The conservatory was a cage of light. Outside, the world continued to turn, indifferent to the fact that I was sitting across from a man who had engineered my destruction just to claim the pieces.
"My freedom?" I echoed, the word feeling bitter on my tongue. I picked up a silver knife and began to slice through a blood orange, the juice staining the white tablecloth. "You talk about freedom as if it's something you can gift me. You stole my past, Yuri. You can't 'give' me a future."
Yuri watched the movement of the knife, his expression unreadable. "I am giving you the only future where you aren't hunted. Once the Glass Ledger is decrypted, I will have the leverage to dismantle the UNI and the internal threats within my own family. You'll be a ghost they no longer need to chase."
"And what about Mikhail? Or Viktor?" I asked, looking up. "They won't just let us walk away once the vault is open. They'll want the key destroyed so no one else can use it."
"That is why Miller and the full security detail are on high alert," Yuri said, gesturing to the jagged silhouette of the cliffs outside. "We move at midnight. The physical terminal for the Ledger isn't here. It's located in a decommissioned bunker five miles up the coast."
He stood up, the movement fluid despite his injury. He walked around the table and stopped behind me, his hands resting on my shoulders. I froze, the heat of his palms seeping through the thin fabric of my sundress.
"I know you found the basement, Jessy," he whispered into my hair.
The knife slipped from my fingers, clattering against the plate. My heart missed a beat.
"I know you took the dossier," he continued, his voice like velvet over a blade. "I let you. I wanted you to see the truth before the end. I wanted you to know that while the Protocol was the reason I found you, it isn't the reason I'm keeping you."
He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of my ear, sending a traitorous shiver down my spine. "Don't use the burner phone, Jessy. If you call Viktor, you won't make it to the border. He has men stationed at the gate. He's waiting for you to betray me so he has an excuse to move in."
He pulled away, leaving me cold in the morning sun. "Be ready by eleven. Wear something you can move in. The red silk won't save you where we're going."
I watched him walk away, his silhouette sharp against the glass walls. I reached into my pocket and felt the cold plastic of the burner phone. Was he telling the truth about Viktor, or was this just another layer of the Protocol? Another way to ensure the "password" didn't delete itself?
I spent the rest of the day in a state of hyper-vigilance. I saw Miller talking in low tones to two guards I didn't recognize. I saw Elena's hands shaking as she turned down my bed. The air in the estate felt like it was being sucked out of the room, leaving a vacuum of pure, unfiltered tension.
By 11:00 PM, I had traded the sundress for black tactical gear I'd found in the back of the wardrobe. I felt like a shadow. I sat on the edge of the bed, the brass key in one hand and the burner phone in the other.
Suddenly, the lights flickered and died.
The silence that followed wasn't the heavy sleep of the Volkov estate. It was the silence of a predator holding its breath. Then, the first explosion rocked the foundation, the sound of shattered glass echoing from the foyer below.
The wolves weren't waiting for the vault anymore. They were coming for the key.