Chapter 11: Flashback revival
The polished silence of the upper hallway was shattered by a low, guttural curse in Russian. Vito stood frozen outside the heavy oak door to Pace’s bedroom, his large hand pressed over his own eyes as if trying to erase what his ears had just reported.
The sounds from within had ceased only moments before—the final, frantic rhythm of the headboard, a choked-off shout, the heavy collapse. Now there was only thick, breathing silence, more intimate and unsettling than the noise.
He muttered again, this time in a pained whisper. “Chert poberi. Kakogo chorta.” Devil take it. What the hell.
A dry, amused voice spoke from the shadows near a marble bust of some forgotten Augustus. “Ty vypolnyaesh rol' shpiona osobenno ubezhdel'no, Vito.” You’re playing the part of the eavesdropper with particular conviction, Vito.
Vito dropped his hand and turned, his face flushing beneath his beard. Jace leaned against the wall, one arm still bandaged and secured in a sling, but his grey eyes were alert and glittering with dark humor. He looked paler than usual, but his presence was no less sharp.
“It’s not spying,” Vito grumbled, defensive. “The door is thick. But some sounds… carry. They have been carrying. For hours. It is not normal.”
Jace pushed off the wall with a wince he carefully disguised. “It’s normal. Lovers are just off-limits. A known rule. You’re the one pressing your ear to the forbidden fruit.”
“How can you be so calm?” Vito hissed, gesturing at the door. “Pace has… he has turned into a horny gremlin. It is unseemly. The security briefing this morning was punctuated by him staring at his phone, waiting for her to text back about what she wanted for breakfast. This is the man who broke a mercenary’s spine with his bare hands last Tuesday.”
A genuine, if faint, smile touched Jace’s lips. “I would say he’s possessive. And toxically jealous. He’s always been like that.” The last sentence was delivered in a flat, factual tone that held centuries of family history.
Vito’s eyes widened. “You mean his exes? The women from before?”
Jace shook his head slowly, the smile fading. “He’s never had relationships before Lina. What I meant was possession. Of objects. Territories. Legacies. People he considers his. The intensity was always there, just… unfocused. Now it has a target. A singular, brilliant, dangerously fascinating target.” He glanced at the door, his expression unreadable. “Just let them be. The more obsessed he is with her, the less he’s looking at other things. At us.”
He moved to walk past Vito, but stopped, his voice dropping to a serious, low register. “Anyway. Have you found out who shot me?”
The shift was jarring. Vito’s embarrassment evaporated, replaced by the cold professional focus. He nodded once, his voice dropping to match Jace’s. “Shell casings were a custom batch. Traced to a workshop in Prague that does work for… well, for several families who’d like to see the Augustus succession get messy.”
“The Vincenzo faction?” Jace asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Their signature is cleaner. This was sloppy. Angry. The shooter was good, but the planning was rushed. Personal, maybe.” Vito met his gaze. “You have made many personal enemies, Jace.”
“So has my brother,” Jace murmured. “But they shot me.” He was silent for a moment, thinking. “Keep it quiet. From everyone. Even Pace. Especially Pace. Let him think it’s an external threat. It keeps his protective rage aimed helpfully outward.”
Inside the bedroom, the world had condensed to the space of a large bed.
Lina lay awake, her body a map of pleasant aches and deep, throbbing tenderness. Pace was a dead weight beside her, one arm thrown possessively across her waist, his face buried in her hair. He slept with the shocking completeness of a soldier, utterly still and deeply unconscious.
The oblivion she’d clawed for in the dark had been granted, but now, in the grey morning light seeping around the curtains, reality was seeping back in. The ledger. TERMINATED. The name Theron. It sat in her mind not as a shock anymore, but as a cold, hard node of data. A problem to be solved.
She carefully extracted herself from under his arm. He grunted, his hand flexing on empty sheets, but did not wake. She padded naked to the en suite bathroom, closing the door softly before turning on the light.
The woman in the mirror was unfamiliar. Her silver-blonde hair was a wild tangle. Her lips were swollen. A faint, bluish bruise was forming on her hip, another on the inside of her thigh. But it was her eyes that held her. The usual icy detachment was gone, replaced by a simmering, violet intensity. She looked alive in a way that felt violent.
She showered quickly, the hot water stinging in pleasant ways. When she emerged, a clean, black dress—simple, expensive, unmistakably chosen by Pace—was laid out on a chaise lounge. She put it on. It fit perfectly.
She found him in the grand library. He was not lounging. He was standing at the tall window, a crystal glass of amber whiskey in his hand, though the hour was not yet ten. He was already dressed in a suit of charcoal grey, impeccable, but his hair was still damp from his own shower, and the predatory ease he usually wore was strained. He looked like a man holding a live wire.
He heard her enter and turned. His dark eyes scanned her from head to toe, a visual inventory that missed nothing. The approval in his gaze was tempered by a watchful tension.
“You’re up,” he said, his voice rough from sleep and other things.
“I couldn’t sleep anymore.”
He nodded, sipping the whiskey. “Coffee’s on the cart.”
She poured a cup, the rich aroma filling the space between them. The library was oppressively warm, the velvet chairs holding the heat. She took her coffee to a different window, putting distance in the room.
“We need to talk about the ledger,” she said, not looking at him. She felt him go still.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” he replied, the words final. “It’s a closed chapter. Ancient history.”
“It’s my history.” She turned then, fixing him with that new, intense gaze. “You don’t get to close the book on my life before I’ve even read it.”
He set his glass down on the marble windowsill with a sharp click. “What do you want from me, Lina? An apology for my grandfather’s sins? I’ll give you one. I am sorry. He was a vicious old bastard who saw people as entries on a balance sheet. Is that what you need?”
“I need to know who pulled me from that fire,” she said, her voice quiet but steady. “The oversight. The complication. Who was the cleaner who couldn’t shoot a child?”
Pace’s jaw tightened. “If I knew, they’d be dead. I told you that.”
“For saving me?”
“For taking what was mine.” The words were out, stark and unforgiving. He didn’t try to soften them.
A bitter smile touched her lips. “So my entire life, my freedom, my work, has been a theft from you. Is that the theory?”
He crossed the room in three swift strides, stopping just before her, his presence overwhelming. The scent of him—soap, whiskey, and that underlying warmth—wrapped around her. “No. Your life has been a prelude. To this. To here. To me.” He lifted a hand, but didn’t touch her. He just traced the air beside her cheek. “I can’t give you the past, Lina. It’s ash. But I can give you every fucking thing from this moment forward. Ask me for something. Anything in my power. But don’t ask me to resurrect ghosts that will only poison what we have.”
What we have. The phrase hung in the air, undefined, terrifying.
She looked up at him, at the storm in his eyes, the desperate possessiveness warring with a fear he would never name. She understood then that he was as trapped by this as she was. His cage was of his own making, but it was still a cage. He needed her inside it with him.
“I want access,” she said.
His eyes narrowed. “To what?”
“To the rest of it. The Augustus family archives. All of it. Not just the ledgers in dusty studies. The real records. The digital vaults. The research my father did for your grandfather. I want to see the work that got him killed.”
Pace recoiled as if she’d struck him. “No.”
“It’s my legacy. My intellectual property. You said anything in your power.”
“That is not in my power to give,” he snarled. “That vault… it’s protected by codes even I don’t have full access to. It’s a family lockbox. Jace and I need dual authorization. And he will never agree.”
“Then convince him.”
“Why? So you can see the blueprints of your own destruction? So you can hate me with clinical precision?” He grabbed her arms, his grip firm but not painful. “I am trying to protect you from that.”
“I don’t need your protection from the truth! I need your help to face it!” Her composure cracked, the scientist’s calm giving way to raw emotion. “He was my father! They burned him alive and erased me! Don’t you understand? I have to know!”
The library doors swung open.
Jace stood there, leaning lightly on the doorframe, Vito a looming shadow behind him. He took in the scene—Pace’s hands on Lina’s arms, her fierce, upturned face, the tension crackling in the air like static.
“Am I interrupting a lover’s quarrel,” he drawled, “or a boardroom coup?”
Pace dropped his hands, stepping back from Lina, his expression shutting down into an impassive mask. “Neither. We’re done here.”
Lina didn’t look away from Jace. She saw the sharp intelligence in his eyes, the calculating gleam. He was the key.
“I want access to the Tiberius Vault,” she stated, her voice clear in the silent room.
Jace’s eyebrows lifted slightly. He didn’t look at Pace. “Do you. And why would I ever authorize that?”
“Because my father’s research is in there. And I am the only person on earth who can complete it. You’re dying, Jace. Whatever temporary fix Pace wrangled from me is just that—temporary. You need the full sequence. The original schema. You need me, with all the information. Not the scraps you’ve tossed me.”
The air left the room. Vito’s stoic face tightened. Pace went perfectly rigid, a statue of controlled fury.
Jace merely smiled, a thin, bloodless curve of his lips. He pushed off the doorframe and walked slowly into the library, his movements still stiff with pain. “You’ve been doing your homework, little ghost.” He stopped a few feet from her, ignoring his brother entirely. “And what would you do with this information, once you had it? Finish daddy’s work? Cure me? Or perhaps craft a more elegant poison for the men who ordered his death?”
Lina held his gaze. “The work is neutral. The application is a choice. My choice.”
Jace chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. He looked at Pace. “She’s good. I see the appeal. It’s not just the hair and the desperate way she looks at you. It’s the spine.”
“Stay out of this, Jace,” Pace warned, his voice dangerously low.
“But she’s brought me into it, brother. She’s offering a trade. My health for our secrets.” Jace tapped a finger against his chin, pretending to consider. “The vault holds more than just Aris Theron’s notes. It holds every dirty deed, every buried sin, every weakness of every rival and ally we’ve ever had. It is the family’s heart, black and rotten and essential. You want to unleash this on the world because you have daddy issues?”
“I want to understand what I am,” Lina fired back. “What you made me. What my work truly is. You owe me that.”
“We owe you nothing,” Pace ground out. “You are here because I will it.”
The words were a slap. Lina flinched, the raw power dynamic laid brutally bare. Her violet eyes glistened, but she didn’t back down. She turned that wounded, fierce look on Pace, and for a second, something in his face fractured.
Jace watched the exchange, the calculation in his eyes moving at lightning speed. He saw the crack in Pace’s armor, the vulnerability Lina represented. A weapon, or a weakness. He could use this.
“I’ll consider it,” Jace said lightly, breaking the silence.
Both Pace and Lina turned to stare at him.
“What?” Pace’s question was lethal.
“I said I’ll consider her proposal. Dual authorization, remember? I hold half the key.” Jace smiled, enjoying the shock on his brother’s face. “But not today. I have a prior engagement. Vito, the car.”
He turned and walked slowly back toward the door, pausing to glance at Lina. “A word of advice, Doctor Vesperine. Be careful what you dig for in graveyards. You might not like what digs back.”
He left, Vito following with a last, troubled look at Pace.
The library was silent again, but the silence was now charged with a new, treacherous current. Lina had just played a card, and Jace had picked it up. She had created a schism, however small, between the brothers.
Pace stared at her, a tumult of emotions warring in his dark eyes: betrayal, fury, a dawning, horrible fear.
He closed the distance between them in one swift movement. His hand came up, his thumb brushing roughly over her bottom lip. “You think aligning yourself with him against me is smart? You think he won’t use you and then break you when you’re no longer amusing?”
“I’m not aligning with anyone,” she whispered, her breath catching. “I’m trying to survive this. All of it. With my mind intact.”
“Your mind,” he repeated, the words a caress and a curse. He leaned down, his forehead nearly touching hers. “Your mind is the most beautiful, dangerous thing I’ve ever wanted to own. And it is going to get you killed.”
Outside, the tires of Jace’s car crunched on the gravel drive, heading toward the city, toward his mysterious engagement. In the warm, suffocating stillness of the library, Lina realized the rules had just changed. She was no longer just a captive, a lover, a complication.
She was now a player.
The library’s warmth became stifling. Pace’s thumb still pressed against her lip, a possessive punctuation to his warning. His dark eyes searched hers, looking for a crack, a regret, anything to prove she was still something he could simply hold.
She didn’t give it to him.
He released her with a frustrated exhale that was almost a growl. Turning sharply, he snatched his whiskey glass from the windowsill. The crystal caught the light as he drained it. “You’ve just made everything harder.”
“It was already impossible,” Lina said, her voice steady. She could still feel the phantom impression of the ledger’s page against her fingertips. “I’m just refusing to pretend otherwise.”
He didn’t answer. He just stared out at the manicured grounds, his broad back a wall of tailored frustration. The distance between them, only a few feet of Persian rug, felt continental. She had drawn a line in the silk threads, and he was standing on the other side, realizing he couldn’t simply erase it.
“I have to go into the city,” he said finally, not turning around. His tone was all business, the lover completely subsumed by the Don. “Vito will remain. You will stay in the west wing. Do not wander. Do not go back to that study.”
“Am I a prisoner again?”
Now he turned. The intensity in his gaze was scalding. “You are a treasured asset in a den of wolves who’ve just seen you bare your teeth at the alpha. What do you think?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He strode past her, the air displaced in his wake cool against her skin. The library doors closed behind him with a soft, definitive click. The silence he left was different from the one before. It was charged with her own defiance. She was alone with it, and it was exhilarating and terrifying.
She didn’t return to the west wing.
She went to the main foyer, a cavernous space of checkered marble and a dripping crystal chandelier. She needed to move, to think in motion. From a shadowed alcove near a suit of antique armor, she watched Pace’s departure. He spoke in low tones to Vito by the front doors, his profile sharp.
“She doesn’t leave. She doesn’t get calls. She looks at a window too long, you tell me.” Pace’s voice, though quiet, carried in the still air.
Vito’s nod was a slow, sad arc of understanding. “Boss. She is not a hostage. She is… confused.”
“She’s a liability with the codes to my fucking nervous system,” Pace snapped, adjusting his cufflink with a sharp jerk. “Just watch her.”
He left, the heavy door thudding shut. Vito lingered, his massive frame slumping slightly. He pulled out a packet of cigarettes, looked at the no-smoking grandeur around him, and put them back with a sigh. He didn’t see Lina in the alcove.
She slipped away, down a side corridor she remembered led to the kitchens. The staff entrance was there, a grey steel door beside industrial freezers. It was, unsurprisingly, locked with a thick deadbolt. A small, high window showed a sliver of the delivery courtyard and the high, spiked perimeter wall beyond.
A player. But a player on a locked board.
The sound of a car engine, different from Pace’s purring sedan, growled to life outside. Peering through the window, she saw Jace’s sleek black car still idling in the courtyard. He hadn’t left. He was just sitting in the back, staring at his phone, waiting.
For what?
The kitchen door from the main house swung open. A young man in housekeeping livery hurried out, clutching a small, polished wooden case. He approached the car. The rear window slid down soundlessly. The man handed the case to Jace, accepted a folded bill with a nod, and scurried away.
Jace opened the case. Even from her distance, Lina recognized the glint of polished steel and dark oiled wood. A pistol. Not a modern polymer sidearm, but an older, elegant piece. A collector’s item. Or an assassin’s affectation.
He checked the chamber with a practiced, casual ease, slotted it back into the case, and placed the case on the seat beside him. The window rose. The car began to roll smoothly toward the main gate.
He was armed. He’d lied about a prior engagement. He was waiting for Pace to leave first.
A cold, logical dread crystallized in Lina’s stomach. The shot in the recovery ward. The rushed, personal attack. Jace’s convenient injury. His amusement at their strife. His immediate, calculated interest in her demand for the vault.
He wasn’t just playing the game. He was escalating it.
She ran.
Her flats were silent on the marble as she dashed back through the corridors, not toward the prison of the west wing, but toward the garage. She burst through the side door into the humid, petrol-scented air. Pace’s dark sedan was just turning onto the main driveway, about to disappear behind the hedge maze.
Jace’s car would take the other fork, the one that led to the city via the coastal road.
“Pace!” Her shout was raw, swallowed by the vast space.
He didn’t hear. The car slid away, a shadow in the morning sun.
Vito came thundering out of the main door behind her, his face alarmed. “Doctor! You must come inside!”
“It’s Jace!” she yelled, turning to him, grabbing his thick arm. “He has a gun. He was waiting for Pace to leave. He’s going after him!”
Vito’s eyes widened. He didn’t question her. He hauled a key fob from his pocket and sprinted toward a heavy, black SUV. “Get in.”
They peeled out of the garage, tires screeching on the cobblestones. Vito drove with a frightening, silent concentration, taking the coastal road at a speed that pushed Lina back into the leather seat. The ocean was a blue blur to their left.
“Call him,” Lina urged, her hands trembling.
“He does not answer when driving. He disconnects.” Vito’s knuckles were white on the wheel. “The coastal road has a choke point. Two miles ahead. A narrow bridge before the highway. If you were going to ambush…”
He didn’t finish. He just pressed the accelerator harder.
They rounded a steep curve, and Lina saw it. The narrow stone bridge, arching over a rocky cove. Pace’s sedan was stopped halfway across, blocked by a delivery van that had apparently stalled. Its hazard lights flashed a dull, repetitive yellow.
Jace’s car was stopped behind it.
As they watched, frozen in the approaching SUV, Jace emerged from his vehicle. He held the polished wooden case. He walked with purpose, not toward the van, but toward Pace’s idling sedan. His movements were fluid, unhurried. A man about to have a word with his brother.
Pace got out of his car. He stood, silhouetted against the dazzling sea, his expression one of pure, irritated impatience. He saw the case in Jace’s hand. His posture shifted, subtly, from annoyance to readiness.
They were too far away to hear the words. The brothers faced each other in the middle of the bridge, the van’s driver conspicuously absent. Jace said something, his head tilted. Pace answered, his hands relaxed at his sides, but his shoulders were a taut line.
Jace opened the case.
He didn’t pull the pistol out. He just looked at it, then back at Pace, as if presenting evidence.
Pace took a step forward.
Jace moved.
It wasn’t a drawn-out confrontation. It was a sudden, explosive detonation of pent-up violence. Jace slammed the wooden case shut and swung it like a bat, cracking it across the side of Pace’s head. The sound was a sickening thud of wood on bone.
Pace staggered, caught off guard by the blunt, brutal simplicity of the attack.
Vito swore, slamming the SUV’s brake, skidding to a halt thirty yards behind Jace’s car.
They were too far. They were stuck behind the blockade.
Lina watched, helpless, her breath trapped in her throat.
Pace recovered with animal speed, shaking off the stunning blow. A trickle of blood darkened his temple. He lunged, not for the case, but for Jace’s throat. Jace dropped the case and met him, his good arm driving a fist into Pace’s already injured ribs.
Pace grunted, the air leaving him, but his momentum was unstoppable. He drove Jace back against the stone parapet of the bridge, the impact shuddering through them both. They grappled, a vicious, silent tangle of suits and fury. There were no elegant martial arts moves. This was raw gutter fighting, all elbows, knees, and teeth.
Jace, weakened by his injury, was overpowered. Pace pinned him against the rough stone, his forearm across Jace’s throat. Jace’s face began to darken, his eyes bulging. He clawed at Pace’s arm, his polished shoes scraping uselessly against the bridge.
Then Jace’s free hand, flailing, found the fallen case. His fingers scrabbled, popped the latch. He didn’t pull the pistol out. He simply twisted, angling the open case.
The gun was inside, pointed upward.
He used his body weight to shove the case against Pace’s thigh.
His finger hooked inside the trigger guard.
The gunshot was a sharp, shocking crack that echoed off the stone and over the water.
Pace jerked. A spray of crimson misted the air. He didn’t scream. He made a choked, guttural sound, his grip on Jace’s throat loosening. Jace shoved him away, gasping, his hand now clutching the pistol properly.
Pace stumbled back, one hand clamping over his upper thigh. Blood welled instantly, seeping through the fine charcoal wool of his trousers, running in dark streams between his fingers. He wobbled, his leg buckling, but he didn’t fall. He caught himself against the hood of his own sedan, leaving a smeared, red handprint on the black paint.
He looked from his bleeding leg to his brother, who now stood pointing the elegant, smoking gun at his chest. The betrayal in Pace’s eyes was more profound than any pain.
Jace was breathing raggedly, his own face bloody from a split lip. He leveled the gun, his arm trembling slightly from strain or adrenaline. “Dual authorization,” he rasped, his voice raw from being choked. “You see, brother? You’ve never understood. It was never about sharing the lock. It was about which of us got to be the key.”
From the SUV, Lina watched the scene solidify into a nightmare tableau. The stalled van. The two bleeding brothers on the bridge. The gun. The vast, indifferent sea below.
Pace, wounded and leaning against his car, stared down the barrel. His gaze, however, slid past Jace. It found the SUV. It found Lina in the passenger seat, her face pale against the window.
Their eyes locked across the distance.
In his, she saw no plea for help. No fear. Just a furious, blazing acknowledgement. She had seen this. She had tried to warn him. She was here, witnessing the consequence of the game she had stepped into.
Jace followed his gaze. He saw Lina. A strange, twisted smile touched his bloody mouth. He lowered the gun, not out of mercy, but for a new audience.