FIVE YEARS OF SILENCE

Alessia's private office had never felt small before. It felt small now, with Nikolia standing in it, filling up space that used to belong entirely to her.

She closed the door behind them and turned the lock without thinking about it, some old instinct from a marriage that no longer existed. "Talk," she said. "You wanted alone. You have alone."

"Alessia—"

"Five years." She crossed the room, put the desk between them like a wall she needed. "Five years, Nikolia. I buried you. Do you understand that? I stood in a room with your father and your sister and a bag with your ring in it because they couldn't find enough of you to bring home."

"I know."

"You know." Her laugh came out jagged. "You know. That's it? That's what you have?"

"I have more than that. I just can't give you all of it here."

"We're alone. You made everyone leave. What exactly are you still protecting me from?"

Nikolia was quiet for a moment, and she watched him choose his next words with the same care she remembered from years ago, back when she used to think that carefulness was tenderness instead of control. "There are people who would hurt you for knowing certain things. I need to be sure this room isn't compromised before I say more than I already have."

"Compromised." She stared at him. "Do you hear yourself? You sound like a man in a spy movie, not my husband."

"Ex-husband," he said, quiet, almost gentle. "You made that very clear in front of your board."

"Don't." Her voice cracked on the single word. "Don't you dare stand there and act wounded by a fact you created. You divorced me. You handed me papers and told me it didn't matter if you loved me anymore, and then you let me spend five years grieving a corpse that never existed. You don't get to be hurt by anything I say to survive that."

Something in his face shifted — not defensiveness, something closer to grief. "You're right."

"I don't want to be right. I want you to explain it to me. All of it. Why the divorce. Why the explosion. Why now, after five years, you walk into a boardroom like — like you just stepped out for coffee."

"The divorce was to keep you safe."

"Safe from what?"

"I can't—"

"You can't." She pressed both hands flat against the desk, needing something solid under them. "You keep saying that. You can't tell me, you can't explain, you can't say more than you already have. Do you understand what that sounds like from where I'm standing? It sounds like nothing has changed. You're still deciding what I get to know about my own life."

"That's not what this is."

"Then what is it?"

Nikolia exhaled, and for one unguarded second the composure slipped, and she saw something underneath it that looked almost like exhaustion five years deep. "There was a threat. To you. To the Arc project. To — to things I didn't fully understand yet, five years ago, and I made a decision in the middle of not understanding it that I've had a long time to regret."

"What threat?"

"I can't name it yet. Not until I know who else might hear it."

"You keep saying 'yet.' When is yet, Nikolia? When do I get to know what nearly got me killed? What did get—" her voice broke "—what got a man killed on a plane that was supposed to be carrying you?"

His head came up sharply. "How do you know about—"

"I don't. Not really. I know there was a pilot. I know he had a family. I know you're standing here alive while somewhere out there, someone else's husband isn't, and I don't understand any of it, because you won't tell me."

"Alessia." He came around the desk, closer than she wanted him, close enough that she could see exactly how much the last five years had cost him, etched into lines that hadn't been there before. "I will tell you everything. I swear to you, I will. But I need to do it in a way that doesn't put you or the children in more danger than you're already in."

"The children." Her stomach dropped. "Are you saying they're in danger right now?"

"I'm saying I don't know yet how much has changed since I walked into that boardroom an hour ago, and until I do, I'm not willing to guess with their lives."

"That's not an answer. That's you deciding again. That's exactly what you did five years ago, standing in your office telling me it didn't matter if you loved me, because apparently deciding for me is the only language you actually speak."

"I'm trying to protect—"

"I don't need protecting." Her voice rose, finally, five years of composure cracking wide open. "I needed a husband who trusted me enough to fight beside him instead of one who thought the kindest thing he could do was let me believe he was dead."

Nikolia didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice was low, rough, stripped of the careful control he'd walked in with. "I know I don't deserve to ask this. But I'm asking anyway. Give me time. Let me show you I've changed enough to earn the rest of this conversation, instead of trying to force it out of me in one afternoon."

"You don't get to ask me for patience. Not after—"

The door burst open without a knock, without warning, and Aria came tumbling in mid-sentence, backpack half off one shoulder, a drawing clutched in one fist.

"Mama, I made you a — " She stopped dead in the doorway.

Her eyes went from her mother's face, pale and tear-streaked, to the stranger standing in the middle of the room — tall, dark-haired, watching her with an expression she'd never seen on an adult before, something between wonder and terror.

Aria's small hand tightened around the drawing.

She didn't move. Neither did Nikolia.

For the first time in her life, Aria Bellamy-Sinclair stood face to face with her father.