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H argen

My hands are shaking.

The observation strikes me as clinical, detached—the kind of note I might make in one of my status reports. “Subject exhibits signs of acute stress. Physiological responses indicate severe emotional disruption. Recommend immediate isolation for assessment.”

Except I am the subject now. I am the one coming apart at the seams on a public street corner, drawing stares from passing strangers who sense the disturbance in their midst but can’t quite identify the source.

They’re going to kill our daughter. V.

The words burn across my vision again, white text on a black screen that might as well be carved into my retinas.

I’ve read the message a dozen times since leaving the others behind in that penthouse.

A dozen times, and it still feels like a hallucination.

A dream brought on by too many decades of guilt and suppressed grief.

But the phone is real. The message is real.

V.

There’s only one person that could be. One person who could reach out with those words after twenty-one years of silence. Twenty-one years of believing her dead. Twenty-one years of carrying the weight of her execution like a stone in my chest, knowing that loving me had killed her.

Vanya Arrowvane is alive.

I find a bench in a small park, hidden behind a line of oak trees that provide the illusion of privacy.

My legs give out as I sit, muscle memory of combat training the only thing preventing total collapse.

The autumn air is sharp against my skin, but I barely feel it.

Everything has narrowed to this moment, this impossible revelation that reshapes every truth I thought I knew.

Our daughter.

The phrase loops through my mind, leaving my head spinning.

Two words that create an entire person—a child.

My child. Now a young woman I’ve never met, never held, never protected.

A child conceived in stolen moments between forbidden lovers, growing up in a world where her very existence could be grounds for execution.

My silver ring catches the weak sunlight as I lift my hand to read the message again.

Vanya gave me this ring during one of our last nights together, slipping it onto my finger with whispered promises about futures that seemed impossible even then.

I’ve worn it every day since her death. A reminder. A penance.

A lie, apparently.

Memory crashes over me without warning, dragging me back to places I’ve spent decades trying to forget.

The first time I saw her…

So damned beautiful. She was arguing with a superior in the Syndicate briefing room, ice-blue eyes blazing with conviction as she defended some protocol modification.

Her pale hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail, every line of her posture radiating authority despite her junior rank.

When she looked up and caught me watching, the force of her gaze stole my breath.

“Problem, handler?” Her voice had carried the cultured precision of old bloodline nobility, but there was challenge underneath.

“None at all.” But that was already a lie. Everything about her was a problem I couldn’t solve.

Three months of stolen glances during joint briefings. Six months of manufactured reasons to consult on each other’s cases. Nine months before we finally gave in to the inevitable during a late-night strategy session that had nothing to do with strategy.

She tasted like winter fire and dangerous secrets.

The love affair was intense, all-consuming.

Until that last night…

“My clan knows.” Her voice had been steady, but I could feel the terror underneath. We were in my apartment, dawn light filtering through blinds I’d drawn tight against surveillance. Her naked skin was warm against mine, but suddenly she felt impossibly distant.

“Knows what, specifically?” My training kicked in automatically.

Assess the threat. Identify variables. Plan containment.

“About us. About this.” She’d gestured to the space between us, encompassing months of secret meetings and carefully hidden affection. “They know I’m seeing someone outside the clan. They’ve called for an interrogation.”

“I’ll find a way,” I’d insisted, the words desperate even to my own ears. “I’ll find a way to save us. We’ll disappear. There are safe houses—”

“There’s nowhere they can’t reach, Hargen.” She sat up, pulling a sheet around herself like armor. “You know this. You’ve helped track fugitives to the ends of the earth.”

“Then we fight.”

“With what army?” Her laugh was bitter. “Against my own bloodline? Against the Syndicate that owns you, body and soul?”

But I’d kept arguing, kept insisting there had to be another way. Right up until she kissed me goodbye and whispered that she loved me enough to let me go.

I’d thought that was the cruelest thing she could do to me.

I was wrong.

The last memory is the one that’s haunted me. Her execution, broadcast to all Syndicate personnel as a reminder of what happened to those who betrayed clan purity. I watched from my assigned station, mandatory attendance.

They chained her to a stake in the center of the ceremonial chamber. Her pale hair hung loose around her shoulders, and she wore the simple white shift required for ritual purification. She didn’t struggle. Didn’t plead. When the flames rose around her, she looked directly into the camera.

Then the fire consumed her.

Or so I thought.

I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to stop the images. But they won’t be banished now. Not when I know they were all lies. Carefully orchestrated theater designed to… what? Protect her? Protect me?

Protect our daughter.

The possibility hits with crystal clarity.

If Vanya faked her death, if she’s been alive all these years, then everything makes sense.

The timing. The elaborate nature of her execution.

Someone helped her disappear. Someone with access and influence, and the ability to orchestrate a deception that fooled the entire Syndicate hierarchy.

But why contact me now? After all these years of silence, why reveal herself unless the threat is immediate and desperate?

They’re going to kill our daughter.

The message pulses with urgency. Someone is hunting a young woman I never knew existed. My daughter.

My daughter .

The rage hits without warning, white-hot and consuming.

For so long, I’ve believed that I’d killed the woman I adored through the simple act of loving her.

Protected myself with a wall of careful emotional numbness, of turning myself into the perfect tool because I had nothing left worth protecting.

When all along, I was being played.

Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? Some elaborate long-term strategy that required my complete ignorance to function. My grief, my guilt, my carefully constructed emotional distance—all of it serving some purpose I was never allowed to understand.

The silver ring feels suddenly heavy on my finger. A symbol of love, or the most sophisticated manipulation in Syndicate history?

Why now?

The answer comes with cold certainty. Because she needs my help. Because after all these years of playing whatever game has kept her alive, she’s finally run out of moves. Because the woman who let me believe she was dead is finally ready to trust me with the truth.

I stand, decision crystallizing with each breath. The betrayal burns, but beneath it lies something stronger. Somewhere out there is a young woman who shares my blood, who’s in danger, who needs protection.

My daughter.

I may not understand Vanya’s choices. May never forgive them. But I’ll be damned if I let our child pay the price for them.

I rub my eyes as I consider what this means.

I can’t do it alone. I’m one man against an organization that spans continents. One burned-out handler against whatever forces are threatening our daughter.

My mind runs through options, playing out scenarios that all lead to one solution.

I know who to contact. I just pray they’ll be willing to help after all that’s happened.

The autumn wind picks up as I leave the park, carrying the scent of dying leaves and the promise of winter. I pull my coat tighter and disappear into the crowd, just another anonymous figure on a busy street.

But I’m not anonymous anymore. I’m a father with decades of lost time to make up for. I’m a man with a daughter to save and a ghost to confront.

Whatever game Vanya has been playing, whatever lies she’s built our daughter’s life on, whatever danger is closing in—I’m going to be part of the solution.

Even if it kills me.

The city blurs past as I walk, but my mind is already working through the only option I can see. It’s going to require trust I don’t have and alliances I never wanted.

But for the first time in twenty-one years, I have a reason to risk everything.