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Chapter 23 – The Poker Chip
Last Updated:
2025-07-16 01:33:59
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Tangled In Velvet Chapter 25 – Vivienne’s Voice
Lisbon, 3:04 AM.Rain tapped glass like fingers with nowhere else to go.Penelope stood in the hallway outside Vivienne’s room, thumb hovering over the encrypted playback unit.One file.No timestamp.Just a title embedded in metadata: Subject 7B – Vocal Loop Initiation.She knocked softly.Vivienne opened the door before the second tap.She hadn’t been sleeping.She wore a faded sweater. Bare feet. Eyes that looked like they’d been somewhere else for hours.Penelope didn’t ask if she was ready.She just held out the device.And said, “It’s you. From then on. I don’t know where this was taken. Somewhere before Manhattan. Maybe inside Stage 7.”Vivienne took it gently.Sat on the edge of her bed.She pressed PLAY.At first, it was just breathing.Then her own voice only not quite hers.“Do you understand?”“Yes.”“What is your name?”“Subject 7B.”“What do you desire?”“To serve.”“What must you forget?”“Everything.”Penelope’s throat went dry.She reached out “You don’t have to ”Viv
Tangled In Velvet Chapter 24 – Stage 7
The jet landed just after dusk on a private strip outside Marseille with no lights, no greeting. Just the scrape of wheels across forgotten asphalt.Penelope slipped down the steps first, coat caught in the wind, eyes already scanning for anything that looked like surveillance.“Coordinates line up with the coast,” she muttered, half to herself, half to Dorian. “Old wine estate, burned out in the ‘80s. Public records show it was condemned.”“Velvet’s first satellite,” Dorian replied, adjusting the signal scrambler on his wrist. “Prototype club. Never opened officially.”Isolde didn’t speak.She stood at the top of the stairs, watching the moon throw silver across the hillside.Something about this place pulled at her chest like a wire strung tight.They drove in silence through winding cliffs and rust-colored trees, past shuttered wineries and broken villas. The road narrowed, then split. The car stopped at the edge of a gravel path covered in ash and moss.Beyond it: a structure sunk
Tangled In Velvet Chapter 23 – The Poker Chip
The villa had the hush of somewhere that had heard things it couldn’t forget.The gates creaked open under soft tires.Isolde didn’t wait for the car to fully stop.She was out and moving before the engine finished humming down.Penelope met them at the door.No wit. No raised eyebrows. Just a clipboard clutched too tightly, her usual deflective charm nowhere in sight.“You’re early,” she said.“You’re worried,” Dorian answered.Penelope stepped back. “Come inside.”The air in the villa felt different, cleaned, but not safe. Like something had passed through.Vivienne wasn’t in the kitchen.Or the study.“She’s asleep,” Penelope said. “Again.”“She’s been tired,” Isolde offered.“Not like this.” Penelope’s jaw tensed. “Three nights in a row. Sleepwalking.”Dorian frowned. “How far?”“Only a few feet each time. Same motion. She sits up, stands still, walks to the window, whispers something.”Isolde’s pulse quickened. “You recorded it?”Penelope nodded. “But that’s not the part that wor
Tangled In Velvet Chapter 22 – Trap at Dock 14
The cold hit like a slap, no wind, just pressure.A kind of silence that tasted like gunmetal and unfinished prayers.Dorian stepped off the skiff first. Isolde followed, boots crunching against hoarfrost that coated the ruined pier.Dock 14 lay ahead a rusted grid of cranes, hollow hangars, and the crumbling bones of Soviet ambition. Somewhere beneath all of it: the coordinates.“Who builds a rendezvous in a place like this?” she asked, adjusting the scarf tight against her throat.“No one is trying to be found,” Dorian said.He held a thermal map black and blue, one red blot pulsing faintly from the warehouse ahead.The dock was abandoned.No motion.No power.Only the distant sound of ice groaning beneath weight that had long since forgotten what heat felt like.They walked in silence.Halfway to the main structure, a crow skittered across a rusted crane.Too still.Too staged.Isolde scanned the rooftops.“No cameras.”“No guards,” Dorian added.They reached the bay doors flaked r
Tangled In Velvet Chapter 21 – The Deal with Dorian
The table between them was covered in laminated overlays terrain scans, atmospheric surveillance, decoy routes. One central map flickered under Dorian’s portable light: a no-man’s land between Finland and Russia, a long-decommissioned weather station circled in fading red ink.“This is where she wants us,” he said.Isolde didn’t sit. She leaned over the table, palms flat, eyes scanning every line of cold land and white wilderness.“No surveillance net?”“Not stable. Two satellites in low orbit, but the area’s coded blackout for NATO ops.”“And no exfil guarantees?”He looked up at her. “No one comes out of there clean. If she’s alive… it means she’s been running longer than any of us.”“Then I’m going.”Dorian nodded once. Not arguing. Just calculating.“Then you’re not going alone.”She met his eyes.Steady. Unsparing.“I don’t need protection.”He didn’t flinch. “I’m not offering that.”“What are you offering?”He tapped the edge of the map three pinpoints, arranged in a triangle ar
Tangled In Velvet Chapter 20 – Ashes in the Rain
The port near Lisbon was quiet at dawn.No cranes moving. No calls. No flags.Just water glinting like glass, and gulls crying overhead.The ship eased against the concrete, its hull whispering across the tide.Isolde stood near the exit ramp, coat zipped high, hair damp from sea mist. Vivienne stood beside her, half-shadowed by a linen scarf someone had handed her three hours earlier.They didn’t look back at the vessel.They didn’t need to.They stepped onto the dock without fanfare. No one is waiting. No press.Just a man with a clipboard, eyes bloodshot, coat military-grey.“Two vans,” he said in Portuguese. “No names.”He didn’t ask who they were.He didn’t care.They were driven through side streets and elevated service roads, tires squeaking through turns where no cameras sat. The city hadn’t woken yet. But that didn’t mean no one was watching.Vivienne tapped the window.A blur overhead.Isolde saw it too a drone.No markings. No path.Just a whir of engineered wings gliding o
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