16. Alexei
Ten minutes earlier…
Iam out of the vehicle before the wheels even come to a stop. The world snaps back into focus as one question rips through me like a blade.
“What happened?”
Lance stands in front of me, his spine too straight, jaw locked so tightly I can hear his teeth grind. His focus drops to the pavement, his shoulders rolling back as if bracing for impact. “She said she saw Wendell. I ordered her to stay in the car?—”
“I tried to stop her,” Blake cuts in.
He shifts his weight, subtle but unmistakable.
He’s been cleared for duty for months, but the damage still lingers.
Metal and bone once crushed together beneath a dashboard.
Speed doesn’t come as easily anymore. And Elena knows that.
She would have known exactly when to move.
Blake is mistaken if he thinks this is his fault.
My hands curl at my sides, nails biting into my palms. “Where did you last see her?”
They lead me down the walkway, my dress shoes striking the pavement in a grim rhythm, until the path fractures into four separate directions. Too many choices. Too many ways for her to vanish.
“We’re confident she went right,” Blake says.
I scan the area, my gaze sharp and restless. Petrova’s guards work tirelessly to bring the crowd under control and disperse them. First responders. Civilians linger far too close, drawn to chaos like moths to flame.
Then I see it.
A black hat.
A powder-blue scarf.
My pulse spikes.
I move before I’m even aware of deciding to, long strides devouring the distance. Lance and Blake fall in behind me without question. Two girls stand near the curb, giggling, clutching fabric like it’s something sacred.
“Ladies,” I say, my voice polite but immovable.
They stop. Their eyes track upward; shoes, legs, jacket, face. Seconds stretching thin before recognition slams into them. Gasps. Squeals. They bounce on their toes.
“No way!” one chirps.
“What are the odds?” the other shrieks.
I don’t smile. “The woman who gave you those… how long ago?”
“You mean your wife,” the girl with the scarf corrects, playful, teasing, turning to her friend and giggling.
I step closer, letting the edge creep into my tone. “Where?”
Their laughter dies instantly. The girl on the right points across the street. “There. The shop.”
I turn back to Lance and Blake.
“Fan out,” I order. “Clara should be here any minute.”
Lance grips my forearm. “I won’t leave you unprotected.”
“I’ll be fine.” I pull free. “That’s an order.”
I move toward the shop, their protests fading behind me, and I smell her. Strawberry and lavender. Faint, nearly lost beneath dust and sweat and exhaust, but unmistakable. Like she’d brushed past me seconds ago on the walkway. Like she’s still close.
I shove the door open.
“We’re closed,” a woman snaps without looking up.
“I’m not here to shop.”
She looks up. Recognition hits her like a wave. Her pen slips from her fingers and clatters against glass as I cross the threshold.
A pile of fabric next to her catches my eye. Silk. Powdered cream with soft pastel petals.
My fingers brush over it.
“Not for sale,” she barks immediately.
“How long ago was she here?”
She stiffens. “I don’t know what you mean.”
I lift the blouse. “My wife.”
Her gaze softens despite herself. A memory flickers, standing in another city, spotting this on a mannequin, knowing instantly how it would look against Elena’s skin.
The way she laughed when she opened it. Kissed me like I’d handed her the world.
She’d confessed it was the nicest gift anyone had ever given her.
That it was now her favorite gift that she would treasure always.
She was willing to part with it to save family. It only made me love her more.
“How long?” I ask again, quieter now, more dangerous.
“Less than five minutes,” she admits. “She asked about the tunnels. Went out back.”
“Thank you.”
I carefully set the blouse down back down, glancing one last time, and move past her in the hallway, through the back door.
Cold air slams into my face as soon as I step out into the alley. The smell of rot, damp concrete, and stagnant water burns my nose.
I notice the drain lid leaning against the brick wall.
My chest tightens.
I climb down, my shoulders scraping as my jacket drags through grime and rust. Darkness closes around me until my shoes hit stone.
I pull out my flashlight. Light spills across red brick walls slick with moisture, green-black water surging through the center channel.
The tunnel groans. The air feels wrong—pressurized, restless, angry. Like the ground itself is holding its breath.
Then I hear it.
Footsteps.
Soft. Measured. Careful in a way that tells me whoever’s coming knows this place can kill you if you move wrong. Water sloshes with each step, a quiet, deliberate sound that tightens something in my chest.
I move.
Long strides. Silent. Muscle memory is guiding me through the dark like I’ve been here a hundred times before. My senses sharpen, tuning to details I don’t consciously name: the echo of space, the shift in air, the faint pull of current.
And then?—
Her.
I smell her before I see her. Bright. Familiar. Clean in a way that has no business existing down here. It cuts through the rot, reminding me, violently, of everything I have to lose.
She stops.
So do I.
A smile ghosts across my mouth before I can stop it. Relief and dread collide inside me, sharp enough to hurt. Of course, she’s here. Of course, she didn’t wait. She never does.
I move slower now, controlled, until I reach the break in the tunnel and turn?—
She strikes.
Fast. Clean. Perfect.
Exactly how I taught her.
Pride flares—immediate and dangerous—chased by something colder. I catch her wrist mid-swing and pin her back before momentum can take her into the water. Her body slams into mine, solid and alive.
“Elena.”
She freezes.
“Alexei?”
The way she says my name cracks something open in me. Relief hits so hard my knees almost give. I cage her in instinctively, pressing her back to the wall, breathing her in like oxygen, anchoring myself to the fact that she’s warm. Breathing. Real.
The image of losing her flashes through me—instant, violent. The world going dark all at once.
I refuse to let myself think it through. Thinking is dangerous.
The ground shudders beneath our feet.
The tunnel groans, stone grinding against stone, water sloshing violently as if it’s waking up. I shift, bracing her with my body, palms flat to the wall on either side of her head as dust rains down.
When it stills, dread settles low and heavy in my gut.
“Is that?—”
I don’t let her finish. I grip her arm hard enough to make my point stick. “We need to go. Now.”
We run.
I push her faster than she wants, faster than is comfortable. I don’t apologize. There isn’t time. The entire drive here I burned Max’s schematics into my head, the drains, exits, redundancies. We won’t make it by taking the long routes. Not with the water already angry.
It surges at our feet as we move, snapping at our heels, trying to steal our balance. One wrong step, and it’ll take us both.
An alcove looms ahead.
A ladder.
I don’t hesitate. “Up you go.”
She starts climbing, losing her footing, and slips. Once. Twice.
My heart stutters.
I grab her wrist, my grip skidding on slick metal, terror flaring sharp and immediate. “Stay still!”
I haul her back against me, muscles screaming, heart pounding so loudly it drowns thought. Her back presses to my chest, and I cage her there, locking us together.
If I lose her…
The thought doesn’t finish. It can’t.
No crown. No country. No purpose. Only silence.
I grunt, dragging every ounce of strength into my arms until she’s steady again. “Go.”
She breathes once, sharp, shaky, and climbs. Light cracks through the dark above us, thin and fragile, but enough to slice relief through my chest.
I follow close behind, hand hovering inches from her arm, ready to catch her. I don’t look ahead. I watch her footing. Always her footing.
She windmills for a split second, her arms slicing air, a sharp sound tearing from her throat, and my body reacts before thought. She recovers. Grabs hold.
I don’t breathe again until she does.
She reaches the top, hauls herself out, rolls onto the pavement. Then she’s there again, face filling the opening, hand reaching down for me.
I take another step, but my dress shoe slips on years of mold and slime.
The world drops out from under me.
Cold water detonates against my chest, brutal and absolute. It steals my breath, my voice, my sense of direction. The chill punches through fabric and skin, dragging me under before I can fight.
“Elena!”
I force myself back up the ladder, lungs burning. I break the surface long enough to see tears streaking her face as I climb.
We’re inches apart, but then her hand is ripped away.
“Elena!”
I climb faster, water already at my shoulders. I hear her struggle. Hear the pain in her voice when she hits brick. A man’s face appears above, smiling as he slams the lid shut.
“Alexei…”
Her voice cuts off.
I slam into the metal with my shoulder, roar tearing out of me, but it doesn’t move. Boots stomp above, sealing me in.
The water kisses my throat now.
I don’t hesitate.
I dive.
The cold clamps down immediately like a vise around my ribs, but I shove it aside. Training snaps into place; clean and ruthless. Calm. Control. I let my body take over while my mind catches up.
I count without numbers. Five minutes, if I’m lucky.
The water churns thick with silt, each stroke churning it into blindness. I swim by memory alone, fingers grazing stone, tracking the change in current. Left. Right.
There.
The fork exists in my mind before I see it. I kick hard, lungs burning, until my head breaks the surface beneath an archway.
Air.
Thin. Stale. Enough.
I brace myself, taking quick, shallow breaths, forcing my pulse down, because panic only wastes oxygen. I won’t give it that.
I dive again.
The darkness swallows me whole. I flick on the flashlight, its beam carving a narrow path through debris and scarred stone.