Chapter 11 - The North Light
The water was a freezing, churning vortex of black ink. Elena kicked with all her strength, her lungs screaming for oxygen as she held onto the strap of Matteo's tactical vest with both hands. Ahead, the faint green glow of Matteo’s wrist compass was the only light in an endless void of ice and stone.
Matteo’s powerful strokes pulled them through a razor-sharp coral cleft. Elena felt the rock scrape along her shins, the pain distant and dulled by the paralyzing cold. Just when her vision began to blur with dark stars, Matteo kicked violently upward.
They broke the surface into a narrow, damp vertical shaft, gasping for breath. The air smelled of rusted iron and bird lime.
Matteo immediately ripped the regulator from Mia’s mouth. The girl coughed, sputtering salt water, but her eyes opened, clear and alive. She wailed, a high-pitched cry that Matteo instantly smothered against his chest, rocking her with a frantic, silent intensity.
"You're okay," he whispered fiercely. "Papa has you. You're okay."
Elena clung to the rusted iron rung set into the shaft wall, treading water, her chest heaving as she coughed out brine. "Where... where are we?"
"Under the North Bluff lighthouse," Matteo said, reaching down to help haul Elena onto the narrow maintenance landing. "Abandoned thirty years ago. Volkov’s men think the tunnel system collapsed after the seventies."
Elena collapsed onto the cold concrete, shivering violently, her teeth chattering so hard she could barely speak. Matteo set Mia down, tore off his soaking thermal undershirt, and wrapped it tightly around Elena's shoulders. The heat radiating from his bare, scarred chest was intoxicating in the frigid shaft.
"Thank you," she managed to whisper, looking up at him.
Matteo paused, kneeling before her in the dim light filtering from high above. His large, tattooed hand reached out, brushing wet strands of brown hair from her forehead with a tenderness that contradicted the violence he had wreaked only an hour ago.
"You could have stayed in the closet," he said, his voice raw. "You could have surrendered to the courier. You took a bullet for my child."
"I took a shot," she corrected with a faint, trembling smile. "I missed, mostly."
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A ghost of a smile touched the corner of Matteo’s lips. "You didn't run. Nobody has ever stayed for Mia. Not since her mother."
Before Elena could reply, a sudden metallic clink echoed from the ladder above them. A beam of white light suddenly sliced down the circular shaft, pinning them against the concrete.
