Chapter 20 Eleanor"s POV
The east warehouse wasn’t just a storage facility, it was a fortress disguised as industrial decay. Crumbling brick, rusted metal, and chain-link fencing gave it the look of neglect. But the truth was colder: twenty-foot fences topped with razor wire, guard towers with dark mirrored glass, and the sharp scent of diesel, river water, and fear.
I sat in the back of the SUV, Alec up front, Ollie beside him.
Since our talk last night, Ollie hadn’t spoken a word.
His silence was a wall between us—solid, heavy, full of hurt.
Alec wore a black jacket over his suit, calm and focused. His eyes scanned the perimeter as we passed through three security checkpoints. At each gate, armed guards snapped to attention, their nods bordering on reverence.
“Welcome to the engine room,” he murmured as the SUV stopped in a vast, cavernous bay.
The ceiling soared overhead, held up by steel girders. Below, forklifts moved between stacked crates. Guards patrolled catwalks, faces hidden behind helmets. Workers in navy coveralls tapped tablets with quiet efficiency. This wasn’t just a warehouse—it was a nerve centre and I knew exactly what it meant.
I stepped out behind Alec, my flat shoes silent on the concrete. Ollie followed like a shadow. No one looked up—but I felt their awareness like static on my skin.
The Don didn’t bring visitors here.
Especially not a woman in a dark dress and wool coat.
We climbed a groaning metal staircase to a glass-walled office overlooking the floor—a command centre. Inside, David and two high-ranking capos huddled around a massive screen, faces tight with tension.
“Alec,” David said, turning. His eyes flicked to me—just for a second.
“We have a problem. The last shipment to Newark… it went dark.”
“Explain.” Alec stepped forward.
“Trackers are dead. The driver’s phone is offline. No distress call.
It just… vanished from the map.” He pointed to a blinking red dot near the docks.
“The cargo was significant.”
“The Ivanovs,” Alec said, jaw tightening.
“It’s their turf, but it’s too clean. Too quiet. Like the truck never existed.”
A cold knot formed in my stomach.
This was the rigidity I’d warned about—the predictable rotation schedule. But this wasn’t a chaotic hijack. This was ghosting. Professional and Silent.
They studied the map. But my eyes drifted to a corner of the screen—encrypted comms logs. Buried in the metadata of a routine system update, sent one hour before the truck disappeared, was a string of code.
A tag.
Ghostfire.
I’d seen it before—in deep-web research, in classified leaks.
Mikhail “Ghost” Voronin.
A hacker-for-hire from Riga who didn’t steal—he sold access.
My mind connected the dots instantly: same route, same system flaw, same clean digital erasure. This wasn’t the Ivanovs.
This was an inside job, enabled by a top-tier cyber mercenary.
I was still staring when Alec spoke.
“Eleanor.”
I looked up. He wasn’t watching the map anymore. He was watching me.
His gaze was sharp, probing. He’d seen the shift in my focus. “You see something.”
No point pretending. David and the capos turned, confusion and skepticism written on their faces.
The air vanished from the room.
I could’ve played dumb, but the memory of checkmate burned in my chest. This man had just confirmed that his father had ordered my father’s death and now, in this room thick with danger, he was waiting for my next move.
I stepped forward. “That’s a Ghostfire tag,” I said, voice steadier than I felt.
“A hacker-for-hire. He doesn’t steal cargo. He sells access.”
David blinked. “A what tag? How could you possibly—”
“They didn’t ambush the truck,” I cut in.
“They redirected it. Spoofed the signals. The truck isn’t missing—it’s exactly where they told it to go. They didn’t hijack your shipment. They betrayed your entire system from the inside.”
Silence crashed down.
The capos stared at me like I’d grown a second head.
Alec didn’t react. He studied me, then the screen, then me again. “Ghostfire,” he repeated slowly.
“Mikhail ‘Ghost’ Voronin. Riga. His signature’s in the third-layer packet header.” The words spilt out. “Trace the payment—it’ll be crypto, routed through proxies. But the digital path will leave a trail.”
David sputtered.
“This is absurd. A maid knows hacker signatures?”
Alec raised a hand—shut him down instantly. His eyes never left mine. “And if it is Ghostfire… who hired him?”
I met his gaze. We both secretly knew the truth.
“Someone with money. Someone who wanted the cargo, not a war, and a person with internal access codes to make the breach look real.” I glanced at the others, then back at him.
“It wasn’t the Ivanovs. This was an inside job and a very profitable one.”
The room thickened with the unspoken accusation: one of your own.
Alec held my stare for a long moment. Then, without breaking eye contact, he turned to David. “Get our tech team now. Search for Ghostfire traces and audit all internal system access in the last 72 hours. Sweep this room for bugs too.”
He moved toward the door. “Eleanor. With me.”
He paused.
“Not you, Oliver. Stay.”
I followed Alec out. Behind me, I felt Ollie’s eyes—hurt, angry, betrayed.
We descended the stairs in silence. He led me off the main floor, through a heavy soundproof door, into a small, stark side room: metal table, two chairs, one-way glass.
An interrogation room.
He shut the door. The warehouse noise vanished, replaced by a silence so deep I could hear my own pulse.
He didn’t sit. He leaned against the table, arms crossed, and looked at me—really looked—as if seeing me for the first time.
“A Latvian hacker’s packet header signature,” he said quietly. “Not from a book or from ‘reading a lot of history.’ This is live, underground intel. The kind known to spies… or someone with a very personal reason to be here.”
He stepped closer. Now I smelled sandalwood, steel, controlled fury.
His eyes—grey, sharp—locked onto mine. “Who are you?”
The maid was gone. The strategist stood exposed. Only the truth remained.
I lifted my chin.
“I’m the daughter of the man your father had killed and the only person in this building who can find your missing shipment.”
The air changed. But his expression didn’t. Only in his eyes—something shifted. A shockwave.
Then a chilling understanding. All the pieces I’d placed clicked into place.
He didn’t reach for a weapon. Didn’t call for guards.
“Prove it,” he said.