LOGINđ€ Jacob đ€When I walked through that door, five sets of eyes turned toward me at once, and for one full second nobody in that room moved at all.Lexâs face I could read instantly careful, watching, waiting to see what Iâd do before she decided what she would. But it was the four small faces that undid me, because they all wore the exact same expression for the exact same heartbeat: confusion. The polite, searching confusion of children trying to place a face they almost recognized but couldnât yet.And then one of them the little girl closest to the foot of the bed, the one with my eyes, my exact eyes, set in a face that was unmistakably half her motherâs broke first.âDaddy?âThe word came out small and unsure, more question than statement, like she was testing whether the word even belonged in this room. And God help me, I lost my breath completely. Five years. Five years and I still recognized myself looking back at me out of a five-year-oldâs face, and she knew me. She knew me.
đ€ Jacob đ€I knew this was going to come back and bite me.I sat on the edge of the bed in the Airbnb Jack had rented for me furnished, generic, smelling faintly of someone elseâs air freshener and stared at my phone like it might rearrange the words on the screen if I looked at it long enough. It didnât. Why is your name on the referral that got Amara into my house four years ago? Twelve words. Twelve words that had just reached backward and dug their fingers into a decision I made when I still had the right to make decisions about my own family.I called Jack before I let myself think about what I was going to say to her.âJack. I need you to dig into Amara for me. The girl I asked you to place in my ex-wifeâs house, four years back.ââOkay, boss.â No hesitation. No follow-up questions. Jack had worked for me long enough to know exactly which Amara, exactly which house, exactly what âdig into herâ meant when it came out of my mouth at five in the morning with my voice this tight. T
đ€ Alexandra đ€ Jen arrived two hours and fifty-eight minutes after I called her, which I noted only because Jen was always early, never on time, and the fact that she walked through that door at the absolute edge of the window Iâd given her told me sheâd hit traffic, or hadnât slept at all, or both. She had a tablet in one hand and a coffee in the other, and she stopped just inside the doorway to look at the kids first, the way every decent person did before they looked at me, before they got to business. âTheyâre breathing on their own,â I said before she could ask. âThank God.â She exhaled, set the coffee down, and pulled a chair close. âOkay. Where do you want to start?â âEverything,â I said. âFrom five years ago to right now. I want names, dates, contracts, anyone brought in, anyone removed, every shift in personnel around this family that I wasnât paying attention to because I was busy pretending Iâd retired from all of it.â Jen didnât blink at the tone. She just opened the
đ€ Alexandra đ€I walked back into Room 14 and pulled the chair back into the small gap between both beds, the same chair Jacob had been sitting in earlier, still slightly warm from where heâd been, and I sat down and took one small hand in each of mine the way I had hours ago, like nothing had moved at all, even though everything had.Lovethâs fingers curled slightly around mine in her sleep.Deanâs chest rose and fell with the steady mechanical rhythm of the ventilator, that quiet hiss and click that I had stopped hearing as a sound and started hearing as a countdown, though I couldnât have told you toward what.I watched them both for a long time and let my mind, against my own permission, drift toward the version of tonight where things had gone differently. Where the call had come too late. Where there had been nothing left for anyone to do.I let myself feel the full weight of that for exactly one breath.Then I closed the door on it, the way I closed the door on everything I co
đ€ Jacob đ€That banter or maybe I should just call it what it actually was, a simple yet sweet conversation was something I genuinely had not been expecting tonight.Not after the slap.Not after Chairman Fisher told me to leave the room like I was a delivery boy who had overstayed his welcome.Not after everything else that had happened in the last several hours, which, when I actually stopped to count it all up, was an amount of chaos that most people donât experience in a full year, let alone one night.But there we were. Me with my terrible vending machine coffee. Her sitting across from me with that look on her face that said she was choosing, deliberately, to let the moment be light instead of heavy. And somehow it worked. Somehow for one entire minute the weight of everything else the children on ventilators, Stellaâs missing legs, the mystery caller, Amara typing at three thirty in the morning somehow all of that stepped back just far enough to let two people who used to know
đ€ Alexandra đ€I found Jacob exactly where I expected to find him. Not by Stellaâs room, not by the elevator pretending he was about to leave the hospital like a reasonable person who had just been dismissed by a wheelchair-bound mafia chairman, but in the small visitorâs lounge near the childrenâs ward, sitting in one of those terrible plastic chairs with a vending machine coffee in his hand that he was very clearly not drinking.He looked up when I walked in.âSo,â he said, âyour dad threatened me with his eyes for a full three minutes before he even started talking.ââThatâs restraint, actually,â I said, sitting down across from him. âNormally people get the eyes for thirty seconds before he moves on to actual words.ââI feel so honored.ââYou should.âHe looked down at the coffee in his hand like it had personally wronged him.âThis is the worst coffee I have ever had in my life,â he said. âAnd I once drank something a flight attendant handed me during turbulence that Iâm fairly
đ€ Alexandra đ€I froze. Not because he touched me. Because somehow⊠despite the chaos inside this underground hellhole, despite the guns hidden beneath tables and the tension choking the air, Jacobâs voice still managed to settle directly under my skin like he belonged there.Annoying man.I turne
đ€ Alexandra đ€The underground base smelled like blood, metal, and burnt gunpowder. Which I find comforting. Which honestly says a lot about the kind of life I was raised in.The elevator doors opened slowly and the moment I stepped out, every single member of papaâs Alpha Team straightened immedi
đ€ Jacob đ€I stood there for a full five seconds after Jayden disappeared. Not walked away. Not turned a corner. Disappeared.One second the man was standing in front of us looking like he carried the weight of the entire world on his shoulders, touching Alexandraâs stomach like he was blessing t
đ€ Alexandra đ€âIf anything happens to them⊠Iâll destroy whoever caused it.â The words had barely left my mouth when a familiar voice spoke behind me.âAre they alright?âEverything inside me stilled. That voice. I turned around slowly. Jayden. My twin stood at the end of the hallway looking comp







