Chương 12 - Descent into Zurich
The fog over Lake Lucerne hung thick like damp fleece, swallowing the lights of the distant villas along the shoreline.
The helicopter didn't land on the private helipad. Instead, it hovered ten feet above the icy waters of a private inlet, hidden beneath the shadow of a limestone bluff.
"Ropes!" Elias barked.
Marco kicked open the side door. The sub-zero wind roared inside, whipping Saraphina’s hair across her face. Elias grabbed a fast-rope, tossed it out, and turned to her.
"Can you do this?" he shouted over the scream of the rotor wash. "Or do I carry you?"
"I’m not luggage, Elias," she snapped back, grabbing the thick nylon weave with gloved hands. "Move."
A grim smirk flickered across his lips before he hooked his boots and slid down into the darkness. Saraphina followed seconds later, the friction burning through her gloves, her boots slamming hard onto the wooden boards of a half-submerged boathouse dock. Marco dropped down last, immediately cutting the line. The helicopter banked away, climbing back into the clouds to serve as a decoy.
Silence slammed down on the dock like a wet blanket, broken only by the lapping of freezing lake water.
Elias unholstered his suppressed Sig Sauer, his shoulders hunched, sweeping the darkness. "The safehouse is three hundred yards up the ridge. Underground bunker beneath a restored 19th-century carriage house. Staffed by four of my best contract operators."
"If they're so good, why aren't they answering the comms?" Saraphina asked, her instincts screaming. She picked up a discarded iron crowbar from the dock floor, testing its weight.
Elias tapped his earpiece again. Static hissed back.
"Marco, flank left through the orchard," Elias ordered, his voice barely a breath. "Saraphina, stay behind me. If I tell you to drop, you drop flat. Don't argue."
"I don't plan on dying today, Kingston," she whispered back.
They moved like ghosts through the frozen apple orchard. The ground crunched softly under their boots. Ahead, through the fog, the silhouette of the carriage house loomed. The timber-and-stone structure looked idyllic, picturesque—the kind of place Swiss billionaires hid their mistresses.
Except the front courtyard floodlights were shattered.
Elias held up a closed fist. They froze behind a low stone wall.
On the gravel driveway, two bodies lay sprawled in dark pools of frozen blood. Both men wore dark gray tactical wool—Elias’s private security detail.
Saraphina’s stomach plummeted into a bottomless void. "Leo..." she choked out, her voice cracking.
Elias grabbed her arm with bruising force, pulling her down behind the stones. His face was a mask of pure terror masked by rage. His jaw muscles twitched violently.
"He’s in the subterranean room," Elias whispered, though his eyes burned with madness. "The safe door requires a biometric sequence and an eight-digit key known only to me and my lead guard."
"They killed the guards, Elias!" she hissed, tears of fury pricking her eyes. "You think a steel door stops the people who burned down my family?"
"Look closer," Elias pointed through the gloom.
Beside the bodies of his guards lay three other men. Dressed in sterile, unmarked black plate carriers. One of them had a foreign insignia scorched into the shoulder fabric—a crowned snake eating its own tail.
"Ouroboros," Saraphina whispered, a cold chill seizing her spine. "The private military wing of the Sterling Trust."
"Lord Sterling," Elias growled. "The bastard from London."
Suddenly, the interior lights of the carriage house clicked on, casting long, bloody rectangles across the gravel.
A shadow moved behind the frosted glass of the second-story balcony. Then, a voice echoed through an exterior megaphone, smooth, cultured, and dripping with venom.
May you like
"Mr. Kingston! Miss Moretti! Please, do come inside. The tea is getting cold, and young Master Leo was just telling me how much he misses his bedtime stories."
***
