"We've tripled security. No one gets within a mile without us knowing."
"That's what I thought about Nexus."
Igor has no response to that.
I press my forehead against the cold glass. Close my eyes.
Seven days. And we're no closer to finding him than we were the night of the attack.
Vittoria
I like Dmitri's room.
That's the thought that keeps circling through my mind as I sit cross-legged on his bed, laptop balanced on my thighs.
The walls are a deep gray, almost black in the low light. Floor-to-ceiling windows line one side, overlooking the estate grounds. Heavy curtains, the kind that block out everything, are pulled back now, letting in the afternoon sun.
The bed is massive. King-sized doesn't do it justice. Dark wood frame, crisp white sheets. Four pillows on my side. Six on his. All perfectly arranged until I messed them up.
There's a fireplace across from the bed. Real stone. Not decorative. I watched him light it last night when I couldn't stop shaking.
His desk sits near the windows. Organized chaos. Papers stacked precisely. Three monitors. A gun.
But it's the small things that get me.
The book on his nightstand. Russian literature. Pages worn like he's read it a hundred times.
The photograph on the dresser. Him and his siblings. Younger.
The watch he takes off every night. Sets it in the same spot. His father's watch.
These details make the room feel less like a fortress and more like a home.
I shift against the pillows. My laptop screen glows with data that refuses to make sense.
Seven days since a man who calls himself Smoke took me from Nexus. Tied me to a chair.
And did nothing.
That's what unsettles me most.
I pull up another database. Cross-reference the tattoo Aleksander found with known gang symbols. Nothing matches exactly. The smoke-like design is close to a few organizations, but not identical.
The problem is there's too much information and not enough at the same time.
I have security footage from Nexus. Four of the men we searched about came back with military backgrounds. Honorable discharges. No criminal records. Nothing that explains why they'd sign up for a suicide mission.
The other? Ghosts. No records. No identities. Like they never existed.
I have the encrypted messages Igor recovered from one of the phones. Self-deleting. Routed through so many proxies I can't trace the source. The language is clinical. Professional. "Target location. Time. Objective. Extraction point."
No names. No personal details. Nothing human.
I have the warehouse codes. Dmitri's right—only three people should have access. Him. Igor. Aleksander. I've checkedthe system six times now. No breach. No unauthorized entry. No evidence anyone hacked in.
Which means someone got the codes another way.
But how?
