Read Chapter 12: The Tide of Betrayal

The water slammed Marcus against stone and dragged him under. He kicked, oriented, broke surface—cold, brutal cold—and gasped. Around him, the flood spat them out of the mountain into a low, black river tunnel, walls slick with algae, the ceiling inches above his head. Beside him, Sophie surfaced with a choked cry, her injured arm useless, the other scrabbling at the rock.

He grabbed her collar. “Breathe. Just breathe.”

The current eased. They floated in a slow, dark drift. The iron chest was gone—swallowed by the same water that saved them—and with it, the ledger.

“Marcus.” Sophie’s voice was a thin thing, shaking with cold. “There’s light.”

Ahead, a pinprick of white. Artificial. Steady. As they drifted closer, it grew into a cone of halogen spilling from an opening in the tunnel wall, a steel ladder rising out of the water into a service shaft. And at the top of that ladder, boots. Two pairs. Then a face.

Anya Petrova smiled down at them, sleek black coat dripping no water of her own. She held a pistol in a gloved hand, trained lazily on Marcus’s forehead.

“Mr. Webb,” she said. “You found the back door. Convenient.”

Marcus trod water, Sophie clutched at his arm. Behind Petrova, two heavies descended the ladder, reaching for them with meaty hands. Marcus had options—a dozen of them, all stupid. He let them haul him out.

The shaft opened into a larger cave, dry, warmed by portable heaters. Petrova had set up a small command post: crates, radio equipment, a folding table with a map weighted by stones. She gestured to the table. “Sit. You look cold.”

Marcus didn’t sit. Sophie did, collapsing onto a crate, her shoulder a mess of blood and ice-grey skin.

Petrova circled them like a financier assessing collateral. “You’re wondering how I found you,” she said. “The avalanche was luck. This—” she tapped her temple—“was strategy.”

“Where’s the ledger?” Marcus said.

“Gone. Drowned. Lovely.” Petrova shrugged. “I had men on the ridge above the glacier. They reported the ice breaking. But you knew that. What you don’t know is that I’ve been watching you since London. No—before London. Since Milan.”

Marcus’s blood went cold in a way the water hadn’t managed.

Petrova turned to Sophie. “Tell him.”

Sophie’s face was the colour of the stone around them. “Anya—”

“Tell him what you told me. The price you took. Every time.”

Marcus looked at Sophie. Really looked. The way she wouldn’t meet his eyes. The way her good hand trembled. The way her breath had gone shallow before the avalanche, when she’d insisted on the exact route across the glacier.

“Sophie,” he said, quiet. “Tell me she’s lying.”

Sophie opened her mouth. Closed it. Then, barely audible: “She’s not.”

The words landed like fists. “How long?”

“Eleven months,” Petrova supplied, pleasantly. “She fed me the Baroness’s schedule for eight. She sold me the Turin coin’s provenance for three thousand euros. She gave me your route before you left Paris.” She leaned in, close enough for Marcus to smell her perfume—expensive, clinical. “Your brother worked for me, Mr. Webb. Did you know that too? Tom was very useful. Until he wasn’t.”

“Where is Tom?”

“Gone,” Petrova said. “Like the ledger. The question is what you know—and I don’t have patience for the Bardi theatricals. The names. The archive in Turin. The debt network. Give me everything.”

“I don’t have it,” Marcus said. “I found an empty chest and a flood.”

Petrova laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. She drew a second weapon—not a pistol. A radio. She keyed it, spoke rapid Russian, waited. Then her face changed. Tension crept into her jaw.

A voice crackled back—older, male, and unmistakably displeased. Marcus caught a single English word in the flood: “Zürich.”

Petrova’s expression flickered. Loss of control. She pressed the radio to her ear, turned away from Marcus and Sophie, spoke low into it. The heavies exchanged glances. Whatever the voice said, it had cut the theatre short.

Petrova clicked the radio off. She seemed smaller. Then she straightened, walked to the folding table, and picked up a single cartridge from an open box. A 9mm round, brass and copper, glinting under the halogen.

She crossed to Marcus. Held the round up between thumb and forefinger.

“Circumstances change,” she said. “I have other fires. But I don’t leave loose threads tied, and I don’t leave them cut.” She pressed the cartridge into Marcus’s palm, closed his fingers over it. “One bullet, Mr. Webb. For you, or for her—your choice. I’d recommend you decide before I reach the surface.” She nodded to the heavies, and all three walked toward a steel door at the far end of the cave.

The door slammed. Metal echoed. Then only the drip of water and the hum of the heater.

Marcus stood with the round warm in his fist. Sophie was watching him, grey-faced, her lips parted—not to speak. To brace.

“Marcus,” she whispered. “I can explain. There was this doctor—I owe money, they said I had—people do terrible things when they’re afraid.”

He looked from the bullet to her. Then, very slowly, he released the cartridge and let it fall. It rang against the stone floor and rolled, wobbling, coming to rest between them.