33. Victoria
VICTORIA
Icannot sit still.
The suite has gone quiet.
Too quiet.
More than twenty-four hours have passed since we arrived at the estate, yet my body has not understood that the running has stopped.
Elsie sleeps curled on the sofa beneath a cream blanket; one small fist tucked under her cheek.
Olivia sits near the fireplace with her knees drawn to her chest, her eyes open, her stare empty.
Mrs. Abena has been taken back to the clinic wing, and every few minutes, I catch myself listening for footsteps that never come.
Lorenzo is stable.
Alive.
That is all anyone tells me.
No one says whether he is awake. No one tells me how much blood he lost before Dr. Luciano pulled him back from the place men do not always return from.
I should be grateful for the silence. For the locked doors. For the guards outside. For the fact that my daughter is breathing close enough for me to hear.
Instead, my skin crawls.
I rise from the sofa.
Olivia looks at me at once. “Where are you going?”
“Out.”
Her face tightens. “Victoria.”
“I need air.”
“You need to stay here.”
My gaze moves to Elsie before I answer.
Her little mouth is parted in sleep. She has survived too much in one day. Too much for a child. Too much for anyone.
“I won’t be long.”
Olivia stands and comes closer, her voice dropping. “You cannot wander around this house right now. Not after what happened.”
“I know.”
“Then sit down.”
I want to.
God help me, I want to sink into the chair beside Elsie and pretend the rest of the world has ended.
But my hands will not stop trembling.
Not from fear.
From being useless.
I have spent too many hours waiting for men to decide where I may stand, what I may know, who I may see. Waiting has become another locked room, and I am tired of breathing inside it.
“I need to do something,” I say.
Olivia’s eyes narrow. “What?”
I do not answer right away.
The lab comes to me before I choose it.
Glass. Heat. Numbers. Colour shifting under light. Measurable things. Things that tell the truth when handled correctly.
My throat tightens.
Once, I chose chemistry because I wanted to teach it.
I wanted to stand in front of a class and show students how easily the body could be damaged by what it craved.
I wanted to speak about addiction with facts, not judgement.
I wanted to make the danger plain enough that even one person might turn away before ruin began.
Now my hands help make the very thing I once wanted to warn people against.
I do not sit with that thought.
That guilt is old. Pressing on it does not heal anything.
“I need my head clear,” I say.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
She lets out a breath without humour. “And leaving this room will clear it?”
I look toward the door.
“I’ll be right back, Liv.”
That silences her.
For a moment, only the fire speaks.
Then Olivia looks toward Elsie. “What if she wakes?”
“Tell her I went to check the work.”
“Do not say that word to me right now.”
“What word?”
“Work.” Her mouth tightens. “You always say that when you are about to do the worst possible thing.”
Despite everything, a weak smile comes and fades. “Then tell her I went to clear my head.”
Olivia does not smile back.
She steps closer and catches my wrist. Her fingers are cold.
“Vick.”
I look down at her hand.
Then at her face.
“I’ll come back.”
She releases me slowly.
The guards outside the suite straighten when I open the door. One of them asks where I am going. I tell him.
He does not move until he speaks into the intercom at his shoulder.
I wait.
The house seems alive around me.
A low hum behind the walls. Distant footsteps. Doors closing far away. Men speaking in low voices, then falling silent when they see me.
The guard listens, then nods once.
“You’re cleared.”
Cleared.
Allowed.
The word settles badly in my chest.
I follow him through the private corridor and down to the lift hidden behind the wall panel. My reflection stares back from the polished metal doors.
Tired face.
Poorly pinned hair.
Eyes that look older than they did yesterday.
The lift descends.
No one speaks.
By the time we reach the lower level, the air has changed.
Everything soft has been stripped away.
No warmth. No pretence that this house is only a home.
The guard leads me through two secured doors.
The lab waits beyond the last one.
The moment I step inside, unease settles over me.
Nothing has changed.
The same counters.
The same storage cabinets.
The same steel sinks and sealed containers.
The same pale lights overhead.
Yet the room feels smaller.
The ceiling presses lower. The benches seem closer. The air tastes thin.
I stop just inside the doorway.
The guard remains outside because that is the rule.
No one enters this section unless I call for them.
No cameras.
No phones and no devices.
Lorenzo agreed because the work depends on trust, and because the formula that keeps their product stronger than what their rivals sell lives in my head and hands.
This is the only corner of the estate where men with guns wait beyond a wall instead of standing over my shoulder.
Usually, that gives me space to breathe.
Today, it leaves me exposed.
I move deeper in.
Then I see him.
Camron stands near my titration station.
He turns too quickly.
The bottle in his hand taps against the metal rim of the bench. The sound is small, but his face gives him away before the glass settles.
He did not expect me.
“Vic…ky,” he says.
The word comes out wrong.
Too high.
Dragged at the edges.
My steps slow. “Camron.”
His hand drops.
Not to his side.
Beneath the lower chamber.
He tries to make it seem casual.
He fails.
My eyes follow for a breath before returning to his face.
He knows I noticed.
Panic crosses him.
Then he buries it.
Almost.
“I was only checking the line,” he says. “The chamber seal was loose earlier. I thought?—”
“You thought?”
He swallows. “I thought I should look before morning.”
His fingers flex at his side.
Sweat shines at his temple.
The room is not warm.
I look past him toward the station.
That section belongs to me. Everyone knows it. Even the cleaners stay away unless I am present. I do my testing there. My measurements. The adjustments no one else is trusted to see.
And beneath that chamber, half-hidden by the shadow of the steel frame, rests a slim black edge.
A phone.
Not fully tucked away.
Not fully hidden.
Recording.
The knowledge reaches me cold and clean.
Camron talks again, but the words begin to tangle.
“I didn’t mean to interfere. I was sent to check supplies. I can leave if you need the room. I was just—Dr. Luciano said earlier the systems might need?—”
“Dr. Luciano is in the clinic.”
“Yes.” He blinks. “I mean before. Earlier. Not now.”
I let the silence stretch.
He shifts his weight.
Once.
Twice.
Then he reaches toward the door.
“No,” I say.
He freezes.
My voice stays even. “Leave it.”
His face drains.
“I was only?—”
“Leave the door. I want to work.”
His mouth opens, then closes.
For one breath, I think he will try to take the phone anyway. His eyes flick to the door. To my hands. To the chamber.
Then he steps back.
“Of course.”
He walks toward the exit, forcing himself not to hurry. At the door, he turns and gives me a smile that barely touches his mouth.
“Apologies, Vick. Long night.”
“Yes,” I say. “It has been.”
He leaves.
The door seals behind him.
I do not move.
Not yet.
I count my breaths.
One.
Two.
Three.
The lab hums around me.
I walk to the station.
Slowly.
The phone sits where he left it, wedged poorly beneath the chamber lip. Its black screen faces outward at an angle, the lens exposed through a narrow gap.
A red dot pulses.
Recording.
My pulse does not race.
It slows.
Camron is foolish, desperate, or obeying someone who thinks I am easier to fool than I am.
I do not touch the phone.
Instead, I take a folded cloth from the drawer and place it where it blocks the lens without shifting the device. Not enough to alert whoever may check it later. Enough to give them nothing except fabric and steel.
Then I do the work.
I move through the lab with purpose. I check equipment, track inventory, and keep the records that matter. I help keep production moving, and by the end of the shift, another batch is finished and ready to leave my hands.
The meth is made here.
And I am part of it.
Even with guilt pressing against the back of my mind, I keep working.
I keep my back turned when needed and my hands low whenever I pass the chamber.
The phone records the cloth.
Let it.
When I am done, I remove the blockage and return it to the drawer.
The phone remains where Camron left it.
Visible enough.
Waiting to betray him.
Or me.
I buzz the guard.
The door opens.
“I’m ready to go back.”
The guard looks past me, but he does not enter. “To the suite?”
I hesitate.
My throat tightens before I ask.
“Where is Lorenzo?”
The guard glances toward the man beside him. The second guard speaks into the intercom.
A few clipped words pass.
Then a pause.
“He’s out of the clinic,” the guard tells me. “With Mrs. Abena. He has seen Olivia and the child.”
My heart gives one hard beat.
“Elsie?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And he is awake?”
“Yes.”
The relief comes so fast I almost resent it.
I grip the edge of my sleeve. “Can I see him?”
The guard does not answer right away.
He speaks again into the intercom.
This wait is longer.
Too long.
I look back once at the lab.
At the chamber.
At the hidden phone.
Then the guard lowers his hand from his earpiece.
“Don Nero approved it.”
My mouth goes dry.
“Take me to him.”
We leave the lab.
The journey back through the estate feels different from the one down. The halls seem longer now. Every guard looks at me half a breath too long. Maybe they know where I am being taken. Maybe they know more than I do.
We do not return to the main suite.
We pass it.
My steps falter once.
The guard continues, and I follow.
We move down a quieter corridor with darker walls and no windows. The carpet swallows our footsteps. At the far end, an old painting hangs in a cracked gold frame, a severe man in black robes staring out at the hall.
The guard stops before a single door.
Not Lorenzo’s bedroom.
I know that without being told.
This door is heavier.
Dark wood.
No handle on the outside.
A small black panel sits beside the frame.
A private study.
The guard steps back.
For one breath, nothing happens.
Then the lock clicks inside the wall.
The door opens on its own.