CHAPTER 17 : THE EAST TUNNEL
1605 Words
POV: Alessia De Luca Volkov
The reception finally ended shortly after midnight.
No one mentioned Emir, not directly.
That was the strange thing about powerful people. The closer they came to violence, the less willing they were to acknowledge it afterward.
The Turkish delegate spent the remainder of the evening looking as though someone had placed a gun against the back of his head.
No one asked why, no one needed to.
Cassian’s warning had spread through the room faster than any rumor ever could.
Touch her again and I’ll feed you to the wolves.
The words lingered long after the music stopped. I noticed the way conversations shifted whenever I approached, the way certain guests lowered their voices, the way some men suddenly became very interested in the contents of their drinks whenever I looked in their direction.
They weren’t afraid of me, they were afraid of what belonged to me or more accurately. Who.
Cassian had spent the rest of the reception speaking with foreign syndicate leaders as though nothing had happened.Nobody else seemed fooled. Neither was I because I had seen his eyes.
Seen the wolf looking back, seeing how close he had come to losing control. The thought followed me all the way through the fortress. The hallways had emptied considerably by the time I escaped the final round of diplomatic conversations.
The estate felt different at night. Quieter, older. The silence settled around the stone walls like a living thing. I was halfway to my room when a shadow moved at the far end of the corridor.
I stopped.
The figure disappeared immediately. Too fast, too deliberate. My pulse quickened.
“Hello?”
No answer, only silence. I should have ignored it. I should have turned around. Instead, curiosity won. Again.
The figure had vanished into a service corridor leading toward the eastern wing. The oldest section of the fortress. A section most guests never entered, a section I had repeatedly been told was restricted which immediately made me want to know what was hidden there.
I followed.
The further I walked, the more the estate changed around me.Luxury disappeared, marble floors gave way to rough stone, decorative lighting became industrial fixtures bolted directly into ancient walls. The temperature dropped noticeably, cold air drifted through the corridor. The kind of cold that belonged underground. Something wasn’t right.
The feeling intensified when I reached a steel door standing partially open. Light spilled through the gap. Someone had been here recently. I hesitated.
Cassian would absolutely hate this. That thought alone nearly convinced me to leave. Nearly.
Then voices echoed from somewhere beyond the door and I stepped inside. The room looked nothing like the rest of the estate. Maps covered the walls, shipping routes, supply chains, cargo schedules, port locations, photographs, coordinates, operational reports.
My eyes widened.
This wasn’t storage, this was a command center. A place where people tracked the movement of the Volkov empire. Several routes across Eastern Europe had been highlighted in red. Others were crossed out entirely.
One route caught my attention immediately. A black circle surrounded a handwritten note.
EAST TUNNEL ACCESS.
Tunnel?
Before I could investigate further, voices approached. I slipped behind a shelf. Two Volkov soldiers entered and neither noticed me.
“Another shipment gone.”
“We lost twenty million euros.”
“We lost more than that.”
The first soldier slammed a folder onto the table.
“The routes keep getting leaked.”
The second man lowered his voice.
“Because somebody is leaking them.”
Silence followed, heavy, dangerous.
“You really think someone inside is helping Kozlov?”
“I think too many operations are failing to believe otherwise.”
My stomach tightened, Kozlov. Again.
The name seemed to appear everywhere lately. Neither soldier looked comfortable, neither looked convinced by their own explanations. Eventually they left.
The room fell silent once more. I remained hidden until their footsteps disappeared. Then I approached the table. The folder remained where they had left it.
I opened it. Photographs, destroyed trucks, burned containers, dead soldiers. The same Romanian shipment Cassian and Nikolai had been discussing earlier. Page after page revealed losses worth millions.
Then something caught my attention.
A symbol. Tiny, easy to miss. A black wolf head surrounded by three claw marks.
My stomach dropped.
I knew that symbol, I’d seen it before. In intelligence reports,in photographs connected to Damian Kozlov’s operations.
Why would it be here?
Unless somebody had marked the shipment before the attack.I turned another page, same symbol, different cargo route.
Another page, same symbol again. Cold dread settled in my chest. This wasn’t random. Somebody was selecting targets, somebody was feeding information directly to Kozlov.
A real traitor, not a rumor, not paranoia. A real person sitting somewhere inside the Volkov empire. Someone inside the Volkov empire was feeding information directly to Kozlov.
I kept digging through the files. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was searching for. I only knew I wasn’t finished. The symbol had appeared too many times, the attacks were too precise. Something else had to be here.
Several shipping manifests sat stacked beside the operations board. I picked up the first folder and began comparing dates.
For a moment, everything looked normal. Then I noticed the numbering. Page forty-seven, page forty-eight, page fifty-two.
I frowned.
Where were the missing pages?
I checked again.
The same thing happened in another file and another. Entire sections had been removed, not misplaced, not accidentally lost, removed. A cold feeling settled low in my stomach.
Someone had gone through these records deliberately. My attention shifted to a cargo inventory report lying beneath the manifests. Several shipment numbers had been crossed out and replaced with new ones.
At first glance, they looked like ordinary corrections, routine paperwork. The kind nobody paid attention to but the more I studied them, the less convincing they became.The handwriting changed, the ink changed, the dates didn’t match.
Someone had altered the records after they had already been entered into the system. Carefully, professionally. The kind of changes designed to disappear inside thousands of pages of paperwork.
I moved toward one of the computer terminals. The screen was still active. Rows of information filled the display, cargo schedules, departure logs, security clearances, transport routes.
I clicked through several entries, then stopped. My pulse quickened. Entire records were missing, days of activity had simply vanished not corrupted, not damaged, erased. Whoever had done this knew exactly where to look and exactly what to remove.
A dock worker couldn’t do this neither could a warehouse guard. This required access, real access. The kind reserved for senior security personnel, the kind used by people sitting in council meetings. The kind trusted by Cassian himself.
For the first time, the truth hit me with full force. The enemy wasn’t hiding somewhere outside the Volkov empire, the enemy was already inside it. My eyes drifted toward another board pinned to the wall. Maintenance diagrams, underground routes, storage corridors, emergency exits.
One pathway had been circled repeatedly. East Tunnel.
The name appeared again and again. Whatever was happening seemed connected to it. I grabbed a flashlight and immediately regretted it.
This was reckless, stupid. Exactly the kind of thing horror movies warned people against. I should leave, I should find Cassian, I should tell Nikolai.
Instead, I followed the map. The tunnel entrance sat behind another steel door. Unlocked which somehow felt worse. The staircase descended deep beneath the fortress. The air smelled of rust and damp stone.
Every step echoed. The darkness seemed endless, eventually the stairs ended and the tunnel began.
I stopped moving.
The sight before me was enormous. Rail systems stretched into darkness, loading platforms lined both sides, storage crates sat stacked beneath industrial lights. A hidden transportation network, a smuggling route built directly beneath the Volkov estate.
No wonder Kozlov wanted access. This place was worth a fortune. I moved carefully, examining everything. Then my flashlight landed on fresh footprints. Several sets, not old, not forgotten,recent. Very recent. Someone had walked through here within hours.
My pulse quickened.
A few meters further, I found something else. Painted onto a concrete wall. Three claw marks, the Kozlov symbol. Fresh black paint still gleamed beneath the light.
Someone had been here. Not weeks ago, not months ago,recently. The realization made my skin crawl.This wasn’t abandoned evidence. This was active, current, ongoing.
I suddenly became aware of how quiet the tunnel was. Too quiet. The kind of silence that felt unnatural as if something were holding its breath, waiting.
A strange unease settled over me. The sensation intensified with every step. Then I heard it. A scrape, soft, metal against concrete.
I spun around nothing,only darkness, only shadows yet the feeling remained. Someone was here, watching. I knew it,I could feel it. The silence stretched.
Then….. CLANG.
The sound exploded through the tunnel. I jumped. My flashlight beam swung wildly. The tunnel entrance door, moving.
“No.”
The massive steel barrier began sliding shut. Fast, far too fast.I ran. My footsteps thundered across the concrete. The door slammed closed seconds before I reached it.
BOOM.
The impact echoed through the entire tunnel. A mechanical lock engaged. One click, then another, then another. Final, permanent. My heart pounded. I grabbed the handle.Pulled,nothing.
I shoved my shoulder against the steel. Nothing. The door didn’t move, not even slightly.
Silence returned. Absolute, terrifying.
Then, from somewhere deeper inside the East Tunnel, A footstep echoed not mine, someone else’s. Slow, deliberate, coming closer.
And for the first time since entering the tunnel, I realized I wasn’t alone.
- Writer
