Chapter 33 Eleanor's POV
Geneva smelled like money and quiet power. Clean air from the lake, smooth stone sidewalks, a calm that felt polished and untouchable. Nothing like the raw chaos of the mountain.
We’d gotten here in pieces. A quiet doctor in Visp stitched my shoulder without asking questions, his eyes lingering on the dirt and exhaustion in our faces. Ollie got us fake passports, thin, flimsy things that somehow worked. We took slow trains, changed in small stations, and every time a uniformed official glanced our way, my heart jumped.
Ollie barely spoke. He made sure I ate, changed my bandage, slept. The easy friendship we’d once shared was gone, replaced by something heavier, grief, guilt, the weight of what we’d lost. He watched me when he thought I wouldn’t notice.
I let him. I didn’t have the energy to pretend. Sorrow sat in my chest like a stone, heavy and cold. On the train, I’d cry in the bathroom, pressing my forehead to the metal wall. Then the tears would stop, and I’d go numb, staring out the window at nothing.
Alec.
Just saying his name in my head felt like breaking glass. There was no body. No funeral. Just white light, then silence. He’d died for me, with three words on his lips I never got to answer.
The guilt was worse than the wound. I’d pulled him into my war, and he’d paid the price.
We reached Geneva at dusk. The city sparkled, clean, distant, perfect. Ollie led us to a small hotel in the Eaux-Vives district, far from the glass towers of banks and finance. Two narrow beds. A window looking onto a quiet courtyard. A place for ghosts to hide.
“We need to find him,” I said, my voice rough from disuse. I sat on the edge of my bed, my father’s notes replaying in my mind. “Henri Leblanc. A journalist. My dad said if I ever needed the truth and couldn’t go to the police, I should find him.”
Ollie sat at the small desk, cleaning his gun with quiet focus. “Those notes are fifteen years old. What if he’s dead?”
“Then we’ll know soon enough,” I said. “But he hated them, ‘Carthage’ ruined his life. My father saved him. He’ll remember.”
Ollie nodded, snapping the gun back together. “We go at sunrise. I’ll scout first. No surprises.”
I didn’t argue. Letting him take charge was easier. I was too tired to fight.
That night, I dreamed of white light. Alec stood in it, not saying I love you, but, Find it. Find it.
I woke with a gasp. The room was dark. Ollie’s steady breathing from the other bed was the only thing keeping me grounded.
Find it. The data. The IP address Alec gave his life for.
It was out there. His last act. A ghost in the machine, waiting for me.
\---
The building on Rue de la Terrassière was old, its stone worn smooth by time. No buzzer. Just a heavy wooden door with a stubborn lock.
We watched from a café across the street for two hours. An old woman with a dog went in. A young couple came out. No sign of Leblanc.
“I’ll go alone,” I said. “You showing up with a gun might scare him off.”
Ollie’s jaw tightened. “Five minutes. If you’re not back, I’m coming in.”
I crossed the street, heart pounding. My shoulder throbbed under my sweater. The front door creaked open. The stairs were narrow, smelling of cabbage and floor polish.
At the top, I knocked on apartment 5B.
Silence.
I knocked again, harder.
A shuffle inside. A chain rattled. The door cracked open, held by a metal bar. One cautious eye peered out from beneath a wild beard.
“Monsieur Leblanc?” I said. “My name is Eleanor Shaw. Alistair Shaw was my father.”
The eye blinked. Widened. The door shut.
For a terrible moment, I thought he’d left me there. Then came the sound of locks sliding. The door opened.
Henri Leblanc was shorter than I’d pictured, wrapped in a threadbare cardigan. His apartment was a maze of paper, books, files, newspapers stacked floor to ceiling. A narrow path led to a desk with three old computer monitors.
He stared at me like I was a ghost. “Alistair’s daughter,” he whispered, his English accented but clear. “He said you were clever. Showed me a photo. You had, pigtails.”
The mention of my father, so ordinary, so human, hit me hard. I swallowed. “He said if I needed the truth, I should find you.”
His eyes flicked to the stairs. “Alone?”
“No. A friend. Downstairs.”
“The friend has a gun,” he said, not a question. He’d seen Ollie watching from the street. He sighed. “Come in. Quickly.”
I stepped into the paper fortress. He locked the door with three heavy bolts.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said, gesturing to a stool.
“I have,” I said. “More than one.”
I told him the essentials, about ‘Carthage,’ Gideon Vain, the hidden data packet waiting at a remote IP address. I left out Alec. Left out the mafia. But I gave him enough.
His weary eyes lit up. He paced his narrow path, fingers brushing stacks like they were old friends. “Vain! I knew it! The money, the whispers, all pointed to the Alps!” He turned, eyes sharp. “You have the key?”
“I have the address. I need a secure way to access it, before someone else does.”
Leblanc swept a hand around his room. “This is my cemetery for truth. And you bring me a resurrection.” He powered up his monitors. “My ‘dark room.’ No internet. No trackers. A fortress. We’ll find your ghost.” He paused. “But be warned, you can’t unsee what you’re about to see.”
I typed in the IP address Alec died for.
Leblanc’s fingers flew across his keyboard. Minutes passed in silence, just the hum of machines and my racing heart.
“It’s there,” he whispered. “Encrypted, but the structure, familiar.” He ran decryption tools. “This will take hours. Your source, is he trustworthy?”
I saw Alec’s face in the red emergency light. Calm. Certain.
“He’s trustworthy.”
A firm knock came at the door, Ollie’s signal.
I let him in. He scanned the room, then took position by the window, eyes on the street below.
Leblanc brought us bitter coffee. Ollie refused it, never looking away from the glass.
As sunset painted the room gold, Leblanc suddenly leaned forward. “The outer layer is open. Bank accounts. Shell companies. Property deeds. Emails. Mon dieu, it’s not a project. It’s a living machine. ‘Carthage’ is an organism.”
My throat went dry. “Can you trace who’s behind it?”
“Months of work! Maybe years!” He sounded equal parts terrified and thrilled. “Start with the Senator. And anyone using the name ‘Kingmaker.’”
He typed. Screens filled with names, transfers, contracts. He stopped on a scanned letter. The signature was crisp, confident.
“Do you know this name?” He turned the screen.
I stared. Sir Alistair Fleming. Knighted. Respected. A man who gave speeches at charity galas.
My father’s namesake.
A chill colder than any mountain wind ran through me. This wasn’t criminals. It was the system itself, the men who shaped the world from leather chairs.
“Kingmaker,” I whispered.
“Maybe,” Leblanc said. “Or just another mask. But these aren’t men you fight with bullets. They own the courts. The police. The truth.”
Ollie had moved beside me, face grim. “This is suicide, Ellie. You can’t win this.”
He was right. This was the real enemy, vast, silent, everywhere.
Despair threatened to drown me.
Then I saw it, a secondary ledger. “Security services.” Contractor, Sterling Holdings. Signed not by Michael, but Alexander. Eight years ago. A million-dollar “consultation” on Carthage assets.
Alec had known. He’d been fighting to clean his own house from the inside.
Grief hardened into something sharper.
I hadn’t survived because he died.
I survived because he gave me the weapon.
I looked at Leblanc. “We copy everything. Then we don’t just leak it. We weaponize it.”
His eyes gleamed. “A public database. A map of every connection. No opinions. Just proof.”
“They’ll come for us,” Ollie said quietly. “Erase us.”
I met his eyes. For the first time since the mountain, I saw fear, not for himself, but for me.
“I know,” I said. “Let them try.”
I heard Alec’s voice, not from the end, but the beginning, We burn them together.
He was gone.
But I was still here.