Read Chapter 29: The Sponsor's Payoff

The boat’s engine coughed as Marco cut it, letting the hull drift into the shadow of a rusted trawler. Rain had started again—a thin, cold drizzle that beaded on Jules’s forehead where he lay slumped against the gunwale. His face was a ruin of bruises, one eye swollen shut, but his good eye tracked Alex with a clarity that made Alex’s gut twist.

“You look like shit,” Jules said.

“You look worse.” Alex pressed a wad of torn shirt against his own shoulder. The fabric was already soaked through, dark and slick. “What happened on the yacht?”

Jules’s jaw worked. He tried to sit up, winced, and settled for propping himself on one elbow. “Viktor didn’t just bring me aboard to scare you. He wanted to talk.”

“About what?”

“His business.” Jules spat a thin string of blood over the side. “The Grand Prix sponsorship? The one that’s got his name plastered all over the circuit? It’s a front. A goddamn carousel of dirty cash.”

Marco leaned in from the helm, his face unreadable in the low light. “Everyone in Monaco launders through the casino. That’s not a secret.”

“Not through the casino.” Jules shook his head slowly, as if the movement cost him. “Through the race teams. Viktor’s sponsor deal with the Torrini team—the one he announced at the gala last month? It’s not about branding. He’s using the team’s supply-chain contracts to wash syndicate money through parts orders, travel logistics, hospitality packages.”

Alex’s mind raced ahead of Jules’s words. “He’s passing dirty cash through legitimate racing invoices. Inflating them, taking the overflow, paying it back as ‘winnings.’”

“Exactly.” Jules’s cracked lips pulled into something close to a smile. “The team’s pit crew gets paid three times their actual salary, then kicks back the difference to Viktor’s offshore accounts. The invoices are clean. The FIA audits see a sponsor pouring money into a struggling team. No one looks twice.”

“But the fixer in the family knows,” Zoe said from the bow, her voice muffled by the hood of her jacket. She hadn’t looked up from her tablet since they’d cast off. “The team principal has to know. Someone’s signing those checks.”

“The team principal is in Viktor’s pocket,” Jules agreed. “And so is the team’s finance director. But the man who actually runs the money—the one who builds the invoices, tracks the kickbacks, keeps the ledger balanced—he’s not on the team.”

“Who?” Alex asked.

Jules met his gaze. “His name’s Ostrowski.”

Marco laughed—a short, bleak sound. “The same Ostrowski who guards Viktor’s yacht? The one whose schematics you got for me?”

“Same one,” Jules said. “He’s not just muscle. He’s Viktor’s accountant. The man with the gun is also the man with the books.”

Alex’s shoulder throbbed, a hot pulse that traveled up his neck. He forced himself to focus. “So Viktor’s taking a ride on the syndicate’s money, skimming it, and laundering it through a racing team he doesn’t even own. That’s leverage. If the syndicate finds out their top man is skimming their own cash, they’ll tear him apart.”

“Not if Viktor gets to them first.” Jules shook his head. “He’s got Luca as insurance. He’s got your mother as proof. And he’s got a jet waiting to fly him somewhere the syndicate’s reach doesn’t extend. He’s not planning to survive this—he’s planning to disappear.”

Alex leaned forward, ignoring the fire in his shoulder. “What about the books? Ostrowski must keep records. Digital ones, given the volume of transactions.”

“He keeps them on a ship’s server aboard the *Melusine*,” Jules said. “That’s the real reason I was in the aft hold and not on the jet. Viktor wanted me close in case Ostrowski needed a ‘persuasion consultant’ to locate anyone who’d ever seen the books. The files are on a drive Ostrowski wears around his neck. He doesn’t let it leave his skin.”

Zoe’s fingers went still over her tablet. “A physical drive. He carries it.”

“Security through proximity,” Jules confirmed. “No remote access. No cloud backup. If you want Viktor’s laundering records, you take the drive from the man wearing it.”

Silence fell over the boat. The rain picked up, drumming against the hull. Alex’s mind turned over the pieces—the yacht where Jules had been held, the schematics Marco had used to break him out, the guard roster he’d memorized for the raid.

“You said Ostrowski was at the yacht,” Alex said slowly. “He was on duty during the rescue.”

“He was,” Jules said. “Which means he saw Marco break me out. Which means by now, he’s packing up the drive and moving it somewhere secure. You want it, you’ll have to find where he’s running to.”

Marco swore softly. “We don’t have time for another raid. The casino’s camera loop goes down in—” he checked his watch—“forty minutes. After that, the real security feeds come back up and Viktor knows we were in his system. Every resource he has gets pointed at us.”

Alex stared at the rain-slick deck. His brother was on a jet somewhere, about to be flown to a fate worse than death. His mother—the woman he’d mourned for six years—was locked in the east wing of Viktor’s estate. And now there was proof of Viktor’s betrayal to the syndicate, sitting on a drive around a dead man walking.

Three targets. One crew. Zero time.

“We split,” Alex said.

Zoe looked up sharply. “Alex.”

“Listen.” He held up his good hand. “The estate is where Ana is. The jet is where Luca’s being taken. The drive is the only thing that makes Viktor mortal. But we can’t hit all three at once. So we prioritize.”

“The drive,” Marco said. “If we can flip the syndicate against Viktor, he loses his protection. He loses the network that’s hiding him. That weakens everything else.”

“But Luca’s on the jet,” Jules said quietly. “And your mother is in that estate. You can’t trade them for financial records.”

Alex’s jaw tightened. “I’m not trading anyone. I’m sequencing. We take the drive, we get proof of Viktor’s double-cross to the syndicate, and then we have an army pointed at Viktor’s back. We don’t have to reach the jet first if the syndicate grounds it for us.”

“You’re betting on syndicate honor,” Zoe said. “They have no honor. They’ll take the proof, kill Viktor, and still come for us because we know too much.”

“Then we don’t give them the proof directly.” Alex looked at her. “We expose it publicly. Broadcast it. Make Viktor’s betrayal so public that the syndicate has no choice but to abandon him—if they touch us after that, they risk the whole operation being dragged into the light.”

“The race broadcast,” Zoe said slowly. “The whole Grand Prix weekend is televised. Every sponsor’s name on every banner. If the accusation goes out on that channel, in front of every powerful person Viktor’s ever fleeced…”

“He’ll be burned,” Alex finished. “I’ll have proof. I’ll have my brother. I’ll have my mother. And I’ll have Viktor with nowhere left to run.”

Jules’s good eye studied him. “You’re planning to go back to the estate. To find Ana.”

Alex didn’t answer.

“Alex,” Marco said, a warning in his voice. “You’re bleeding half to death. You’ve got a scratched-out hole in your shoulder and you’re talking about storming a syndicate boss’s manor.”

“Then you’d better find me a doctor,” Alex said, “because I’m not leaving her in that east wing another hour.”

The boat rocked. Somewhere in the distance, a ship’s horn sounded—low, mournful, like a warning Alex had no intention of heeding.

Zoe picked up her bag. “I know someone at the port clinic who won’t ask questions. But Alex—you’re not walking into that estate alone. Whatever you’re planning, we do it together, or we don’t do it at all.”

Alex held her gaze, then nodded once.

For the first time in hours, the plan felt less like a desperate grab at loose threads and more like a noose—one he intended to tighten around Viktor’s throat until the man had nothing left to hold over him.