Chapter 18
eighteen
Dom set the duffel bag on the scarred wooden floor and surveyed the room they’d rented above the taverna.
The paint peeled in long strips from the walls like sunburned skin, revealing patches of older colors beneath—blue, then green, then something that might have been yellow once.
A far cry from the pristine luxury of Villa Pandora.
But luxury came with surveillance, with Stavros’s watchful eyes, with complications they couldn’t afford.
This place, with its single sagging bed and bathroom door that didn’t quite close, offered the one thing they needed most: anonymity.
“Home sweet home,” he said, more to fill the silence than anything else.
Vivi didn’t respond. She moved to the window, pushing aside the thin curtain to check the view—a narrow street, the back of another building, no clear line of sight to their door.
She’d been nearly silent during the drive here, her face set in lines of careful neutrality that told him exactly how hard she was working to hold herself together.
Dom pulled out the burner phone they’d picked up at a kiosk in town, paid for with cash from Vivi’s vault stash. He dialed from memory, turning to check the door’s flimsy lock one more time as he waited.
Davey answered on the second ring. “Who is this?”
The sound of his brother’s voice hit him harder than expected, a rush of relief so intense it made his throat tight. “Dom.”
A beat of silence, then: “Jesus Christ. Are you okay? Where the hell have you been? We’ve been tearing the city apart looking for you and Vivi.”
“I’m fine. We’re fine.” He glanced at Vivi, who had settled on the edge of the bed, her shoulders rigid. “We’re not in the city. We’re in Greece, on Naxos. We’re holed up in a taverna in a little village called Apollonas.”
“How the fuck did you get there?”
“Long story,” Dom said. “The short version is Praetorian grabbed us in New York and brought us here to crack a vault. We did it. Mostly. Things got complicated.”
“Why would they want you to crack a—” Davey stopped short and exhaled slowly like he was counting to ten. “Wait, is Sabin with you? Are they using Vivi as leverage to get him to cooperate?”
“Other way around.” He winced and looked at Vivi, who turned away from the window to watch him. “Sabin isn’t the only thief in the Cavalier family.”
“Or in WSW employment,” Davey concluded. “Fuck. How long have you been stealing with them?”
“I’m not.”
“But you were. Guessing you retired at the same time as Sabin.”
He didn’t reply, because what was there to say? Davey had guessed it in one. The silence on the other end of the line stretched long enough that he could hear the hum of the WSW operations center in the background.
“How long?” Davey asked finally.
“The stealing? Few years. Off and on.” He kept his voice level. “Before I came back to the company full-time.”
“Does Cade know?”
The question landed like a fist. He hated the way bad news now got routed through the question of what Cade had known, what Cade had covered, what Cade had used, what he could use against them now that he was the enemy.
“No. Nobody knew. That was the point. Part of the thrill.”
Another silence. Dom could picture his oldest brother pinching the bridge of his nose, the way he always did when the world refused to cooperate with his expectations.
“Okay,” Davey said at last. “We’ll deal with that later.”
“Generous of you.”
“Don’t push it. Tell me about the vault. Tell me about Praetorian’s play.”
Dom sat down at the room’s small table, and the chair creaked alarmingly under his weight. He walked Davey through everything. Raines. The job. Villa Pandora. The Lazarus Protocol. The flooding sublevel. Stavros’s ultimatum. The furnace.
Davey was quiet for a long time after he finished. “You destroyed it? Tell me that was the right call.”
“It was. Praetorian couldn’t have it. Nobody could. It was too dangerous.”
“Okay.” A beat. “Okay. Where’s Sabin now?”
Dom looked at Vivi. She was watching him with an expression he couldn’t quite read.
“We don’t know,” he said. “Praetorian still has him, and now we’ve blown the job, so—” He stopped.
“So they have no reason to keep him alive,” Davey said flatly.
“They might,” Dom said, though it cost him something to say it with any conviction. “With his skills, he’s still a potential asset. They might try to convert him like they did Cade. Get him to switch sides.”
“That’s a thin thread to hang a man’s life on.”
“I know.”
Vivi stood abruptly and walked back to the window with her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. The late afternoon light cut across her sideways, catching the gold in her hair.
Even upset and stressed, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He was an ass for hurting her, and a fool for letting her walk out of his life without a fight.
If she ever forgave him, he’d spend the rest of his life making it up to her.
“Dom.” Davey’s voice pulled him back. “We’ve been tracking you since you disappeared. Daphne’s been working around the clock. She narrowed it down to Naxos this morning, so we’re already en route. We’ll hit Athens in about nine hours. Less than twelve till we’re on the island.”
So that background hum wasn’t at HQ, after all. It was the company jet.
Some of the tension eased out of Dom’s shoulders. Of course Daphne had found them. She was the best for a reason.
“Good,” Dom said. “That’s good.”
“Sit tight.” There was a pause, the sound of Davey speaking to someone else, then: “Anything else I need to know?”
Dom hesitated, thinking of Stavros’s words. An army of soldiers whose consciousness can be transferred. Leaders who need never die. “Yeah, but not over this line. Just... tell Daphne to dig into Heinrich Strauss. Everything she can find. It’ll help us understand what we’re up against.”
“Will do. And Dom? Don’t do anything stupid before we get there.”
“Define stupid.”
“Anything that ends with you dead.”
“Aw, you’re no fun.”
Davey gave a short, rare laugh. “It’s good to hear your voice, little brother.”
“Likewise.” Dom swallowed. “See you soon.”
He ended the call and met Vivi’s eyes. “Cavalry’s on the way. Twelve hours.”
She released a shaky breath and nodded. “Okay.”
“Your turn,” he said, holding out the burner.
Vivi took it and dialed Raines’s number from memory. Her spine straightened, her expression shifted, and suddenly she was someone else entirely—a woman used to getting her way, annoyed but not panicked, inconvenienced rather than desperate.
“It’s me,” she said when the call connected. Her voice had changed, taken on a harder edge. “We have a problem.”
Dom couldn’t hear Raines’s response, but whatever it was, it made Vivi’s mouth tighten.
“The vault security was more complex than your intel suggested,” she said, the perfect blend of accusation and professional annoyance. “We need more time to get in.”
She listened, then gave a short, cold laugh that didn’t sound like her. “Fine. Walk away. Good luck finding someone else to replace us on such short notice.”
Dom rose to his feet, prepared to take the phone if things went south, but Vivi held up a hand and listened intently to whatever Raines was saying.
“Yes, I’m aware you have my brother. I don’t want him with you any longer than he has to be, but we don’t have a choice here. We need more time to get this done.”
Another pause, and then she briefly shut her eyes in relief. “Yes, that’s reasonable.”
She ended the call without saying goodbye, and the mask dropped the moment the call disconnected. She slumped into the chair he’d abandoned, elbows on her knees, head bowed.
“He bought it,” she said. “Barely. We have forty-eight hours before he expects delivery. Unless he finds out what happened at Villa Pandora.”
“He won’t,” Dom said, with more confidence than he felt.
He moved to the window to check the street below.
No suspicious vehicles, no loitering figures.
Just a couple of old men playing backgammon at a table outside the taverna, glasses of ouzo between them.
“Raines doesn’t have men inside Pandora.
” Of that, at least, he was positive. “And Stavros won’t tell him shit. ”
She nodded, not looking up. The icon from her vault sat on the table beside her—the small Byzantine piece that had started everything three years ago. She reached out and touched it absently, tracing its worn edges.
“Hey.” Dom crossed the room and crouched in front of her chair.
She didn’t look up. Her hair had fallen forward, curtaining her face, and she was still touching the icon with two fingers like it was the only solid thing left. He could see the slight tremor in her hand.
“Vivi.” He said it quietly and cupped her face in his hands. “Look at me.”
She did, finally. Her eyes were dry, but only just. The careful neutrality she’d been carrying all day had cracked open somewhere between Raines’s voice and the moment she’d ended the call, and what was underneath it was exhaustion so complete it looked like grief.
He reached up and pushed her hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. She let him.
“When did you last eat?” he asked.
She blinked. Whatever she’d expected him to say, it wasn’t that. “I don’t—” She shook her head. “Breakfast. At the villa.”
He stood, glancing around the room. The taverna below was already filling with the sounds of the dinner service—the clatter of dishes, low music, the smell of garlic and olive oil drifting up through the floorboards. “Stay here.”
“Dom—”
“Stay here.” He said it gently and went to the door.