Chapter 35 Alec’s POV
The cold hit me first. Not the clean, biting chill of the Alps, but something deeper, bone-aching, damp, rising up through the floor like it was trying to claim me from the inside out.
Darkness.
Smell of wet earth and gasoline, sharp and chemical.
Fragments came back in flashes, jagged and disorienting—the explosion didn’t come from below, it blew out the villa’s side. The world flipped. Killian’s hand, rough and urgent, shoving me through the library floor hatch. “Down!” Then falling. Sliding through a narrow chute of stone and dust. Impact. Black.
Now this.
Still dark. Still cold. Pain lancing my ribs, my head throbbing like a drum hit too hard. But I was breathing.
And that almost felt worse than dying—because breathing meant I’d survived, and surviving meant I still had to face what came next.
I was in a root cellar—low ceiling, rough stone walls, shelves lined with dusty jars of preserves gone to mold. A single hurricane lamp glowed on an upturned crate, casting a small, flickering circle of light that barely pushed back the dark. It hadn’t been lit when I first woke. Someone else had been here. Someone who’d decided I was worth saving.
I sat up on the narrow cot, kicking off a coarse wool blanket that smelled of mothballs and mildew. The room tilted. I grabbed the damp stone wall to steady myself, knuckles white. My clothes—the fine cashmere sweater, the tailored wool coat I’d worn like armor to my own execution—were shredded, stiff with dried blood and soot. And my signet ring was gone.
They’d taken it. Placed it on another man’s hand.
The message was clear: You’re dead. This is your proof.
A scrape in the shadows, just beyond the lamplight. I froze, every muscle coiled. No weapon. No shoes. Just me and four walls.
“You’re awake.”
The voice was dry, tired, not cruel, just worn down by years of silence and solitude. “About time.”
An old man shuffled into the light. Bent at the waist, dressed in patched work clothes faded to the color of dirt. His face was a map of wrinkles, eyes sharp beneath bushy brows. In his gnarled hands, a tin cup.
“Water. It’s clean.”
I took it slowly, eyes never leaving his. Sniffed the rim. Nothing off—no bitter tang, no chemical sting. Took a cautious sip. Cold, clean, almost painfully real. A relief so sharp it nearly brought tears to my eyes. “Who are you?”
“Caretaker,” he said with a shrug, as if it explained everything. “Of this place. Others like it.” He gestured vaguely upward, toward the world above. “I keep the accommodations ready. Vain paid for silence. And readiness.”
“A safe house. Part of his paranoid network.”
He nodded. “Heard the mountain cough last night. Like thunder in the wrong season. Went down to the old air shaft outlet at dawn. Found you half-buried in scree, blood on your side, but breathing.” He paused, studying me. “Dragged you here with my garden cart. You’re heavier than you look.”
“You dragged me?” I glanced at his thin arms, his stooped frame.
A faint smile touched his lips. “Cart’s got wheels.” He crossed his arms, took me in—the blood, the burns, the hollow look in my eyes. “They’re combing the cliffs now. Dogs. Flashlights. Found a body, or what was left of one. Big man. They zipped him in a black bag for the news crews.”
Killian.
My throat closed like a fist. Loyal to the end, he’d taken my place. Died so the story could be closed. So I could disappear.
The cold in my chest hardened into something sharp and unyielding.
“The ring?” I asked, voice tight.
“On the body. Saw it myself on the village TV. They showed it close-up—silver, lion crest. Said it belonged to Alexander Sterling.” His eyes locked onto mine, sharp and knowing. “You were supposed to be finished.”
“I am,” I said quietly. Alexander Sterling—the Don, the heir, the ghost—was ashes now. A headline. A closed file in a government archive. What stood here was just a ghost, digging his own grave with bloody hands.
I drained the cup, the water doing little to ease the dry ache in my throat. “How long?”
“Day and a night. Lost a lot of blood from your side. Stitched you up myself. Won’t win any medical prizes, but it’ll hold—if you don’t move too fast.”
A day.
Ellie would have seen the news by now. Ollie too. They’d think I was gone. Grieving. Maybe even relieved to be free of the man who dragged them into hell.
That hurt more than the wound in my ribs. More than the burn on my arm.
I had to move. Had to reach her before she walked into a trap thinking she was alone.
“I need to get to Geneva.”
The old man let out a dry laugh, like dead leaves skittering across stone. “Impossible. Roads are watched. Trains too. Not just for you—something’s burning online. I hear it on the radio. ‘Carthage Files,’ they’re calling it. The people who did this? They’re scrambling. Chasing ghosts in Geneva, in London, in New York. They’re not looking here.”
Ellie.
She’d done it. Launched the files. Lit the fuse. And now the whole machine was shaking, its gears grinding, its masters exposed.
This was my only chance.
“What is possible?” I asked. Not a question. A command.
He didn’t flinch. Looked past the blood and bruises, past the hollow eyes, to the will that hadn’t broken. Nodied slowly. “There’s a way. Not for a man. For a ghost.” He pointed to a burlap sack in the corner, half-filled with potatoes and onions. “Delivery run. North ridge chalet. Food, supplies. Van leaves in two hours, before dawn. Driver’s old. Blind in one eye. Asks nothing. Drops off in Annecy.”
Annecy. France. One step out of Switzerland. One step closer to her.
“The depot,” I said.
“From there, you’re on your own. But the world thinks you’re dead.” He met my gaze, something like respect in his tired eyes. “That’s a powerful kind of freedom, isn’t it?”
It was. My greatest weapon now wasn’t a gun or a name. It was my own corpse.
They’d buried me. Now I could walk unseen.
“Bring me the bag.”
Two hours later, Alexander Sterling was gone.
In his place stood a laborer—hair hacked short and uneven, face smudged with ash, clothes loose and stained. I moved slowly, favoring my side, eyes downcast, shoulders slumped—not acting tired, being it. I looked like a man who’d worked himself to the bone and had nothing left to give.
I stood at the cellar door as the caretaker pushed it open to the pre-dawn gray. The air was crisp, sharp with pine and the damp rot of fallen leaves.
“You got a destination?” he asked quietly.
I looked south—toward France, toward Geneva, toward the woman who’d turned my war into her own. I had nothing. No phone. No money. No allies. Just my mind, my will, and the cold, unshakable fact that I was still breathing.
“Yes,” I said, voice low, rough as gravel. “I need to find a hunt that isn’t looking for me… and walk right into its path.”
I slung the sack over my good shoulder. It pulled at my stitches, a fresh wave of pain lancing through my side. I didn’t care.
“And the girl?” the old man asked softly, almost hesitantly. “The one in the photos—Rome, Geneva? The one they’re hunting too?”
My mask slipped—just for a heartbeat.
The real me showed through: the fear, the hope, the fierce, aching love I’d buried under layers of ice.
“She is the hunt,” I whispered.
I stepped into the gray morning light, leaving the tomb behind.
A dead man walking.
A ghost with one purpose: reach her before she loses the war we started together.
In the distance, the van’s engine coughed to life.
I walked toward it, each step a quiet refusal of the lie they’d told the world.
The game wasn’t over.
I was still in it.
And the dead?
Sometimes, they’re the only ones who see the whole board.