Chapter 26
The fishing boat, La Stella, cut through the glassy surface of the Mediterranean with a rhythmic, pulsing thud that seemed to vibrate in my very marrow. Behind us, Marseille was a smudge of orange light and smoke against a bruised dawn sky. The Volkov empire, a structure built on decades of bone and betrayal, had finally been reduced to a headline. But as I stood at the stern, watching the white cliffs of France shrink into the horizon, the silence felt less like peace and more like a vacuum.
My father was asleep in the small cabin below. I had checked his vitals an hour ago; his pulse was slow, anchored by the mild sedative, his breathing the first rhythmic thing he’d experienced in weeks. He was safe, but he was a man without a country, a man whose daughter had become a ghos
