Read Chapter 28: Rescue at the Docks

The fish-port stank of diesel and dead things. Alex pressed himself against the rusted railing of the maintenance catwalk, the ledger heavy in his jacket, and watched the *Melusine* bob against berth nine. Sixty meters of white hull and dark glass, Viktor’s floating monument to money laundered clean. Four men on the gangway, just like the schematics said. Ostrowski at the bow, hands clasped behind his back like a palace guard.

Zoe’s voice crackled through the earpiece. “Casino cams are looped. You’ve got twelve minutes before anyone at the port authority notices the feed is ten seconds behind.”

“Make it count.” Alex rolled his shoulder. The wound burned beneath the bandage, wet and hot. He’d stopped looking at it. What he couldn’t see couldn’t slow him down.

“Jules is in the aft hold, starboard side. They’ve got him chained to a bolted ring, but he’s alive. I’m reading a pulse on the thermal—weak, but there.” A pause. “Alex. There’s another heat signature in there with him.”

“Guard.”

“Two. One stationed at the hold door, one walking the upper deck every six minutes.”

Alex checked his watch. “Marco, you ready?”

Marco’s voice came low, engine-rough. “Two minutes to the dock. I’ll have the boat close enough to throw a rope.”

“Stay out of sight until I give the word.” Alex exhaled, tasting salt and copper. He moved along the catwalk, boots silent on the corroded metal. Below, the water slapped against the pylons, covering the small sounds he made.

The plan was simple. Desperate. The best kind.

He reached the mooring line, thick as his forearm, and swung down. The rope burned through his gloves but held. He dropped onto the stern deck in a crouch, the ledger pressed flat against his ribs, and counted the seconds until the upper-deck guard would pass the ladder well.

Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.

He crossed the deck, ducked behind a life raft canister, and waited.

The guard appeared above, silhouette against the sodium lights of the harbor. Alex timed his breath. The man paused to light a cigarette, the flare of the lighter a tiny orange eclipse, and then moved on.

Alex slid to the aft hold hatch. Locked. He pulled the pick set from his boot, worked the cylinder with hands that trembled from adrenaline and blood loss. The fourth pin clicked.

The hatch opened onto a steel ladder descending into dark. Alex went down fast, boots hitting the deck with a soft thud. The hold smelled of bilge water and rust and something else—blood. Recent blood.

Jules was against the far bulkhead, wrists shackled to a ring bolted into the deck. His face was a ruin of purple and split skin, one eye swollen shut, but the other blinked open when Alex’s shadow fell over him.

“Took you… long enough.” Jules’s voice was a croak, barely a whisper.

“Traffic.” Alex knelt, already working the lock on the shackles. “Where’s the guard?”

“Took a piss break.” Jules tried to smile; it came out as a grimace. “I think I insulted his mother.”

The lock clicked. Jules’s hands dropped, and he sucked air through his teeth as the blood rushed back. Alex pulled him to his feet, supporting most of the weight. Jules was worse off than he’d hoped—ribs likely cracked, maybe a concussion. But he was alive.

“We need to move. Zoe says we have six minutes before the feed—” A sound cut him off. Footsteps on the deck above. Heavy, deliberate. The guard was back.

Alex pressed Jules against the bulkhead, put a finger to his lips, and drew the knife from his belt. The hatch opened, and a shaft of light cut down the ladder. The guard descended, boots ringing on steel, and Alex moved before the man’s feet touched the deck.

His arm locked around the guard’s throat, blade at the carotid. The man went rigid.

“Make a sound,” Alex breathed, “and you bleed out on this floor. Nod if you understand.”

The guard nodded, trembling.

Alex shoved him forward, against the hold wall, and brought the butt of the knife down on the base of his skull. The man crumpled. Alex caught him, lowered him to the deck, and zip-tied his wrists and ankles. Gagged him with a strip torn from his own shirt.

“Nice,” Jules said, leaning against the bulkhead. “You’re getting soft in your old age.”

“Shut up.” Alex pulled Jules’s arm over his shoulder, half-carrying him toward the ladder. “Can you climb?”

“Do I have a choice?”

They climbed. Jules went first, using the rungs with his good arm, Alex pushing from below. At the top, Jules collapsed onto the deck, and Alex dragged him behind the life raft canister.

The harbor lights were still steady. No alarms. Zoe’s voice came through, tight. “Five minutes. They’re going to notice the port authority feed is static soon. Get to the water.”

“Marco?” Alex spoke into the mic.

“On my way. Thirty seconds, north side of the hull.”

Alex looked at Jules. “You have anything in you?”

Jules’s one good eye met his, and something passed between them. “Yeah. I have what you need.”

They moved low, Jules somehow finding the strength to keep pace, half-stumbling across the deck. The north railing was cold under Alex’s hands. Below, a dark shape detached from the harbor shadow—Marco’s boat, engine barely above an idle.

The rope ladder hit the deck beside them. Jules grabbed it, hesitated.

“Alex. Before we go—” He turned, face swollen, voice cracking. “They were going to move me. Tonight. Viktor wanted me on his jet.” He swallowed. “And Alex. He was talking about a passenger. His ‘insurance.’ He kept saying the name Kessler like it meant something.”

Alex’s bloodstream turned to ice.

“Your brother,” Jules said. “And someone else. Someone they keep in a room on the east wing of the estate. They never let her out.”

*Ana.*

The name from the ledger burned in Alex’s mind.

“Go,” Alex said, forcing the word out. “Get on the boat.”

Jules swung over the railing, descended the rope ladder. Alex followed, hands slipping on the wet rungs, the wound in his shoulder screaming as he gripped. The boat dipped beneath his weight, and Marco grabbed his arm, pulled him in.

“Go,” Alex said. Marco gunned the engine.

The *Melusine* shrank behind them, lights still steady. No alarm. They’d made it.

Jules collapsed onto the bench, breathing ragged. Alex crouched in front of him.

“You said ‘they never let her out.’ Who? Who have they got?”

Jules looked at him, and the fear in his one open eye was deeper than the torture had put there.

“I don’t know her name,” Jules said. “But Viktor called her ‘the proof.’ He said if Luca ever found the courage to talk, he’d kill her himself. And Alex—the way he said it—I think she was already dead to the world once. He said he’d make sure she died a second time. For good.”

The engine cut through the harbor water. Alex felt the ledger against his chest, felt the inscription burning beneath his fingers.

*Ana Kessler.*

His mother had been dead for twenty years. The funeral. The casket. The ashes he had scattered in the sea.

Unless none of it had been real.

“Marco,” Alex said, his voice hard, steady despite the blood soaking his shoulder. “Change of course. We’re not going back to the safehouse yet.”

Marco looked at him. “Where are we going?”

Alex stared at the shrinking shape of the *Melusine*, Viktor’s floating kingdom of secrets.

“East wing of the estate,” he said. “Let’s go find a ghost.”