TAKEN BY THE IRON KING

Chapter 11: Outside Line

Elena’s pov

The opportunity came during the late meal rotation.

The guard who brought the tray was one of the quieter full patches. He set the food down, checked the room with a quick glance, and left the door open a few extra seconds while he spoke to someone in the hallway. I had timed these moments for days.

The camera still watched, but the angle left a narrow window near the desk where a body could block the view of a hand.

I powered the phone under the edge of the tray, volume muted, and dialed the only number that still felt clean. Lena answered on the second ring.

“Elena? Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling—”

“I can’t talk long,” I said, voice low and even. “I need you to listen. Vincent’s last weeks. Did he say anything unusual? Did he go anywhere he normally wouldn’t?”

Silence on her end for half a second. Then, quieter, “He was secretive. More than usual. Kept cancelling dinner. I saw him once near the old industrial side of town. He said he was checking on a storage unit he hadn’t used in years. Wouldn’t tell me which one. Just said some things needed to stay put until the timing was right.”

My pulse stayed steady only because I forced it. “Did he mention a name? Or a location more specific than industrial?”

“No. But he looked tired. Like he was carrying something heavy. Elena, are you safe? Because this number is showing up weird on my end and—”

The line clicked. Dead.

I powered the phone off and slid it back into the hidden seam of my jacket before the guard returned to close the door. The entire exchange had lasted less than forty seconds. I ate the meal without tasting it and waited.

It did not take long.

The door opened hard enough to hit the stopper. Dante stepped in alone. No suit this time. Black shirt, the controlled stillness that always preceded a cut. The hostility between us needed no introduction.

“You used the phone,” he said.

I stood. “I asked one person one set of questions about the man who raised me. You already monitor every signal that leaves this place. You knew the moment it connected.”

“I knew. And now you know the consequence. Outside contact ends. Completely.”

“You can take the phone. You can’t take the fact that Vincent visited a storage unit in the weeks before he died. He told someone he trusted that certain things needed to stay put until the timing was right. That is not nothing.”

Dante’s eyes stayed cold. “You do not get to run your own investigation inside my compound.”

“I’m not running an investigation. I’m refusing to sit in a locked room while everyone else decides which pieces of my father’s life I’m allowed to know. The hospital never gave a cause of death. Sofia said he worked closely with the Romanos. Your own men whisper about a debt that never died. And now there’s a storage unit. How many more gaps are you going to leave before the people already hunting me fill them first?”

He stepped closer. Not enough to touch. Enough to remind me of the difference in power.

“You are alive because you are useful,” he said. “That usefulness has limits. Cross them again and the room becomes smaller. The door stays locked longer. The questions stop being answered at all.”

“Then answer one now. Did your men already search every storage unit Vincent ever touched?”

Something shifted in his expression, calculation, not concession. He did not reply. He simply turned and left. The lock engaged with a heavier sound than usual.

I sat on the edge of the bed and forced my hands still. Lena’s words replayed in clean sequence. Secretive. Industrial side of town. Storage unit he hadn’t used in years. Things that needed to stay put.

I pulled the memory of the second photograph from where I had hidden it. Vincent beside a motorcycle. Partial Iron Veil patch. Industrial background. Crates. Warehouse walls.

The address Lena had half-described matched the location Ghost’s earlier reports overheard in the hallway during one of the tighter lockdowns had already flagged. Dante’s men had searched it. They had found it empty.

Whatever Vincent had placed there was already gone. And someone had moved it before either of us reached it.