Chapter 7
seven
Dom woke to the sound of a metal tray hitting the kitchen counter. He sprang up from the bed, adrenaline surging through his system before his brain caught up to his reflexes.
The apartment.
Greece.
Praetorian.
Vivi was gone from her side of the bed. His gut dropped out.
The bed beside him was empty, covers thrown back, the pillow still dented from her head. He was off the mattress and moving before he’d fully processed it, bare feet hitting the hardwood, every nerve ending firing at once.
“Vivi.” Too loud. He didn’t care.
Nothing from the bedroom. Nothing from the hall. He hit the doorframe going too fast and ricocheted into the corridor, scanning both directions in the half-second it took his brain to catch up. Bathroom door open. Empty.
Shit. Shit.
They’d taken her. While he slept, they’d come and—
Then he saw her.
She stood in the kitchen, arms crossed, staring at the kitchen island.
“They’ve decided it’s time to get to work,” she said without turning around.
Dom took a second to breathe—and to tell his heart to calm the fuck down before it leaped out of his chest—then crossed to stand beside her.
On the kitchen counter sat a sleek black case, several rolled blueprints, and two tablets.
Next to them, a tray with fresh fruit, pastries, and a carafe of coffee steamed in the morning light.
Breakfast and burglary tools. How thoughtful.
“Looks like we got the deluxe prison package,” he muttered, reaching for the coffee. He needed caffeine before dealing with whatever fresh hell Praetorian had prepared for them today. “Did they leave a note? ‘Thanks for being our unwilling accomplices, enjoy these complimentary croissants.’”
Vivi didn’t crack a smile as he’d hoped.
She reached out and flipped open the black case.
Inside, nestled in custom-cut foam, lay an array of tools that would make any thief drool—electronic bypass devices, custom lock picks, signal jammers, and a thermal imaging scope.
Top-of-the-line equipment, the kind that costs more than most people make in a year.
The kind that Dom had used on missions he couldn’t talk about in countries that he wouldn’t admit he’d been to.
“They certainly spared no expense,” she said, running a finger along a particularly elegant lock pick. “How nice of them to provide such quality tools while holding my brother hostage.”
The bitterness in her voice was wrong. He’d spent years learning every register of Vivianna Cavalier’s voice.
The honey was her default, the sweetness she deployed like a weapon—it disarmed people, made them underestimate her, made them hand over things they’d never intended to give.
He’d only ever heard this bitterness from her one other time, and that was when he’d kept a promise that destroyed all the love she had for him.
He reached past her and picked up one of the tablets. It unlocked at his touch—no passcode, because of course. Raines wasn’t worried about them accessing the information. He wanted them to access it.
The screen loaded a schematic. Villa Pandora’s layout, clean and detailed, with vault locations marked in red. Vault 237 on the upper level. Vault 485 below, separated by what looked like a reinforced floor and a secondary biometric checkpoint.
“They’ve been planning this for a while,” he said, swiping through the files. “Security rotations, access codes, patrol patterns. This is military-grade intelligence.”
Vivi grabbed the second tablet and started scrolling, her frown deepening. Then she set the tablet aside and looked up at one of the cameras. “I want to see Sabin. Now.”
On cue, the television on the wall flickered to life.
“That’s not possible.” Malcolm Raines appeared on screen, seated at a desk in an anonymous office with no distinguishing features visible in the frame.
As if they needed more proof that they were being watched.
Raines nodded toward the equipment. “I trust you’ve found everything you need to begin planning—”
“I’m not planning anything until I see my brother,” Vivi said, stepping toward the screen.
“Ms. Cavalier—”
“No.” She cut him off. “You will not get any-fucking-thing from me until I see Sabin. Alive. In person.”
You tell him, Viv.
Jesus, she was magnificent. Brilliant, fearless, always three steps ahead. Was it any wonder he’d fallen head over heels in love with her when they were teenagers?
Raines’s expression didn’t change. “You saw the proof of life yesterday.”
“I saw a video feed that could have been recorded anytime. For all I know, you’ve already killed him.”
“We haven’t. He’s alive and unharmed.” A pause. “Mostly.”
“Then it shouldn’t be a problem for me to see him today.” She also paused, waiting the same extended beat as Raines had. “Or I don’t cooperate.”
Dom moved to stand beside her, close enough that their shoulders nearly brushed. She glanced at him briefly, surprise flickering across her face before her attention returned to the screen.
“Ms. Cavalier, I don’t think you understand the position you’re in.” Raines’s tone remained frustratingly level. “You don’t make demands.”
“I’m not making demands. I’m stating facts.
You need me. You need my biometric access to the facility.
You need my knowledge of the layout and the security protocols.
And you need my cooperation to pull this off without raising alarms that would lock down the entire place.
” She stepped closer to the screen. “So either I see my brother today, or you can find yourself another thief.”
“We do have other options,” Raines said, but he was bluffing. His expression was still one of mild indifference, but Dom had spent enough years reading people in high-stakes situations to catch the fractional delay before Raines responded. It was the tell of a man recalculating.
And Vivi saw it, too.
“Do you?” She cocked her head. “Then why go to all this trouble to get me specifically? Why not use one of your other operatives? Why drag Dominic and me across the Atlantic if you had better options?”
Dom couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at his lips.
Raines was silent for a long moment. “I’ll give you five minutes with him. And the conversation will be monitored.”
“Twenty.”
“Ten.”
“Fifteen.”
The phone rang on Raines’s desk. He picked it up and must have muted the sound on his end because they could no longer hear him as he spoke to whoever had called. When he hung up, a muscle twitched just below his eye.
The sound clicked back on. “You can have fifteen.”
Ah, so they weren’t the only ones being watched in this situation. As much as Raines wanted them to think he was the puppet master, there was someone also pulling his strings.
Dom filed that away.
Vivi nodded once. “When?”
“This afternoon. Two o’clock. A car will collect you.” Raines’s eyes shifted to Dom. “Mr. Wilde will remain at the apartment.”
“He comes with me,” Vivi said immediately. “I need him there.”
Dom’s eyebrows shot up. He hadn’t expected that.
“Very well,” Raines said after an extended stretch of charged silence. “But he stays in the car.”
“Fine,” Vivi agreed.
“I expect you to begin familiarizing yourselves with the schematics immediately. You have one week.” With that, Raines’s image vanished, leaving the screen black.
The room felt suddenly larger without his presence, as if the air had been allowed to expand again.
Dom turned to Vivi, curiosity burning through him. “‘I need him there?’ Since when do you need me for anything?”
She didn’t meet his eyes. “I want as many eyes on Praetorian locations as possible. Davey’s probably tearing the world apart looking for you. The more you see, the more you can tell them when we get out of this.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
“Don’t mistake practicality for confidence, Dominic.” She gathered the tablets and blueprints and moved to the dining table. “Let’s get to work.”
He’d forgotten how quickly she could shift gears, how completely she could immerse herself in mission mode. It was like watching someone put on armor, piece by piece, until the person underneath disappeared completely.
And damn it all, he found it just as attractive as he had three years ago.
“You were incredible.” The words came out before he could stop them.
She looked at him sideways. “I was logical.”
“Same thing, with you.”
She didn’t respond to that. She set the tablet flat on the counter and unrolled the first of the blueprints beside it, smoothing the corners down with her palms.
“Stop staring and make yourself useful,” she said without looking up. “I need coffee if I’m going to explain this place to you.”
He grinned despite himself and moved to the kitchen to pour two mugs. When he returned, she had the main schematic anchored with oranges from the breakfast tray.
“Villa Pandora,” she said, tapping the blueprint as he set her coffee down. “It’s a fortress disguised as a luxury retreat, built into the cliffs on Naxos. The above-ground resort portion is just for show. The real facility is underground.”
Dom studied the layout. “How many sublevels?”
“Four. The first two sublevels are where client vaults are located. That’s where our Vault 237 is.
” She traced a finger along a corridor. “It’s basically a very high-end safe deposit box.
Except instead of storing grandma’s jewelry or legal documents, people store things they can’t keep in traditional banking systems. Things that would raise flags if they went through conventional channels. ”
“Unclean cash, questionable art, documents with complicated provenance?”
“Exactly.” She took a sip of her coffee. “Sabin and I opened an account under a false identity about eleven years ago. We needed a place to store insurance—cash, passports, some pieces from various jobs that were too hot to fence immediately.”
“And Strauss’s vault?”
She pointed to the fourth sublevel on the blueprint. “Down here. More secure, more isolated. These are the premium vaults for clients who need extra privacy and security. More expensive, more restricted access.”
Dom frowned at the layout. “These aren’t adjacent. Not even close. There’s a whole other floor between them. Sublevel three.”
“I’m aware.” Vivi stared down at the schematics over the rim of her mug.
“That’s the challenge. I can access our vault legitimately—walk in the front door, present my credentials, visit what’s mine.
But accessing Strauss’s vault means bypassing multiple security protocols, including biometric locks tied to Strauss himself. ”
“Who’s inconveniently dead.”
“Very.” She rolled her shoulders, and he noticed the tension there, the tightness at the base of her neck. She’d probably stab him if he tried to massage those knots out, so he kept his hands to himself.
“This is why they took both of us,” she said after another moment of studying the blueprints. “They knew we’d need to create an alternate access point.”
“They want me to blow a hole between floors,” Dom concluded, tracing a line from 237 down through the third level to 485. “From yours into Strauss’s.”
“And do it quietly enough not to trigger the seismic sensors embedded in the bedrock,” she added.
He grinned. He couldn’t help it. “I love a challenge.” And the adrenaline rush that came with being handed a technical problem everyone said was impossible, and then making it look easy.
Vivi’s expression said she didn’t share his enthusiasm. “It’s not a game, Dominic.”
He sobered. “I know that.”
“Do you?”
The question shouldn’t sting. After all, he’d always been the wildest of his brothers.
While Davey was the responsible firstborn, and Elliot was the typical middle child peacemaker, he’d embraced his duty to be the pain-in-the-ass youngest. He was the family joker.
The troublemaker. The reckless one. And he’d spent years pretending that was all he was, because it was easier than admitting how much he actually cared.
About the work. About the people he was protecting. About her.
“I know what’s at stake,” he said, quieter.
She studied him for a moment, like she was deciding whether to believe him. Then she turned back to the blueprints.
“The seismic sensors are the real problem,” she said.
“Villa Pandora has been in operation for thirty years. Stavros—the man who runs it—built the security infrastructure himself, layer by layer. He knows every weakness in the system because he patched every one. Which is why we need to know this place inside and out before we go in.” She picked up one of the tablets and scrolled through more detailed security specifications.
“The good news is, Villa Pandora operates on discretion. They don’t ask questions, don’t examine what clients bring in or take out, and they maintain a strict hands-off approach as long as you follow their protocols. ”
Dom moved around the table, coming to stand next to her so he could see the tablet screen. The proximity was a mistake. Her scent hit him—that familiar jasmine mixed with something dark and uniquely her—and suddenly he wasn’t thinking about security systems or demolition charges.
He was thinking about last night. How she’d slept six inches away. How he’d lain there listening to her breathe, remembering every curve of her body, every sound she made when he touched her. How much he wanted to bridge that gap between them, even knowing it was the last thing she wanted.
He must have been staring because she stopped mid-sentence and looked up at him, one eyebrow raised.
“Something interesting, Wilde?”
“Yeah,” he said before he could stop himself. “You.”
Her eyes darkened slightly, pupils dilating, and her throat worked as she swallowed. For a moment—just a moment—the prickly armor cracked, and he glimpsed the woman underneath, the one who had once looked at him like he was everything she’d ever wanted.
Then her gaze flicked to one of the cameras in the corner, its red eye watching steadily, and the armor slid back into place.
“Focus, Dominic.” She turned back to the blueprints. “We don’t have time for distractions.”
But her voice had softened just slightly, and when she leaned over the table to point out another security feature, she stood close enough that their arms brushed. The contact was brief, probably accidental, but it sent electricity racing up his spine.
The cameras were watching. Praetorian was watching. But in that moment, Dom didn’t care. Because for the first time in three years, he felt like they might find their way back to something that wasn’t just anger and regret.
If they survived the next seven days.