All Chapters of The Cold Compromise : Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Chapter 82: The Scent of Justice The cold that clung to the mountains felt different now. It wasn’t the sharp, cutting cold of dawn anymore. It had settled into something duller, heavier—like the world itself was holding its breath. From the ridge where Luca and Ethan crouched, the entire St. Bernard Pass lay exposed beneath them, a thin white scar along the mountainside. Hours earlier, the place had been a battleground of panic, gunfire, and survival. Now it moved with the quiet precision of a federal operation. Black SUVs rolled in one after another, their tyres carving deliberate lines into the snow. Agents from Hayes’s clean unit stepped out with a kind of calm purpose that came only from knowing exactly what mission they’d been sent for. No shouting. No frantic movements. Just the soft clack of doors and the crunch of boots across frozen ground. Silvio Gatto was dragged out moments later, thrashing and spitting curses that vanished into the cold air. He didn’t look threatenin

Chapter 84: The Old Sawmill Luca and Ethan crawled from the icy creek bed, slick with black mud that clung to every fibre of their clothing. The cold had been brutal, searing their lungs, but the sludge offered a brief shield against Maxwell’s thermal sensors. Ethan’s ribs throbbed with each laboured breath, yet the cold had muted the pain just enough for him to move. Their bodies shook violently, teeth chattering, limbs trembling as if their muscles themselves had forgotten how to obey. “Keep moving,” Luca rasped, dragging Ethan toward the underbrush. “She’s ahead, setting a trap. Maxwell knows the Route Napoleon is our only corridor to the coast.” The old side track, barely visible beneath decades of overgrowth, led them to L’Ancienne Scierie—the Old Sawmill. The structure rose from the forest like a skeleton of decay, its wooden beams warped and grey, roofs collapsed in places, machinery rusting in silence. It was abandoned, forgotten, and the perfect place to disappear—or be c

Chapter 86: The Missing Page The revelation hit Luca like a physical blow: the Petrov ledger was incomplete. One final page, missing. A single page that held the names of the highest-ranking political figures—the ones Maxwell had been meticulously protecting. The implications rippled through their escape like a sudden avalanche. Everything they had been running for, every calculation, every mile covered, now took on a new, sharper meaning. Maxwell was no longer just a predator. She had become a necessity, a living barrier in their path. She needed Luca alive to validate her incomplete case. A lethal confrontation was no longer her interest; she had to preserve her prey to finish the story on her terms. “The final page,” Ethan murmured, voice thin and brittle with exhaustion. He traced the air with trembling fingers, as if trying to grasp the ghost of its existence. “It must contain the names of the highest-level players—the ones she’s protecting. If she forces you to sign a confes

Chapter 87: Crash Site The Renault 4x4 roared like a wounded beast, engine screaming in protest as Luca pressed it up the steep, rocky service road. Gravel spattered against the undercarriage, and the tyres clawed at loose stones, hurling them into the shadowed forest with every lurch. Each jolt sent a fresh wave of pain racing across Ethan’s ribs, and he gritted his teeth against it. The cold and exhaustion had left his body fragile, but adrenaline made him feel impossibly alive. They were climbing toward a fate that felt equal parts desperation and design. Luca’s mind was a razor-sharp machine, cutting through variables, calculating risks. There was no turning back. Maxwell’s helicopter had pinned the D22 below, the bridge over the ravine a deadly fulcrum. The only way past her was to throw a chaotic variable so extreme that her precision would be useless. Chaos was their shield. When the trees parted, the Renault burst onto the D22. Sunlight struck the windshield in blinding sh

Chapter 89: Principality Infiltration The air changed the moment they crossed into the Monaco Principality. It was subtle at first, like a shift in temperature, but soon it became painfully obvious. The quiet, almost exhausted charm of the French countryside faded behind them, replaced by the sharp, immaculate shine of wealth that had never known hunger or fear. The streets gleamed unnaturally under the soft coastal lights. Every sidewalk looked polished. Supercars glided by as though they floated. Even the shadows here seemed edited and controlled. Luca felt the difference immediately. Ethan felt it too. The Principality wasn’t just rich. It was sterile in the way only power could make a place sterile—safe for the elite, dangerous for outsiders. They ditched the Renault in a discreet parking garage outside the border, knowing it wouldn’t survive a single glance from Monaco’s ever-present surveillance systems. Then they continued on foot, slipping into side alleys that twisted li