She didn’t respond. There was nothing left to say.
They moved through the villa silently, past staff who averted their eyes, through the main hall with its priceless art, out the front doors to where their car waited. No one stopped them. No one spoke to them.
The Byzantine icon pressed against Vivi’s hip as she slid into the passenger seat—the only thing they’d taken from Villa Pandora. A small, sacred thing that had survived centuries of war and theft and destruction. A witness to history repeating itself, over and over.
Dom started the engine, his hands still shaking slightly, his clothes still damp. “Now what?” he asked as they drove away from the villa, through the gates, onto the narrow coastal road.
Vivi stared out at the sea, gleaming like hammered silver in the late afternoon sun. “Now,” she said, “we find another way to save Sabin. Whatever it takes.”
The icon felt heavy against her hip as Villa Pandora disappeared in the rearview mirror. It had survived. They had survived. And somehow, they would make sure Sabin did too.
Even if she had no idea how.
eighteen
Dom setthe duffel bag on the scarred wooden floor and surveyed the room they’d rented above the taverna. The paint peeled in long strips from the walls like sunburned skin, revealing patches of older colors beneath—blue, then green, then something that might have been yellow once. A far cry from the pristine luxury of Villa Pandora. But luxury came with surveillance, with Stavros’s watchful eyes, with complications they couldn’t afford. This place, with its single sagging bed and bathroom door that didn’t quite close, offered the one thing they needed most: anonymity.
“Home sweet home,” he said, more to fill the silence than anything else.
Vivi didn’t respond. She moved to the window, pushing aside the thin curtain to check the view—a narrow street, the back of another building, no clear line of sight to their door. She’d been nearly silent during the drive here, her face set in lines of careful neutrality that told him exactly how hard she was working to hold herself together.
Dom pulled out the burner phone they’d picked up at a kiosk in town, paid for with cash from Vivi’s vault stash. He dialedfrom memory, turning to check the door’s flimsy lock one more time as he waited.
Davey answered on the second ring. “Who is this?”
The sound of his brother’s voice hit him harder than expected, a rush of relief so intense it made his throat tight. “Dom.”
A beat of silence, then: “Jesus Christ. Are you okay? Where the hell have you been? We’ve been tearing the city apart looking for you and Vivi.”
“I’m fine. We’re fine.” He glanced at Vivi, who had settled on the edge of the bed, her shoulders rigid. “We’re not in the city. We’re in Greece, on Naxos. We’re holed up in a taverna in a little village called Apollonas.”
“How the fuck did you get there?”
“Long story,” Dom said. “The short version is Praetorian grabbed us in New York and brought us here to crack a vault. We did it. Mostly. Things got complicated.”
“Why would they want you to crack a—” Davey stopped short and exhaled slowly like he was counting to ten. “Wait, is Sabin with you? Are they using Vivi as leverage to get him to cooperate?”
“Other way around.” He winced and looked at Vivi, who turned away from the window to watch him. “Sabin isn’t the only thief in the Cavalier family.”
“Or in WSW employment,” Davey concluded. “Fuck. How long have you been stealing with them?”
“I’m not.”
“But you were. Guessing you retired at the same time as Sabin.”
He didn’t reply, because what was there to say? Davey had guessed it in one. The silence on the other end of the line stretched long enough that he could hear the hum of the WSW operations center in the background.
“How long?” Davey asked finally.
“The stealing? Few years. Off and on.” He kept his voice level. “Before I came back to the company full-time.”
“Does Cade know?”
The question landed like a fist. He hated the way bad news now got routed through the question of what Cade had known, what Cade had covered, what Cade had used, what he could use against them now that he was the enemy.
“No. Nobody knew. That was the point. Part of the thrill.”
Another silence. Dom could picture his oldest brother pinching the bridge of his nose, the way he always did when the world refused to cooperate with his expectations.
