The storm had not stopped.
Rain still lashed against the cracked windows of the safehouse, an abandoned vineyard estate on the outskirts of Palermo, hidden by vines and dark clouds.
Natalia stood near the fireplace, though there was no fire. The cold crept in through the stone walls, wrapping around her like a warning. Her body ached from the blast, her mind from the truth she could not shake.
Sergei Volkov was dead.
And yet, somehow, his ghost was still haunting her almost like he never left.
She looked over her shoulder. Dimitri sat on the edge of an old table, shirt discarded, his shoulder stitched roughly with the thread she had found in the first-aid kit. The bandage was soaked crimson. His expression was blank, the same cold steel he wore when he was forcing himself not to feel.
He had barely spoken since the attack.
"You are losing blood," she said finally.
"I have lost worse," he murmured without looking at her.
"Don't start that again." She crossed the room, grabbed the bandage roll from the table, and started wrapping his shoulder tighter. He winced but said nothing. "You will die if you keep pretending you are made of stone."
"Would that not be the worst way to go?"
"Don't say that."
Her voice cracked before she could stop it. Dimitri's eyes lifted, sharp and unreadable, as if he hadn't expected her to care.
A long silence stretched between them with rain tapping against glass and the wind whispering through broken shutters.
Finally, he spoke. "Specter knew exactly where we were. That means he is inside the network. Someone close gave him our location."
Natalia pulled away, pacing to the other side of the room. "Could be one of the lieutenants if your father. They were loyal to your father before he died, they might be carrying a grudge."
"I am not sure." Dimitri's tone hardened. "If they were working for him, we would both be dead."
"Then who?"
He didn't answer immediately. His eyes drifted toward the small table in the corner, where the black phoenix card now lay under a dim lamp.
"Specter said something," Dimitri muttered. "About you being the key."
She crossed her arms. "You think I know what that means?"
"I think he does."
The tension thickened, the kind that wasn't about distrust, but fear of what they might find if they kept digging.
Natalia rubbed her arms. "You think your father used me somehow? Before I met you?"
"I don't know." He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling slowly. "But he had records and files on everything. Names, bloodlines, experiments. He worked with your father before he murdered him. If you were part of something, even unknowingly... "
"Then he made sure I would never remember."
Her voice was quiet, resigned. She looked at her reflection in the rain-streaked glass. "You are saying my life could have been built on a lie."
Dimitri's voice softened. "We are all built on lies one way or another. Some of us just learn how to live with them."
She turned to face him. "And you?"
"I'm still learning."
For a moment, the storm outside felt like it was holding its breath. His eyes met hers, gray to brown and the air between them shifted. Not warmth.Something sharper, heavier. A pull forged in danger, in blood and affection.
She was the first to look away. "We need to move before dawn. The city is crawling with Specter's men."
"There is a route north through the hills," he said, reaching for his gun. "I have an old contact there, someone who always helped my father disappear when he needed to. If he is still alive, he will know where Specter's network runs."
Natalia nodded, but something in her chest twisted. "You trust him?"
"No," Dimitri said. "But I trust that he hates Specter more than he likes breathing."
Before they could leave, a faint beep echoed from the laptop on the floor, the same one Specter had used earlier. It flickered back to life, its cracked screen glowing dimly.
Natalia frowned. "What is that noise? "
Dimitri approached cautiously. The screen displayed a single line of code, scrolling too fast to read. Then it stopped on one phrase:
"Recovered Subject Data — N.I."
Natalia's breath hitched. "N.I… that is..."
"You," Dimitri finished grimly.
He knelt and typed a command to freeze the screen, but the system instantly corrupted, replacing the text with static. A faint digital hiss filled the room, followed by a low mechanical chuckle.
Specter's voice.
"You don't know, do you?"
Natalia stiffened.
"You thought your father's sins died with him, Dimitri. But this is his experiment that survived."
The laptop sparked again, dying completely.
Dimitri and Natalia stared at each other, both pale, and silent.
"What did he mean?" she whispered.
Dimitri's voice was hoarse. "He is trying to manipulate you."
"Or tell the truth."
Her words hit him like a blow.
He stood abruptly, rage flickering beneath the surface. "My father was a monster, but he wasn't a god. Whatever Specter says, it's not totally a lie."
"Maybe," she said quietly. "But how do we know what is true?"
He turned toward her, the tension in his face cracking just enough to show the fear beneath. "Then we find out before we face him."
The wind outside howled harder, shaking the shutters.
Dimitri packed the laptop's remains into a duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder. "We need to leave in ten minutes. North through the hills."
Natalia hesitated. "And if Specter is right?"
He paused in the doorway, rain blowing in against his face. "Then I will kill him myself before he ever touches you."
There was no tenderness in his tone, but the promise in it made her chest tighten.
The drive through the countryside was silent. The rain blurred the windshield into streaks of light, the road twisting endlessly between vineyards and shadows. Dimitri's hand gripped the steering wheel too tightly, knuckles pale against the leather.
Natalia watched the passing darkness, her mind looping over the same words: Project N.I.
The name felt like a curse she didn't remember earning.
She turned slightly toward him. "Do you ever think about what it cost your father to build all of this? The empire. The fear."
"I think about what it cost me to survive it."
"And was it worth it?"
He did not answer right away. The silence stretched long enough for her to think he wouldn't.
Then, softly: "Ask me when this is over."
The headlights cut through the fog as they reached the edge of a cliffside road. Dimitri stopped the car suddenly. Natalia frowned.
"What is it?"
He leaned forward, scanning the darkness ahead. "We are not alone."
She followed his gaze, three black cars parked across the road, their engines off but headlights glowing faintly through the rain.
Dimitri's hand went to his gun. "Specter found us faster than I thought."
Before she could respond, the SUV doors opened in unison, men in tactical suits stepping out, faces masked, weapons raised.
"Out," one of them shouted. "Hands where we can see them!"
Natalia tensed. "We can not take all of them."
"Who says we have to?" Dimitri said quietly.
He hit the headlights twice, a coded signal.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the hillside erupted in blinding light and a hidden convoy roaring to life, black motorcycles and armed allies swarming from the trees.
Natalia blinked in shock. "You.."
"Called in an old debt," Dimitri finished, a grim smile ghosting across his face. "Specter does not own every ghost in this world."
Gunfire split the night as the two sides collided.
And through the chaos, Natalia caught sight of something beyond the road, a figure standing on the cliff, silhouetted against lightning.
A man watching.
When the flash came again, he was gone.
But the rain carried his voice faintly across the wind, metallic and calm:
"Run, Volkov. Every step brings you closer to me."