Chapter 293

ALEXANDER

Vincent pulled out his phone and tapped quickly across the screen, brow furrowed as he cross-checked whatever database he had access to.

“There’s no record of a basement on the original building plans or any of the later modifications,” he said, voice clipped and professional.

“According to every official document, this warehouse is a single-level structure with a partial mezzanine. Nothing below grade.”

I stared down at the wooden hatch still half-covered by the dragged-aside rug.

“Then what the fuck is this door?” I growled, irritation sharpening every word. The pain in my leg was a constant, burning throb, but it barely registered against the sudden spike of hope and rage twisting together in my chest.

Without waiting for an answer I crouched, ignoring the way my injured thigh screamed in protest, and yanked the heavy metal latch upward. It resisted for a second, then gave with a dull metallic clunk.

I hauled the door open. It swung wide and slammed against the concrete with a loud, echoing bang that bounced off the warehouse walls.

Cold, stale air rose from the dark opening. “Fuck… there’s stairs,” Dante muttered, leaning over to look.

I shot Vincent a hard look. “Well then,” I said, voice dripping with sarcasm, “apparently there is a fucking basement after all. Funny how the official documents somehow missed the giant secret dungeon under our feet. Must’ve been a fucking clerical error.”

Vincent didn’t flinch. He simply stared into the black square in the floor, phone still in hand.

“Officially, no,” he replied evenly. “Unofficially… someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure no one would know this was here.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My tongue felt heavy, my body suddenly numb in a way that had nothing to do with blood loss.

She was down there. I knew it the same way I knew my own name. The tracker had been telling the truth the entire time.

The signal hadn’t been a trap. It had been pointing straight to this hidden level the whole time we were tearing the upper floors apart like idiots.

Leo stepped in front of me, already turning on the torch function on his phone.

The narrow beam cut into the darkness below, revealing a steep set of concrete stairs leading down into black.

He turned his head slightly and spoke into the radio without raising his voice.

“All units, hold the upper level and the exits. No one comes in or out. We found a hidden access in the main floor — possible lower level that doesn’t exist on any plans. Dante, Vincent, with us. Everyone else stays sharp and keeps this place locked down. Confirm.”

A series of quiet clicks answered him.

Leo glanced at me, torch beam steady. “You good to move on that leg?”

“I’m fine,” I lied. The wound was still bleeding slowly into the makeshift pressure bandage he had tied around it, and every step was going to hurt like hell, but there was no version of this night where I stayed up here while they went after her.

Dante shifted his weight, peering down the stairs. “Could be a dead end,” he said quietly. “Or a kill box. Narrow stairs, only one way in or out. Perfect place to trap anyone coming after her.”

“Then we go careful,” Leo answered. “No rushing. We clear as we move.”

Vincent checked his weapon one more time. “If Santos is down there with her, he’s not going to open the door and invite us in. We should assume he’s armed and ready.”

I nodded once, jaw tight. “I know.”

I took the first step down.

My heart was racing, slamming against my ribs so hard it felt like it might crack bone. The air grew colder and damper the further we descended.

The smell of dust, old concrete, and something faintly metallic filled my nose. Leo’s phone torch and Vincent’s beside it were the only light — two narrow white beams sweeping across rough walls and the narrow staircase as we moved.

No one spoke for several seconds.

The only sounds were our careful footsteps, the soft scrape of boots on concrete, and the distant, muffled wail of the alarm still screaming upstairs.

It felt like we were dropping into another world entirely — one Santos had built specifically to keep her hidden.

Halfway down, Dante muttered, “This doesn’t feel like a storage level. Feels deliberate.”

“It is deliberate,” I said, voice low. “He wanted her somewhere no one would think to look. Somewhere that doesn’t exist on paper.”

Vincent’s beam swept across the wall. “No cameras visible. No sensors I can see. Either he didn’t bother, or they’re better hidden than the door was.”

“Or he didn’t think anyone would get this far,” Leo said.

When we reached the bottom landing, Dante pressed a hand against the wall, fingers searching for a light switch. He found one after a few seconds and flipped it.

A row of bare bulbs flickered to life along the low ceiling, casting a weak, yellowish glow over a short concrete corridor.

The place was unfinished. No proper walls. No tiles. Just raw concrete, exposed pipes, and the kind of damp cold that clung to the skin. It looked less like a basement and more like a fucking dungeon someone had carved out of the earth and forgotten to finish.

My legs felt unsteady as I took the first step inside. Then another. A few more and I stopped dead.

A foul smell hit me full in the face.

I shuddered..It was thick, sour, and unmistakable — vomit mixed with something older and worse. The air was almost impossible to breathe without tasting it. My stomach turned hard.

Alina. Was my wife here? In this place?

My heart squeezed so tightly it hurt. I forced myself forward on legs that suddenly felt less steady than the wound in my thigh could explain. The deeper we moved into the space, the stronger the smell became, coating the back of my throat.

Behind me someone gagged.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” a Dante gasped.

“Fuck, what is this?” Vincent growled, covering his nose with the back of his hand as he swept his weapon across the shadows.

Dante’s face had gone tight. “That’s not just old damp. That’s recent.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Every step deeper into the corridor made the reality harder to ignore.

She had been down here. Possibly for hours. In this cold, unfinished hole that smelled of sickness and neglect. The thought of her alone in a place like this — hurt, afraid, waiting — made something dark and violent coil under my ribs.

Leo’s voice stayed low and controlled. “Two doors at the end. One closed, one half open. We clear left first, then the open one.”

Vincent nodded. “Agreed. If he’s still here, he’ll be with her. He won’t leave her unguarded.”

“Unless he already ran,” Dante said.

“He didn’t run,” I said quietly. The certainty in my own voice surprised even me. “He’s too obsessed. He won’t leave her until he has no other choice.”

We advanced slowly, checking every shadow, every possible corner where someone could be waiting.

The corridor was narrow enough that a single man with a rifle could have held it easily — which made the fact that no one was currently shooting at us feel almost worse.

Either Santos had pulled his remaining men inside with him, or he had already decided how this was going to end.

Leo tested the first door carefully. Locked.

“Leave it,” I said. “We come back if we need to.”

We moved to the second door — the one with the light spilling from the gap.

I stopped just short of the frame, breathing controlled, every muscle coiled. Behind that door was either my wife… or another empty room that would finally break whatever was left of my restraint.

Leo glanced at me. “Ready?”

I gave a single nod. Leo shifted his stance, weapon raised. Dante and Vincent took positions behind us, covering the corridor and the locked door we had left.

I pushed the door open.

Ten men stood in a loose semicircle, rifles and pistols locked on our chests and heads. No one looked surprised. They had been waiting.

“You guys lost?” the leader’s voice cut through the stillness as he stepped forward, cocky swagger as fake as the confidence in his eyes.

Behind him, the others  were laughing. Low, amused chuckles, the sound of men who thought the fight was already over.

A couple of them muttered to each other, clearly convinced we had walked straight into a trap.

They thought they had us. Ten guns, one narrow doorway, nowhere to run. In their heads, we were already dead.

Stupid of them to think numbers meant anything.

I didn’t raise my hands. My voice stayed flat and cold.

“Not even a little.”

His smirk faltered, confusion flickering across his face.

He didn’t have time to figure it out.

My fist connected with his jaw before he even saw it coming. The crack of bone echoed off the concrete walls, sharp and satisfying. He stumbled back, hand flying to his face as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

His friends lurched forward instinctively — and that was their second mistake.

Leo moved first. He stepped in hard, drove an elbow into the nearest man’s throat, then stripped the rifle from his hands in one clean motion and used the butt to drop him.

Dante went low and fast, sweeping the legs out from under two more before either could get a clean shot off; one hit the floor hard enough to knock the wind out of him, the other caught Dante’s boot across the temple and stayed down.

Vincent was already on the right flank, disarming one shooter with a brutal twist of the wrist and putting a second on the ground with a short, vicious strike to the side of the neck.

In less than five seconds the semicircle had collapsed into chaos — men cursing, weapons clattering, bodies hitting concrete.

I didn’t give him room to recover.

I closed the distance on the mouthpiece still clutching his broken jaw.

My knife was already in my hand. I slammed him back against the concrete wall and pinned him there, the cold edge of the blade pressed hard against the side of his throat.

The smirk he’d been wearing vanished the second his eyes flicked down to the knife. His hands shot up, palms out, the universal sign of surrender.

“Whoa, man, come on,” he stammered, voice cracking. “We can talk—”

I leaned in closer, the blade not moving an inch from his throat.

“Where the fuck is my wife?” My voice was low, flat, and completely without mercy. “You have exactly ten seconds to tell me.”

His eyes went wide.

“Ten.”

He swallowed hard, the movement making the edge of the knife press deeper against his skin.

“Nine.”

“Eight.”

“Seven.”

“Six.”

“Five—”

“Okay! Okay!” he choked out, panic finally cracking through the last of his bravado.

“She’s in the room next door — the locked one! Only Santos has the key, I swear! We don’t have it!”

I didn’t ease the pressure of the blade.

“Santos,” I repeated, voice still deadly quiet. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know — he was with her earlier... That’s all I know, I swear—”

I drove my knee into his gut hard enough to fold him. He dropped, gasping. I followed him down just long enough to put the edge of the blade under his chin again.

"If you’re lying to me,” I said, “I’ll come back and finish what I started.”

Then I straightened and ran towards the locked door.

Leo was already moving to it, checking the frame and the heavy metal lock.

“Door’s solid,” Leo said under his breath. “No easy way through without making noise. Hinges are on the inside.”

I stared at the locked door, heart slamming against my ribs.

Alina was on the other side of it.

And somewhere behind that same door — or close enough — was Santos.