Chapter 20 Cargo Holds and Hidden Witnesses #3
“Don’t,” he said again. Not gentle. Not asking. “If you open it, they’ll take you with him.”
Elena’s breath came in sharp bursts, tasting metal and damp. “He was the only one who - ”
Matteo’s eyes were hard, his jaw clenched so tight Elena could see the strain in his cheek. “He was a witness. They were never going to let him finish.”
Elena stared at the closing hatch. She could see only the edge of the witness’s arm disappearing into the light. The moment stretched thin, like a thread pulled too far.
Then the hatch sealed with a heavy thunk.
Silence crashed down.
The only sound left was the rain and the dull, distant thrum of engines. The hold smelled worse now - burnt powder from Matteo’s shots mixed with wet canvas and old tar. Elena’s hands were shaking.
She turned her head toward Matteo, and the anger in her chest tried to find a target.
“He said Lucien,” she whispered. “He said Lucien Moretti. He said Marzio was the money mouth. He said Zurich like it was a location in his mouth.”
Matteo’s gaze stayed on the sealed hatch as if he expected it to open again. “Fragments.”
Elena swallowed hard. “He was terrified.”
Matteo exhaled through his nose, slow. “Terrified people lie.”
Elena flinched at the bluntness. “So you think he made it up?”
Matteo finally looked at her, and the severity in his eyes made Elena’s throat tighten. “I think he was trying to survive long enough to give you something. And someone decided that wasn’t acceptable.”
Elena pressed her fist into her jacket pocket until the storage tag’s edge pressed back. It felt like holding a piece of the witness’s voice in her palm - except the witness was gone, and the confession was ripped away mid-sentence.
Her mind raced through every fragment she’d heard, every word that had slipped out between gag and fear.
Lucien Moretti. Money mouth. Banks. Shells. Zurich.
Marzio De Santis.
The conspiracy was shaping itself in clearer lines, but the cost had just doubled. She’d begged for truth, and someone had answered by removing the mouth it came from.
Elena’s phone vibrated in her pocket.
The sudden buzz made her jerk. Matteo’s hand moved instantly to cover hers, his fingers sliding over the device without taking it out.
“Don’t,” he said again, but his voice had changed. Less command. More urgency.
Elena looked up at him. “They’re still tracking. They want us moving.”
Matteo’s eyes flicked down to Elena’s phone screen. “Or they want you reacting.”
Elena hated him for being right. She hated that her fear had been predictable. She hated that the enemy had learned her rhythms - learned how she thought, how she clung to evidence like it could save her from being erased.
She pulled the phone free with her own hand, thumbs hovering. The screen lit with a coded directive. Not a coordinate this time. A time window.
The text was short, cryptic - no explanation, no mercy. It named a location for a transfer. A place tied to the skiff’s route, not far from where they’d been loaded. A dock sector under a different name than the one Matteo had been forced to follow earlier.
Matteo’s phone - receiving coded directives of his own - buzzed at the same moment.
The sound was synchronized, like someone had timed it to punish their trust.
Matteo glanced at his screen, then went still.
Elena watched his face carefully, searching for the tell she’d learned during previous hunts: the micro-expression that meant the order wasn’t just dangerous. It was personal.
“What?” she asked.
Matteo’s voice stayed low. “They’re moving the exchange.”
Elena stared at him. “They were going to silence him. That’s what they did.”
Matteo’s jaw tightened. “Now they’re changing the route.”
Elena’s anger curdled into something colder. “Because the witness talked.”
Matteo didn’t deny it. He only watched her, as if deciding whether to tell the truth or protect her from it.
Elena felt the decision in his silence. She wanted to scream at it. She wanted him to stop guarding her from information that would keep her alive.
Instead she forced her voice steady. “Is it still Marzio?”
Matteo’s eyes flicked to her pocket, the storage tag inside. “It’s still Marzio’s chain. But the handoff point is different.”
Elena’s stomach sank. Different handoff meant different people. Different people meant different bullets. Different bullets meant more chances for her evidence to vanish, for her to be blamed, for her research to be overwritten by a story someone else wrote with blood.
She swallowed. “Then we don’t go.”
Matteo’s gaze sharpened. “We can’t not go.”
Elena’s throat tightened. “You have orders.”
Matteo’s silence answered her, and it was worse than a confession. His discipline wasn’t just loyalty. It was a trap. The Shadows had always used loyalty like a leash - now it was wrapped around his neck.
Elena’s chest felt too small for her lungs. “So what do we do?”
Matteo slid his sidearm slightly, not drawing it - adjusting his grip on the inside of his jacket. “We extract what we have. We use it to control the next conversation.”
Elena’s fingers tightened around her phone. “And if they take that too?”
Matteo leaned closer, the scent of gun oil and cold leather surrounding her. “Then we make sure they can’t control the narrative alone.”
A distant metallic scraping echoed above them, like a winch winding. The skiff shifted subtly - just enough to tell Elena the vessel was being repositioned, the hold still their cage but the destination changing.
Elena’s eyes narrowed. The enemy had been tracking them through the tracking tag. They would also be tracking the witness’s absence - tracking that testimony got interrupted. Which meant the next step would be harsher. They’d already lost control once; they wouldn’t allow it twice.
The hold door rattled again.
Not the hatch opening. Something else. A secondary latch on the skiff’s internal access panel, the kind sailors used for inspecting lines and pumps. Matteo had earlier blocked access to the main hatch, but this panel was separate.
A thin seam of light appeared along the side wall near the floor. Elena smelled it before she saw it - fresh oil, clean metal, the scent of someone who’d just washed their hands to remove proof.
A voice came through the narrow gap, barely audible under the rain.
“Elena Russo.”
Her name again. Like a label on a file.
Elena froze.
Matteo’s body went rigid beside her. He didn’t reach for his sidearm. Instead he lifted his hand slowly, palm open, signaling her to stay still.
The
thin seam of sound tightened in Elena’s ears as if the whole world had leaned toward the gap. The hold smelled of tarps and damp rope, but now there was something else under it - bleach-clean metal, the sharp bite of disinfectant trying to pretend it had never seen blood.
Elena didn’t move. Her pulse thudded against her ribs, loud enough to feel like it might reach the other side of the skiff.
The voice slipped closer through the panel, low and practiced, not loud enough to be a threat and not kind enough to be an invitation. “Elena Russo.”
Matteo’s eyes tracked the seam of light. His jaw worked once, a tight grind. He was calculating distances, angles, the way a man listened for intent in silence.
Elena’s throat went dry. “Who is that?”
The voice didn’t answer with a name. It answered with certainty. “You’re with him.”
Matteo’s head tilted a fraction, the smallest shift of acknowledgment that told Elena he’d already heard the tone before he even recognized the voice.
Elena’s fingers hovered over her phone. The screen was dark, but the tracking tag wasn’t - she could feel it pulsing like a heartbeat against the fabric of her pocket. If the enemy was close enough to call her through a panel, they were close enough to take everything.
“I don’t like being called,” Elena said, keeping her voice flat. She forced her gaze to stay on the seam instead of the darkness beyond it.
Matteo’s hand stayed open, steady as a promise he refused to make out loud.
The voice chuckled once, dry. “You’re in a place where liking doesn’t matter.”
A second sound joined the first: a soft click, then another. Not the hatch. Something being unlatched inside the skiff’s framework. Elena felt the vibration through the floorboards, a faint tremor that made her stomach tighten.
Matteo finally shifted, just enough to angle his shoulder toward her. “Don’t answer questions.”
Elena’s gaze flicked to him. “I didn’t.”
His eyes didn’t leave the panel. “Not with your mouth.”
The seam widened by a breath. A sliver of a face appeared in the gap - just enough to see a clean jawline and the edge of a surgical mask, the kind used when someone didn’t want breath on their work. The man’s eyes were visible, dark and alert, and they moved with hunger for control.
He leaned closer until the smell of disinfectant sharpened. “You’re going to stop trying to bargain with the wrong men.”
Elena’s skin tightened. “I’m not bargaining.”
“Not yet,” the man said, and the word yet carried a threat that didn’t need a gun. “He’s loyal. You think loyalty is a wall. It’s a gate.”
Matteo’s knuckles whitened against his own palm as he held himself in place.
Elena forced herself to breathe through her nose. The hold was damp, cold, and her jacket felt slick with rain. If she moved too fast, she’d give the enemy a reason to act.
“What do you want?” Elena asked.
The man’s eyes slid to Matteo like he could see the sidearm under the jacket even without looking. “I want the witness.”
Elena’s stomach dropped. “There’s no - ”
“You have him,” the man corrected, voice calm. “In the cargo hold under the tarps. Quiet. Breathing like he’s praying the silence will hold.”
Elena’s mouth went numb.
Matteo’s head snapped a fraction toward her, and Elena understood in the same instant that he hadn’t told her everything. Matteo had known there was a witness hidden here, but the enemy knew too - meaning the location was already mapped.
Elena’s anger surged, hot and humiliating. “How do you know that?”