Page 14 of Hooked On Victor (Hooked #3)
Chapter fourteen
They arrived in the rain.
It wasn’t the soft, misty drizzle of postcard Europe but a cold, relentless sheet that hammered the narrow road like it was punishing them for coming.
The wipers of the borrowed car scraped in a frantic rhythm, pushing water into arcs that blurred the world beyond the windshield.
Trees flanked the lane in tall, dark rows—cypress and fir, sentinel-straight and funereal in their solemnity.
Ahead, the estate loomed out of the gloom like something dredged from a half-remembered dream.
Pale stone walls shone wet under the cloud-heavy sky, streaked black in places where centuries of rain had worn grooves. Ivy clung to it in limp, wet ropes. Iron gates, rusting at the hinges, creaked in the wind.
It had once been a Romanov summer palace.
Now it was part museum, part mausoleum. A shrine funded by oligarchs and historical societies eager to prove their cultural devotion, while quietly laundering their sins in nostalgia.
Victor stepped out first, boots hitting the gravel with a crunch muffled by the storm. He shrugged his coat tighter around his shoulders, collar turned up, hair plastered to his forehead in dripping strands.
He paused beneath the wide portico, breath fogging, eyes locked on the tall double doors as though he expected them to open on their own. Or maybe to swallow him whole.
Rose got out more slowly, pulling the scarf tighter around her neck, feeling the rain chill her collarbones through the wool. She stopped beside him, close enough for their arms to brush.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said quietly.
But they both knew he would.
He turned to her, eyes catching the gray light like obsidian.
He didn’t look afraid.
Just resolved.
“I do,” he said simply.
A gust of wind whipped around them, rattling the decorative ironwork above the door.
Nikolai joined them at last, pulling up the collar of his own tailored coat, flipping forged passes in one gloved hand.
“We have two hours,” he said evenly, voice barely audible over the rain. “I pulled strings with a scholar I trust. He believes you’re a visiting researcher from the British Archives.”
Victor didn’t reply at first.
He just took the badge without looking at it, but Rose saw the name in bold black letters:
Dr. Viktor A. Romanov.
She watched the muscle jump in his jaw.
Then he clipped it onto his coat anyway.
Inside, the air was warm but heavy.
The vestibule smelled of damp stone and polish. Water dripped from their coats onto the pristine black-and-white tiled floor. A docent offered them polite, rehearsed greetings in French, eyes flicking briefly to their badges before nodding them through.
Rose couldn’t help noticing the cameras tucked discreetly into the ceiling corners.
They moved on.
Beyond the foyer, the main hall opened wide and grand, its marble floors glowing under the shimmer of enormous chandeliers. Their glass teardrops caught the light in fractured rainbows that danced along the ceiling moldings.
Everything smelled of wax and old wood.
Curated nostalgia.
Tour guides moved in quiet loops, their voices pitched low and reverent as they recited the tragedies of the last Tsar and his doomed family.
Victor walked with slow, deliberate steps.
Not dragging.
Not running.
Every stride seemed like it weighed more than the one before.
Portraits lined the walls, each hung in massive gilt frames polished to a near-blind gleam. Nicholas II in full military dress, eyes hollow with exhaustion. Alexandra with her thin, pinched mouth and devoted, haunted gaze.
And the daughters.
Olga. Tatiana. Maria. Anastasia.
Victor stopped in front of one painting and didn’t move.
Tatiana Nikolaevna Romanova.
Her face was pale, narrow, elegant. The same serious eyes. The same defiant set to the jaw.
He stared so long that Rose thought he might have forgotten she was there.
She swallowed, voice sticking in her throat before she forced it free.
“She looks like you,” she whispered.
Victor didn’t turn.
He didn’t even blink.
“I never thought I’d see her face,” he murmured. His voice cracked in the middle. “Let alone realize it’s the one I carry.”
She put her hand gently on his coat sleeve.
He didn’t shake her off.
Nikolai cleared his throat behind them.
“It’s time,” he said.
Victor finally tore his eyes away from the portrait, exhaling like he was trying to empty something rotten from his lungs.
They left the public wing, slipping through a maintenance door that clicked shut behind them with a noise like a judge’s gavel.
The corridor beyond was narrow, lined in cold, sweating stone.
Dim bulbs cast long, uneven shadows that wavered with every step.
Their footsteps echoed, sharp and hollow.
Nikolai moved with unhurried certainty, flashing the badges at each checkpoint, murmuring in practiced French to bored guards who didn’t look twice.
Rose felt her pulse in her throat the whole way.
At the end of the corridor, they stopped before a steel-plated door.
It was old, but clearly reinforced. Pitted with age, but unyielding.
It bore no keypad. No handle.
Only the double-headed eagle, carved in heavy relief. One head faced forward. The other backward.
Victor stared at it.
The symbol mocked him.
Two faces.
One future. One past.
He reached out, fingers trembling once before he steadied them.
He pressed his palm to the crest.
Nothing.
Nikolai’s voice was low.
“Heat. The vault recognizes blood and body temperature.”
Victor hissed, breath fogging.
He yanked his coat off, baring his wrist, the pale skin marred by old scars and fresh bruises. He pressed it against the cold metal, letting his heat bleed into it.
For a moment, nothing.
Then a low click echoed in the silence.
The door shuddered once.
Then slid open.
Inside, the air was wrong.
Dry.
Old.
It had the stale, choking stillness of a tomb that hadn’t been opened in decades.
Their footsteps made no sound on the stone floor.
It wasn’t just a room.
It was a memory.
A place built not to hold treasure, but to hold secrets too dangerous to survive the light.
Shelves lined the walls, bowing under the weight of ancient ledgers, brittle papers bound in cracked leather. Rolled maps, their edges curling, traced borders that no longer existed. Velvet-lined boxes held jewels dulled with time, coins stamped with the faces of dead emperors.
Paintings leaned against one wall, faces turned inward as though hiding from the present.
Oilskin bundles were stacked in careful piles.
Letters sealed in wax no one had broken in a hundred years.
A reliquary of lost empire.
And in the center of the room, on a low stone altar, sat a single black case.
It was unadorned.
Sealed tight.
Victor moved toward it like a man in a dream.
Nikolai’s voice followed him, hushed but unyielding.
“That’s it. That’s the failsafe. The case holds a device designed by a chemist to incinerate the entire vault in minutes if opened improperly.”
Victor stopped.
He turned.
His eyes found Rose’s.
For a moment they were just two people in the dark.
She swallowed hard.
“It’s not just yours anymore,” she whispered, voice trembling. “It’s ours. Open it.”
He nodded.
Once.
Sharp.
Final.
Victor placed the token Nikolai had given him into the circular indentation on the case’s front.
It clicked.
He pulled out the old signet ring from his pocket—the one he’d worn since childhood, never knowing the truth it held.
He pressed it into the matching seal.
Another click.
The lock disengaged.
The lid lifted with a soft sigh of air, hinges creaking with age.
Inside were three items.
A journal bound in cracked crimson leather, the Tsarina’s initials pressed into the cover in gold that had faded to pale straw.
A packet of official documents, edges brown and brittle, bearing Romanov seals in blood-red wax.
And at the bottom, a letter folded neatly, the ink faded but legible.
To my son, if he should ever rise again. —N.
Victor stared at it.
His lips parted.
But no words came.
Rose moved to his side, her fingers slipping into his without asking.
He held on like he would drown if he didn’t.
And in the hush of the sealed room, surrounded by the bones of an empire, the heart of a dynasty beat once more.