Page 16 of Hooked On Victor (Hooked #3)

Chapter sixteen

The morning light came slowly, pooling in delicate puddles across the wide pine floorboards.

It sifted through the lace curtains in thin, luminous bands that caught the floating dust and made it look like the room was full of quiet ghosts.

Outside, the hills were still silver with dew, low mist curling through the valleys like a memory refusing to burn off.

In the hush of the old inn’s kitchen, Victor sat at the long scarred table.

The Tsarina’s crimson journal lay open in front of him, a ribbon of faded silk marking the last page he’d read aloud.

Beside it, the brittle letter penned by Nicholas II—edges browned, wax seal cracked but still clinging to dignity.

His laptop was open, the screen throwing a cool blue glow over his face, incongruously modern in this place that felt so steeped in the past.

The air smelled of strong, dark coffee brewing on the antique stove. And dust. And something older—an earthy tang that Rose had come to associate with ancient paper and the rustle of brittle secrets.

Victor’s hands moved over the keyboard in precise, unhurried keystrokes. Every line he typed seemed to lift a little weight from his shoulders. He looked different in that light—still the same hard edges and quiet intensity, but softened. Grounded.

Like he was no longer a man on the run.

Like he had finally found something worth staying to fight for.

Nikolai stood near the window, his lean frame framed by the lace curtain’s delicate shadows.

His arms were folded across his chest, coat unbuttoned, the shoulder rig beneath just visible when he shifted.

He didn’t fidget. He didn’t sigh. He watched the hills the way a hawk watched for movement—every leaf, every shiver in the grass cataloged in that unblinking gaze.

Rose sat at Victor’s side, one knee drawn up, her hand resting on the table just shy of his.

She didn’t need to touch him. Being there was enough.

The anchor he kept returning to. The witness to every step that had brought them to this quiet room with its uneven floorboards and its crown of sunlit dust motes.

Victor’s voice broke the hush at last, low but steady.

“What are we calling this?” He tapped the headline draft on the screen.

Rose tilted her head, studying the bold letters. She smiled faintly, a dry humor in her eyes that she knew he needed.

“Not ‘The Return of the Tsar.’”

Nikolai’s soft snort was edged with genuine amusement.

“God, no,” he said without turning from the window.

Victor considered the empty space on the screen, the cursor blinking like a heartbeat.

Then his mouth curved just slightly.

“The Echo Ledger,” he said.

Nikolai’s brow lifted in a rare expression of approval.

“Not bad.”

Victor nodded, the decision final in the way he pressed the keys.

“We publish selected letters,” he said, voice calm. “The ledger of betrayals that shaped the fall. Redacted names. Dates. Enough to remind the world that history isn’t just myth and marble. It’s men. And consequences.”

“And the rest?” Rose asked, her voice softer, as though afraid to break this fragile moment of certainty.

Victor glanced at the small black flash drive beside the journal. Its plastic shell looked innocuous. Ordinary. But they all knew it could burn the world if mishandled.

“It stays in the vault,” he said firmly. “Locked. Monitored.”

Nikolai finally turned from the window, dark eyes measuring.

“You’re not tempted?” he asked quietly. “To claim it all?”

Victor’s jaw worked once, twice.

“I’m more tempted,” he said slowly, “to let it breathe. To let it stop haunting me.”

The afternoon passed in a steady rhythm that felt almost normal.

Nikolai slipped away after lunch, shrugging into his coat with the quiet efficiency of a man who’d never once needed to explain where he was going. He left no instructions, no reassurances. Just a nod to Victor and a last look at Rose as if acknowledging the unspoken understanding between them.

Outside in the courtyard, he met a courier with an unremarkable face and an encrypted satchel. The documents would begin their journey tonight—scattered across trusted archives, each piece logged under anonymous metadata.

Rose stayed behind, curled in the window seat with the last of the letters spread across her lap. She moved slowly, scanning, translating, cataloging. Every so often she’d murmur a line aloud, her voice so soft it seemed meant more for the walls than for Victor.

Victor himself spent an hour pacing the terrace outside, hands in his pockets, the cold wind combing through his hair. The view stretched wide in all directions—rolling green hills stippled with dark cypress, a sky bruised with the promise of rain.

He tried to picture what it meant to outlive your own legacy. To stand on the bones of a dynasty that had birthed you—and nearly swallowed you whole.

He was thinking of Tatiana. Of a woman he’d never met whose courage had given him this second life.

He was thinking of his mother, whose face he barely remembered.

Of Rasputin, who had chosen preservation over ruin.

Of Nikolai, who had watched him like an older brother and a stranger in equal measure.

And of Rose.

Always, Rose.

Her hand steady on his shoulder in the vault. Her voice, the one thing that had never once tried to claim him.

He didn’t hear the footsteps behind him until the last second.

A voice cut through the cold air—low, smooth, unsettling in its casualness.

“Not everyone wants peace, Romanov.”

Victor turned, calm but coiled, eyes narrowing.

The man stood by the terrace railing, as if he’d simply stepped out of the mist. He was clean-shaven, his suit a meticulous charcoal pinstripe that didn’t belong in this windswept country place.

His gloved hands rested lightly on the iron balustrade, body language as relaxed as a guest at afternoon tea.

But his eyes were wrong.

Dead.

Victor didn’t blink.

“I thought the scavengers would show up eventually,” he said flatly.

The man inclined his head a fraction.

“You’re releasing something you don’t understand,” he said. His voice had the careful modulation of a diplomat, but there was nothing diplomatic in the intent beneath it. “You think the truth sets you free? It doesn’t. It just paints a target.”

Victor took a step closer. He moved without haste. But he was ready—she could see it in the way his shoulders set, the angle of his hips.

“Who sent you?” he asked.

The man’s mouth curved into something that wanted to be a smile.

“Someone with more to lose than you.”

He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a simple cream-colored card. Held it out like an invitation.

“This is your final warning. If you let this echo into the world, we will answer it with fire.”

Victor didn’t lift a hand to take it.

He didn’t need to.

He understood the message perfectly without reading a single word.

The man studied him a moment longer. Then he turned and walked away, soundless as a ghost, his silhouette vanishing down the slope into the mist.

Victor stood very still.

Only when he heard Rose’s quick footsteps behind him did he exhale.

She emerged onto the terrace, gun already in hand, her eyes wide and sharp.

“What was that?” she demanded, voice low but fierce.

Victor’s jaw tightened.

“Confirmation,” he said.

She moved closer, her free hand coming to rest over his heart.

“Of what?” she asked, softer now.

He didn’t answer right away. Just looked past her, out over the rolling hills, the dark line of cypress, the vault hidden far away beneath layers of stone and memory.

Then he met her gaze, and there was something almost peaceful in the way his eyes settled.

“That we made the right choice,” he said simply.

She exhaled, leaning her forehead against his.

“And that?” she murmured, nodding at the empty space where the man had stood.

Victor’s mouth curved—not quite a smile.

“They’re afraid of the truth,” he said.

His hand found hers, their fingers threading together in the cold.

“And they should be.”