All Chapters of Tangled In Velvet : Chapter 21 - Chapter 25

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

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