The Volkov's inheritance: 90 days to rule

Chapter 6: The Key in the Dust

Adrian’s POV

I stared at the photograph on Dominic’s phone until the image burned into the back of my eyes.

The body bag being loaded into a coroner’s van. The yellow crime-scene tape. The flashing blue lights reflecting off wet pavement.

Mr. Ricci. Seventy years old. He used to slip an extra bag of pasta into my grocery bag when he thought I wasn’t looking. He fixed the boiler with duct tape and pure stubbornness. He never raised the rent even when the neighborhood around us got worse. He was a good man.

And now he was dead. Because of me.

“The police are looking for you,” Dominic said. His voice was tight. He paced the marble floor of the Volkov Tower lobby like a man who had already calculated every bad outcome. “They found your name in his records. They know about the eviction notice. They know about the fire. They’re calling it a revenge killing.”

Victoria snapped her briefcase shut. “We need to get him out of the city. Now. I have a private jet on standby at Linate. If the police pick you up, Enzo will use the arrest to strip your provisional seat before the day is over.”

“No.”

The word came out before I even realized I was speaking.

Victoria turned on me, dark eyes flashing with frustration. “This is not a negotiation. You are a suspect in a murder investigation.”

“I know,” I said. My voice sounded hollow, but it stayed steady. “But I’m not running.”

I looked at Dominic. “The police sealed off his apartment, right? What about the rest of the building? The basement?”

Dominic blinked. “I… I don’t know. Probably not.”

“Then we go back.”

Victoria stepped directly into my path, blocking me from the revolving doors. Her face was only inches from mine.

“Listen to me very carefully, Adrian,” she said, voice dropping to a cold, sharp whisper. “Yesterday you were a mechanic with grease under your nails. You fixed cars. You didn’t even know this world existed. Today you are a suspect in a murder investigation and you are trying to play detective. You are in a game against men who have been killing people for thirty years. If you walk out that door and go back to that building, you are going to get yourself killed. And I am not going to stand here and watch you do it.”

I looked at her and did not blink.

“Mr. Ricci was a good man,” I said, voice hard. “He didn’t deserve to die like that. If I run, I look guilty. And I am not going to let them bury that old man while I hide on a jet. You can either help me, or you can stay here.”

Victoria stared at me. The tension between us was thick enough to choke on. Finally she stepped aside.

“Fine,” she said, ice-cold. “One hour. We go in, we look, and we get out. But if you get us caught, I will let them arrest you.”

Before we left I turned to her again. A question had been sitting in my chest since the bunker.

“Victoria. Where is he?”

She looked up. “Where is who?”

“My father. Where is his body? When is the funeral?”

The lobby seemed to go completely silent. Dominic turned his head. Raven stopped checking the magazine of her pistol.

Victoria closed her briefcase slowly. “There is no body, Adrian.”

“What do you mean there’s no body?”

“The yacht explosion,” she said. “Enzo planted a high-grade incendiary device. The fire burned for hours. By the time the coast guard arrived, there was nothing left. Just charred metal and ash.”

A cold weight settled in my stomach.

“Wait,” I said, voice tightening. “You just said Enzo planted a bomb. You know he killed my father. So why the hell haven’t the police arrested him?”

Victoria looked at me with those dark, unreadable eyes.

“Because we have no proof, Adrian. The fire destroyed everything. There is no body, no DNA, no bomb residue that can be traced. All we have is a theory. If I go to the police with this, Enzo’s lawyers will have the case thrown out before it even reaches a judge. And then he will know we are coming for him. He will disappear. Or worse, he will kill us before we can build a real case.”

I flinched. The words hit like a physical blow.

“I thought you were a lawyer,” I said, the disgust clear in my voice. “I thought the law was supposed to protect people. I thought it was supposed to put murderers in prison.”

Victoria didn’t flinch. She didn’t look away.

“The law protects people with money and evidence,” she said. “Right now you have neither. Enzo has both. That is the reality of the world you just stepped into. So stop acting like a naive mechanic and start acting like a man who wants to survive.”

I stared at her. The rage was boiling in my chest. But I knew she was right.

I reached under the suit jacket and touched the silver necklace. My mother’s necklace. And now my father was ash in the wind.

It didn’t feel right. A man who built a twelve-billion-euro empire just turns to ash and we are supposed to accept it? No funeral. No body. No justice.

The thought sat in my chest like a cold stone, but I pushed it down.

“Let’s go,” I said. “We have a basement to search.”

We took the black SUV and parked two blocks away. The sky was still gray and heavy with the threat of more rain.

The front of the apartment building was crawling with police. Two cruisers were parked out front. Crime-scene tape fluttered in the wind. Uniformed officers stood near the entrance taking statements from a few remaining tenants.

“We go around the back,” Raven said. She led us through a narrow alley that smelled like trash and wet concrete.

The back door of the building was a heavy steel door with a rusty lock. Raven pulled out a small leather pouch, selected two thin tools, and had the lock open in under ten seconds. We slipped inside.

The basement was dark and damp. It smelled like mold and old dust. The storage units were lined up against the far wall behind a chain-link fence that had seen better decades.

I walked straight to the old rusted fuse box, exactly as I remembered it. I opened the panel. Just old wires and dust. Nothing useful.

I turned around. The storage unit closest to the fuse box was Mr. Ricci’s. Unit 7. But something was wrong. Every other lock in this basement was old, rusted, and cheap. But the padlock on Unit 7 was brand new. Shiny steel. Heavy-duty.

Mr. Ricci was a cheap old man. He wouldn't spend money on a new lock unless he was hiding something important.

I didn’t have my tools. I was wearing a thousand-euro suit. But this was my building. I knew every corner of it. I walked to the old wooden workbench near the boiler room. Under a stack of dusty rags, I found a rusted coffee can. Inside was an old socket wrench and a flathead screwdriver, left behind by the super years ago. I grabbed them and walked back to Unit 7.

The padlock was brand new, heavy-duty steel. A screwdriver wouldn't pop it open in a million years. But the door itself was old. I looked at the hinges. They were rusted iron, bolted to the outside of the frame. The super had probably replaced the lock but never bothered to reinforce the hinges.

I didn't touch the lock. Instead, I fitted the socket wrench to the first hinge bolt and cranked it hard. It squealed in protest, then snapped loose. I did the same to the second, third, and fourth.

The door groaned, tipped forward, and crashed onto the dusty basement floor.

And in the far corner, a small metal filing cabinet.

I opened the top drawer. Old lease agreements. Receipts for boiler parts. Nothing useful.

I opened the second drawer. Empty.

I opened the bottom drawer. It was stuck. I yanked it hard. It flew open with a metallic screech.

Inside was a single item.

A small black safety-deposit-box key. Taped to it was a folded piece of paper with a handwritten note in dark ink.

*For when you need it most. — N.V.*

I stared at the note. My hands started to shake.

N.V. Nicolai Volkov. My father.

I held the key up to the dim light filtering through the small basement window. The bank logo stamped into the metal was clear. Banca di Milano.

My mind was spinning. Mr. Ricci was a simple man. A landlord who fixed boilers and slipped extra pasta into grocery bags. He didn’t belong in this world. He didn’t belong in my father’s bloody world of shipping routes and human cargo.

So why did he have this?

Then the realization hit me like a freight train. It wasn’t a coincidence. I lived in this building for four years. My father knew exactly where I was the whole time. He didn’t just leave me in the slums; he chose this building. He chose Mr. Ricci to be my landlord. He hid the key with the one man he knew I would trust.

And it got Mr. Ricci killed.

I closed my fist around the key. The metal bit into my palm hard enough to leave a mark.

I didn’t have the answers yet.

But I knew exactly where to find them.