Chapter 1 - The False Back
Nadia’s breath was hot against his ear.
Her words were sharper than the gun pressed against her thigh.
“Julian isn’t working alone,” she whispered. “He sold you to the Volkov Bratva. They aren’t just here for the ledgers, Silas. They’re here to slaughter your entire bloodline. Your wife’s car was intercepted twenty minutes ago.”
Silas felt the air leave his lungs.
His wife.
His empire was one thing. His legacy was another. But his wife was the only innocent piece of his shattered soul.
He didn’t ask how Nadia knew. He didn't ask why his housekeeper was tapped into cartel communications. There was no time for interrogation. There was only survival.
Through the crack in the wardrobe, Silas watched Julian pace the floor of the study.
“Check the perimeter again,” Julian barked at the two armed men in the room. “Dante said he was on his way. He wouldn’t just vanish.”
One of the men, a heavily tattooed enforcer, sneered. “Maybe your old man smelled a rat. If he bolted, the Volkovs will skin you alive, kid.”
Julian drew a suppressed pistol and pressed it directly against the enforcer’s forehead.
“Don’t ever call me kid,” Julian said, his voice trembling with a terrifying, unearned arrogance. “Find him.”
As the men left the study, leaving Julian alone by the shattered vault, Nadia moved.
She didn’t push Silas forward toward the doors. Instead, she reached blindly behind them, feeling along the cedar paneling at the back of the wardrobe.
Silas heard a faint click.
The back wall of the wardrobe gave way, swinging open silently on oiled hinges.
A hidden servant’s corridor.
Silas had bought this estate ten years ago. He knew every inch of the blueprints. Or, he thought he did. He had no idea this passage existed.
Nadia grabbed his wrist and pulled him backward into the pitch-black tunnel, pulling the false wall shut just as Julian turned back toward the wardrobe.
They stood in the dark, breathing in the smell of dust and old masonry.
“How long have you known about this?” Silas mouthed in the dark.
“Since my second week,” Nadia whispered back, her voice completely devoid of the meekness she had worn for four years. She unholstered the compact pistol. “Stay behind me. The corridors lead to the wine cellar. But we have to cross the main hall to get to the extraction point.”
“Who are you?” Silas finally demanded, his voice a low, gravelly rasp.
May you like
Nadia looked back at him, her eyes catching a faint sliver of moonlight from a ventilation grate.
“I’m the woman who was supposed to put a bullet in your head tomorrow morning,” she said coldly. “But I refuse to let a traitorous brat and a Russian syndicate steal my kill. Now move.”
