Chapter 10
ten
They‘d been at it for thirty-six hours, or close to it—the schematics spread across the dining table, empty coffee cups pushed to one end, both tablets propped against the breakfast bowl Dom had conscripted as a stand. He’d memorized the sublevel layouts, the patrol rotation timings, the biometric checkpoint architecture.
He was starting on his third pass through the seismic sensor grid when the television flickered on without warning, and Raines’s face appeared on the screen.
“Change of plans,” Raines said, without preamble and without apology. “You’re being moved to the property today. A car will arrive in twenty minutes.”
Dom felt Vivi go still across the table. He kept his own face neutral, which took more effort than he‘d like to admit.
“We’re not ready,” Vivi said. “You gave us a week.”
“I gave you seven days to complete the job. This is day two.” Raines’s tone had all the warmth of the concrete room they’d woken up in. “Being on-site accelerates the timeline and removes certain logistical complications. Pack what you’ve been given. Twenty minutes.”
The screen went dark.
Dom looked at Vivi. She looked back at him. Neither of them said a word for a long beat.
“Logistical complications,” he said finally.
“Right.” She was already rolling up the nearest schematic, her movements practiced and efficient. “Because telling us the real reason would be too much like a courtesy.”
He filed his copies away in order—sublevel diagrams first, security overlays second, entry schematics on top—and started running the scenarios his brain had already begun queuing the moment Raines signed off.
Why move them early?
Option one: Praetorian already had an asset inside Villa Pandora who was positioned to support the job, and they needed Dom and Vivi in place before that window closed.
Option two: something had shifted in Praetorian’s intelligence picture—a leak, a threat, another player moving—and they were accelerating before the situation deteriorated further. It was probably too much to hope that the other player was Wilde Security.
Option three, the one his gut liked least: this wasn’t actually a move to Villa Pandora. It was a transit to somewhere else entirely, and the whole job had been a pretense for something he hadn’t worked out yet.
None of the options settled well.
The guards arrived exactly twenty minutes later. The same two that dumped them in this apartment a day ago.
They were each given a suitcase filled with clothes befitting their cover as a rich couple.
Dom changed quickly, pulling on linen pants and a white button-up shirt that fit him a shade too precisely for comfort.
When he came out of the bedroom, Vivi was already by the door, dressed in a cream linen dress and strappy sandals.
“Ready?” he asked.
“No,” she said pleasantly. “Let’s go.”
The drive took forty minutes on roads that wound through the island’s interior, olive groves and white-walled villages blurring past the tinted windows.
Naxos was beautiful. He had to give it that.
Dom watched the terrain without appearing to watch it.
Old habit. He clocked the road markers, the intersections, the occasional glimpse of sea glittering at the end of a descending lane.
Building a map in his head the same way he always did, because maps were exits and exits were options and right now options were all he had.
Vivi sat beside him in the backseat, close enough that her scent wrapped around him. She was looking out her own window, her profile composed and still, the cream dress falling in clean lines across her lap. She could have been on holiday. A woman without a single complicated thought in her head.
He knew better.
The same guard from the warehouse detail was driving. The one who’d made the mistake of talking to Dom like he was furniture
The lane was paved but barely, flanked by low stone walls and old olive trees that leaned over the road on both sides, their branches nearly touching overhead.
It opened abruptly into a clearing fronted by a high white stone wall.
The decorative ironwork along the top was intricate and tasteful, and Dom caught the glint of sensors embedded in the scrollwork where it met the corner post. A man in gardening clothes crouched near the base of the wall, hands in the dirt.
He didn’t look up as they passed, but also didn’t move like a man weeding.
A small brass plaque beside the gate read Villa Pandora in fancy cursive letters.
The gate opened as they approached.
Beyond it, the property unfolded in terraced gardens stepping down toward a cliff edge where the land simply stopped, and the sea began, hundreds of feet below.
Bougainvillea climbed the villa’s white walls in bursts of deep magenta and orange.
Terracotta roof tiles. A loggia ran the length of the main building, shaded by trailing jasmine.
No doubt the view from that top terrace was the kind that reset the brain to factory settings, all blue and gold and devastating, the islands in the middle distance like brushstrokes in a painting.
It was beautiful. It was also locked down tighter than most military installations Dom had been inside.
He counted four more “groundskeepers” before the car stopped, all of whom were packing concealed weapons.
The front entrance was a set of arched double doors in dark wood, and they opened as Dom and Vivi stepped out of the car.
Stavros Konstantinou was smaller than Dom expected, given the larger-than-life persona his intel indicated. Silver-haired, impeccably combed, wearing a cream linen suit that said, “This guy has money.”
Between that suit, his pants, and Vivi’s dress, Dom had seen about as much linen as he could handle for this lifetime. He longed for his usual jeans and a worn-in t-shirt.
Stavros moved unhurriedly down the front steps. His face was deeply tanned, the lines in it from a lifetime of relaxing in the sun, not stress. He was smiling warmly as he extended his hand.
“Vivianna.” He took her hand in both of his and held it for a moment rather than shaking it—a gesture that was entirely genuine and entirely calculated at the same time. “It has been too long. You look magnificent. But then, you always do.”
“Stavros.” Her smile was perfect. Warm, slightly nostalgic, the smile of a woman delighted to be somewhere she’d missed. She leaned in to air kiss each of his cheeks. “You haven’t changed at all.”
“A diplomatic lie, but I appreciate it.” He stepped back and studied the space behind her like he expected to see someone else. “Where is that handsome, trouble-making brother of yours?”
“Not with me this trip, I’m afraid.”
“Hm, that’s a shame. He always livens things up around here.” His dark eyes shifted to Dom, and the warmth cooled a bit even as his smile remained firmly in place. “And who is your companion?”
“Dominic Wilde,” Dom said, extending his hand.
“Wilde.” He inclined his head slightly as they shook. “I know the name.”
“Most people do.”
“Your father and uncles built something remarkable.”
“They did,” Dom agreed. He kept his voice easy, pleasant, entirely unrevealing.
Stavros studied him for a moment longer than was strictly social.
Then he turned and gestured toward the entrance with one hand.
“Your usual suite is ready. I’ve taken the liberty of having dinner arranged for two, if you’d like it.
” His gaze moved between them. “You both look like you’ve had a difficult journey. ”
Understatement of the century.
Dom followed Vivi through the arched doors, into the cool, shadowed interior of the above-ground villa, its tiled floors and whitewashed walls exactly as the schematics had shown. Behind him, a staff member materialized from somewhere and fell in step.
He glanced back once, through the open doors, at the view—the terraced gardens, the groundskeepers who weren’t gardeners, the cliff edge where the land ended and the sea began.
Stavros stood in the entrance, watching them go. He lifted a hand to wave when he noticed Dom looking.
That man put on a good front, but he was just as dangerous as Praetorian. Whatever they did, they had to be sure to stay on his good side.
Dom touched the small of Vivi’s back and leaned down slightly. “He already knows something’s wrong.”
“He knew the moment we walked in,” she said under her breath. “He just doesn’t know what. Yet.”
“Is that a problem?”
She was quiet for half a beat. “That depends entirely on how he decides to respond to it.”
The suite was on the second floor of the main building, accessed through a corridor lined with terracotta pots and framed watercolors of the Aegean. The staff member—young, efficient, probably armed—opened the door, set their bags just inside, and withdrew without a word.
Dom stepped in first. Old habit. He swept the room in the time it took Vivi to follow him through the door.
Large. Tasteful. White walls and blue accents, a four-poster bed dressed in white linen, French doors opening onto a private terrace with that brutal view.
Sitting area with two low chairs and a coffee table.
Kitchenette. Bathroom through an arched doorway on the left.
Everything exactly as the schematics had shown, scaled up to the reality of being inside it.
No cameras.
He checked twice. Checked a third time, slower, running his gaze along the ceiling line, the crown molding, the vent covers, the smoke detector above the bathroom door.
The smoke detector was real—he unscrewed the casing with his thumbnail to check, found a sensor and nothing else.
He replaced it and moved on. The mirror in the bathroom.
The framed print above the headboard. The decorative sconce bracket beside the terrace doors.
Nothing.
He stood in the center of the room and turned a slow circle, cataloging it one more time just to be sure.
No cameras.