Silence settled. Heavy. Final.
“Fuck it,” Luka said finally. “I'm in.”
“Same,” Troy added.
“Obviously,” Dom agreed.
One by one they nodded. My team. My brothers. The family I'd found in blood and battle.
All of them willing to die for this. For Sebastian. For me.
The doors opened.
King Alexandre entered. Rain still on his coat. Eyes red-rimmed. Looking like he'd aged a decade in an hour.
He took in the room. The maps. The team. Me standing there bleeding through bandages and refusing to sit.
“Tell me everything,” he said.
So I did. Fast. Clinical. No excuses. Just facts laid out like autopsy results.
When I finished, he was quiet for a long moment.
“This is on me.” The king said.
“No, Your Majesty. This is?—”
“On me.” His voice went hard. Final. “I trusted Marcel. Made him family. Gave him access. Every choice that led to this moment, I made.”
“I lost him,” I said. Had to say. “I was supposed to protect him and I?—”
“Not your fault, Viktor.” The King's hand found my shoulder. The bad one. Pain flared. I didn't flinch.
“Where would he take him?” I asked instead. Pushing past emotion. Back to tactics. To things I could control. “You know Marcel better than anyone. Where's his bolt-hole?”
Alexandre moved to the table. Studied the maps.
“There are places in this city even ministers forget,” he said finally.
He unlocked a drawer. Pulled out something old. Weathered. A blueprint tube that looked like it belonged in a museum.
“During the reform years, Marcel oversaw archival modernization.”His mouth twisted on the words. “He asked for discretionary funds to secure one spur of the old Mail Rail system.”
He spread the blueprint over our modern maps. Antique lines overlaying satellite imagery. A city beneath the city. Forgotten. Hidden.
And annotated in handwriting I recognized from files. From evidence. From everything.
The Queen's hand.
“Post-war emergency routes,” Alexandre said. “Crown-only vault access. My wife helped catalog them before she died.”
His finger traced a red line. Thin. Barely visible. Forking under Blackfriars.
“Mail Rail,” Noah breathed. Leaning closer. “Clerkenwell to the Old Royal Mint.”
I followed the line. Saw where it ended. A small box. Labeled in careful script:
STRONGROOM / CROWN ARCHIVE ANNEX
