The duct is tight, claustrophobic, dragging at my shoulders as I crawl. Sweat pools at the base of my spine. My breaths come fast and shallow. Behind me, boots storm into the vault corridor.
“She’s in the ducts!” someone yells.
They know it’s me.
Where the fuck did I go wrong?
Uncle Boris. He must have suspected. Or… no. He would’ve confronted me himself. He always liked watching the fear rise until it flooded my brain and made me make mistakes.
If it wasn’t him…Then who?
I keep moving, twisting through the ductwork until I reach the vertical shaft leading up to the loading bay. I grip the ladder rungs and climb, my muscles burning. When I reach the top, I kick out the loose panel, slip through, and drop silently to the floor.
My motorcycle is parked where I left it, wedged behind stacked pallets. A cheap model, anonymous, bought from a man who didn’t care why I needed it. I yank the helmet over my head, sling my leg over the seat, and start the engine just as the loading bay door crashes open behind me.
“Victoria!” a guard shouts.
I don’t look back.
The bike roars out of the compound and into the night, the cold air slashing across my cheeks. The city unfurls ahead of me, glittering and merciless, a labyrinth I know how to vanish into.
I’ve survived worse than those following me. I’ve escaped from the man who caged me under the guise ofprotectionandlove.
But as I race toward the bridge leading out of the borough, a chill crawls over my spine.
Recognition.
Someone else triggered that alarm. Someone who wanted me to run. Someone who wanted to watch and see if I would make it out alive.
The truth settles into my bones with a quiet, inevitable certainty: That alarm wasn’t activated to protect my uncles hoard and stop me getting away.
There’s something else going on here. A bigger game I didn’t know I was a part of until now.
Leonid
I sit back in the leather chair in my office, the one that smells like expensive cigar smoke and the weak fear of men who think money makes them untouchable. Boris keeps his security feeds on a private network, separate from the compound’s standard system, because he is paranoid and sentimental about his own power. He still believes he owns what he owns because he earned it.
Yet hacking into the feed, both looped and live, was a piece of piss.
The camera angle is perfect. The corridor is lit in sterile whites, the floor polished to a dull shine, the vault door waiting at the end like a sealed mouth. The loop plays smooth and seamless. No flicker. No lag. A feed any of his idiot men would trust.
But I know what lives under the lie.
I glance at the second monitor, the one that shows the live feed that I pulled the day after the annual Masquerade party thrown by the Vasiliev’s. It shows the real corridor.
And there she is. Boris Andreev’s niece.
Victoria.
She moves like she was poured into the shadows and taught to breathe quietly. Black clothes. Black hair pinned tight. A small black backpack that is utilitarian, not designer. No jewelry. No vanity. A woman stripped down to pure intention.
Her hand touches the panel. It hesitates, as if it recognizes her blood.
Then it lets her in.
My mouth curves, slow.
Interesting.
