BEYOND THE VOW

CHAPTER 6: THE RAT IN MY OFFICE

The black SUV cuts its lights fifty feet before the concrete blast doors.

Vladimir doesn't kill the engine. The heavy diesel hums beneath us in the damp dark of the cliffside bunker as he throws the gearshift into park.

"We're secure," Vladimir grunts from the front seat, his scarred jaw tight as he checks the rearview mirror.

Voss kicks his door open without a word, the cold mountain air rushing into the cabin, and yanks my door open. His hand locks around my elbow, guiding me out of the vehicle and straight into the subterranean depths of his safehouse.

"Watch your step," Voss rumbles, his palm pressing securely against the small of my back to steer me through the reinforced entryway.

"Don't," I hiss, stepping away from his heat the second we clear the threshold. "I didn't ask for an escort."

The safehouse is a brutality cavern carved deep into the limestone cliffs overlooking the northern riverbanks. Stripped-down, cold, and fortified. Raw walls meet dark, minimalist steel accents. A single massive mahogany table dominates the center of the room, flanked by floor-to-ceiling observation glass overlooking the midnight city skyline. No guards. No warmth. Just stone, iron, and shadows. The biting chill of the cavern seeps straight through my blouse, making me shiver as the oppressive, tomb-like silence of the bunker presses down on my skin, wrapping around me in an icy shroud.

I shrug out my tailored wool blazer, the heavy fabric slipping off my shoulders, and slam it down onto the center of the table.

"Aegis didn't just guess where we'd be," I snap, pacing across the floor. "The board sent them, which means someone inside my inner circle must have tracked my location and leaked our coordinates to Volkov."

Voss is across the table in two silent steps, his dark eyes locking onto mine. "Who?"

"It can only be someone from my executive office—someone close to me." I slam my palm flat against the wood. "Elias. My Chief of Staff."

"The rat," Voss growls, a lethal edge sharpening his voice. "He authorized the wire."

"He has root access to my entire schedule. He knew about Container Seven-Nine." I trace a sharp fingernail down the manifest. "Elias sold us out to the Bratva, he's sitting in his executive suite right now believing he won."

"Then we don't wait for morning," Voss murmurs, a cold, predatory intent flashing in his eyes. "We drag him out of his penthouse, let my men bleed him for answers, and find out what else he gave to Volkov and what the board is plotting."

"No." I step closer, locking my eyes onto his. "Violence is too quick for a bastard like Elias. We use the ledgers to choke his finances, seize every asset he owns, and corner him in the executive suite."

A slow, dark smile stretches across Voss's face. "You want to ruin him completely first."

"I want to take everything he sold us out for, and then you can finish him," I snap back, leaning over the table. "Help me trace these routing numbers."

For twenty minutes, the safehouse is a blur of sharp calculations and rustling paper. We move around the table like twin predators, our bodies circling in a tense, silent dance of strategy and calculation. Every time we brush against each other, the air between us sparks with raw friction, an electric, volatile current that cuts right through the freezing limestone damp.

"Look at this," I murmur, leaning in over a ledger. "A five-million-dollar transfer out of Volkov's holding company, routed through a shell entity called Neva Holdings, dropped straight into a domestic routing number flagged to a private trust. This was weeks before my father died—Elias was already Volkov's asset before Arthur died."

Voss leans over my shoulder, his heavy chest pressing back against my spine, his cedar-and-gunpowder scent overwhelming my senses. "That's not an external account," he breathes, dropping an octave right against my ear. "That's an internal Sterling master routing key. Elias is your rat. He didn't just leak your location—he gave himself full administrative control of the entire corporate vault long ago."

"Give me your terminal," I snap, shoving past Voss to the wall-mounted secure console wired into his safehouse network. "Punch in my Sterling International master executive bypass code. The paper ledgers only give us the blueprint. But if Elias is executing a hostile takeover tonight as I suspect, my server will log the IP address of the override."

The dark screen flickers to life, spitting out a cascade of code lines. A flashing red authorization alert blinks on the monitor: *Master Key Active. External Liquidation to Neva Holdings.*

"He's emptying the accounts right now," I whisper, staring at the screen in disbelief.

Before Voss can answer, a sharp, piercing vibration tears through the room.

My father's burner phone. Ringing from inside the pocket of my abandoned jacket on the table.

I grab the device and answer.

"Valentina," Elias purrs, dripping with false sympathy. "You really should have stayed away."

"You're draining the reserves," I spit, anger burning in my throat. "You sold us out to the Bratva just to loot the company."

"Business, Valentina," Elias replies smoothly, the sharp click of his mechanical keyboard echoing through the receiver. "Right now, I'm securing my acquisition."

"You're signing your own death warrant," I hiss, gripping the burner so hard my knuckles turn white.

"Am I?" Elias chuckles softly, a low, condescending sound that makes my blood run hot. "You're hiding God knows where miles away in the dark, watching a terminal you can't control. By the time you manage to cross this city, your accounts will be scrubbed clean, your board will have ratified my appointment, and the keys to Sterling International will belong to me."

"You think a few keystrokes erase a dynasty, Elias?"

"I don't think, Sterling. I execute." His voice drops, turning razor-sharp. "And since you're so eager to play executive, I've left a little parting gift at the front lobby for you. Come try to reclaim your empire before I lock the doors permanently."

"Try locking me out of my own building and see how fast the board turns on you when the federal subpoenas drop," I snap back, my voice dripping with ice.

"The federal prosecutors are already paid off, Valentina," Elias laughs, unfazed. "You have nothing left."

The line goes dead with a sharp click.

The phone slips from my fingers, clattering hard against the table.

Voss is beside me before the echo fades, his heavy hand clamping down around my arm, his dark eyes burning straight into mine. "Valentina. Look at me."

"I want him dead," I snap, my voice cracking with lethal fury as I drive my fist against the table. "Ruined, bleeding, and buried. That parasite spent years crawling through my father's offices, smiling behind my back, pretending to be the loyal shadow while he plotted the entire execution."

Voss doesn't blink. The dark in his eyes flares, a cold validation mirroring my own rage as he closes the distance between us in a single stride.

"Then we stop talking and take action," Voss rumbles, his hand gripping the back of my neck, fingers tangling in my hair as he yanks me hard against his chest. The raw, heavy heat of him burns through my clothes, drowning out the chill of the bunker. "A rat like Elias doesn't get a quiet trial. He gets dragged out by the collar."

His thumb digs into my jaw, forcing my face up so I have no choice but to absorb the absolute violence written across his features.

"Not yet," I gasp, shoving my hand against his chest to break the momentum before reaching into my bag for my personal encrypted phone. "If we walk in there blind while he has root access, he'll wipe the mainframes and lock us out of our own accounts forever. We need a tourniquet on the server first."

I speed-dial a private, encrypted extension—skipping the switchboard entirely to reach Jax, an underground systems architect and the only genius hacker I trust, operating off-grid out of an abandoned industrial warehouse in Red Hook.

"Sterling," Jax's gravelly voice crackles through the speaker, heavy with background static and the frantic clicking of mechanical keys. "I saw the server alarms for your corporate vault tripping across the grid. Master override active. Looks like your Chief of Staff is gutting your treasury."

"Elias," I hiss, my teeth grinding together. "He's draining our assets into Neva Holdings and freezing our primary nodes. I need you to bypass his admin key right now, Jax. Lock him out of the main gateway and quarantine the vault before he finishes the transfer."

"Give me forty-five seconds to punch through his proxy shield," Jax snaps, his typing accelerating into a frantic blur. "He's hard-coding a backdoor, but if I inject a recursive loop into his firewall..." A sharp series of electronic beeps warbles through the line. "His master key is frozen in a dead-lock loop. He can't move a cent."

As Jax confirms the lockdown, I finally feel the phantom tourniquet on the corporate server click tight, stopping the financial hemorrhage. My lungs remember how to expand, drawing a long, shuddering breath of recycled air. Voss watches with a dark, intense validation that burns through the remaining frost of the bunker, acknowledging the cold calculation behind my counter-strike.

"Good. Keep him trapped in the system," I order, tapping the screen to end the call.

I pull it back on over my shoulders, sliding my arms into the heavy sleeves as the surging adrenaline hardens into pure, focused intent. I am ready to hunt.

I turn back to Voss, my eyes locked on his with lethal clarity.

"The server is contained," I whisper. "Now let's go get my money back."