money to maintain. She had a s
Chapter 1The Maybach smelled like usual, something that only the elite of the elite will recognize, Wealth.Damien Voss CEO of Voss industries, had his head against the window with his eyes closed, his hair looked like he had run his hand through it multiple times and his face said it all, dark ci







