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Nick’s jaw clenches, but he doesn’t move. Hector shrugs. "You're a tough bastard, Ryeland. That much I’ll give you. I would've cracked. Hell, most people would’ve. But you just disappeared behind those dead eyes. Wouldn’t let us in. Not once."
My stomach churns. But there’s a fierce heat in my chest, too. Nick never broke. Even when I thought he had. Even when he let me believe he was dead. He was still protecting me. Still fighting.
Pride explodes in my chest. Nick was true to his country and his team, never giving up the intel, no matter how much he was tortured. Now I get why he let me think he was dead. He'd already been through hell and back, and he was just protecting me.
"You used me all these years just to get at Nick." It's a statement, not a question, but Hector nods.
"I did." He smiles and tweaks his head towards Nick. "It worked, didn't it?"
"You already survived him. We’re here to finish this," Nick says as he looks to me for the briefest of moments, but it was enough of a window for Hector. He moves swiftly. Stupidly. Desperately. I see him reach for the pistol I always knew he had hidden under any desk he ever owned.
I don't hesitate and pull my weapon and shoot, aiming straight for the heart, just like in the movies, but this is all new to me and the shot lands center mass. The recoil snaps up my arm, but I don’t flinch. Hector starts to collapse, and I think for a moment that it’s over, but Hector doesn’t know he’s dead yet and raises his gun, aiming not at me, but at Nick.
I shoot again, and this time, I hit the mark. Hector glances down at his chest and crumples with a shocked gasp. I’m glad he had time to realize that I was the one who took him down without thinking twice. He falls to the floor and doesn’t get up.
I don’t move for several seconds. I just stand there, watching as the man who tried to own me bleeds onto the white marble and polished teak floor.
"Clear," Logan says after a moment.
Nick doesn’t speak. Just takes the gun from my hand and guides me back off the boat.
* * *
Cerberus safe house
Outside of Monte Carlo, Monaco
The safe house is quiet. Tucked into the edge of a cliff, windows flung wide to the endless sound of the wind kissing waves and gulls calling overhead. I sit on the edge of the bed, still in my tac gear, the adrenaline ebbing from my veins like the tide pulling back from the shore. My hands rest in my lap—scarred, steady, and stained with a finality I never thought I’d live to see. They aren’t shaking. Not even a tremble, and that, more than anything, makes my chest tighten.
Because it means I’m not in shock. I’m in control.
Nick kneels in front of me, his hands steady as they settle on my thighs, grounding me with nothing more than the quiet strength of his presence. "Breathe," he says, his voice low, coaxing, like a tether anchoring me to the here and now.
He strokes my hair, slow and rhythmic, like the world hasn’t ended and we’re allowed this quiet moment. He says nothing when the first tears slip down my cheek—doesn’t hush them, doesn’t ask for more from me. He just gathers me in his arms and holds me like he’s willing to carry every shard I’ve been shattered into and piece me back together without question.
I press my forehead to his, exhale, and let it all fall.
21
NICK
The sea is calm tonight, a seductive hush that wraps around us like satin. That rare, haunting calm that follows a storm—the kind that doesn't just cleanse the world but rewrites it. Above, stars spill across the Mediterranean sky like scattered diamonds on black silk, glowing soft and low, as if even they’ve surrendered to the stillness. And for the first time in what feels like forever, I inhale without bracing for blood, betrayal, or battle.
This isn’t silence born from loss. It’s peace—earned, stolen, sacred. It hums in the curve of the wind, in the gentle rise and fall of the sea beneath us, in the soft memory of her kiss still ghosting across my skin. For once, I breathe not as a soldier, not as a ghost—but as a man finally stepping out of the shadows and into something dangerously close to freedom.
Cerberus has gone dark... for now. Hector is dead. The Marseille corridor is dust. Vallois’ empire—once a gilded labyrinth of diplomatic immunity, shadow funds, and weaponized shipping routes—has collapsed. One by one, we dismantled his fronts, burned his safe houses, and bled his network dry until nothing remained but fear and fallout. What he built over decades, we unraveled in days. Not with armies. With precision. With resolve. With the truth. The intelligence we passed to Fitzwallace set off a chain reaction across three continents—indictments, asset freezes, and diplomatic recalls. The corridors Vallois built have crumbled. The empire is dead.
And Hector? He was the final knot, the last loyal string. Now severed. Now silent. No more shadows clawing at our heels. We did what no one else was willing to do. We pulled the whole damn web down, strand by strand, until the predators at the center had nowhere left to hide.
And now?
Now we vanish too... at least for a little while.
Cherise sleeps below deck, wrapped in linen and the sort of stillness that only comes after storms. Her breathing is slow, a soft rhythm that calls to something in me more primal than peace. I sit at the helm, the sky a velvet canopy above, stars winking like secrets. One hand rests on the wheel, the other around a half-empty glass of bourbon, its warmth chasing the last of the ghosts from my blood.
The coastline shrinks behind us, swallowed by horizon and distance. We dropped off the grid two days ago—no trail, no comms, nothing but ocean and open sky. The wind brushes across my skin like her fingers do—gentle, searching, addictive. The sea beneath us cradles the hull with each rise and fall, and it feels less like escape and more like absolution.
Here, we are not fugitives. Not shadows. Just a man and a woman suspended in this small, floating world of salt, moonlight, and second chances.