“I’ll make something proper for dinner,” she promised.“You all look like you need it.”
When she left, the room felt quieter.
The shift didn’t last long.
Kael leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled, eyes never leaving Ethan.“Before we get into anything else,” he said evenly, “I want to understand what we just walked into.”
Ethan’s gaze flicked to him.
“Who owns this property?”Kael asked.“The land, the airstrip, the hangar.On paper.”
Ethan shrugged and took a sip of his coffee."I do.It is all in my name.Well, companies that I own at least."
“And the men outside,” Kael continued before Ethan could answer.“The ones we took down and the ones still coming.Who are they working for?”
Ethan gave him a look."Same answer.They were all chosen and hired by me.Most were trained by me."
Silence pressed in again, heavier this time.
Kael nodded once, as if ticking boxes.“And the security here,” he added.“What kind of net did they just hit?Private contractors?Off-book assets?Or something tied into a larger system we haven’t seen yet?”
Ethan crossed his arms and sat back in his chair."A lot of the tech was developed by me.I needed a place that I could build for myself, that I could keep the most important person in the world to me safe.Poppy lives here with Lucy and me.She's only three, so for now, her small world makes her happy and safe."
Poppy was three.Niko frowned.Ethan must have gotten his wife pregnant the moment he got home.Pain shot through him at that thought, and he shook his head.He could not afford to go down that train of thought.He needed answers himself.
Niko leaned forward, forearms braced on the table.“Pyre,” he said, slower this time, letting the word carry its weight.“Not the callsign.The man behind it.The reason people are willing to burn down forests and put bounties on your head.I want to know what you’re really doing, Ethan—and who you’re doing it to.”
Ethan didn’t answer immediately.
“Not everything is what it seems,” he said finally.
Then—slowly—he looked directly at Niko.
Really looked at him.For the first time since they arrived on the property.
“If I’m going to tell this,” Ethan said, voice low and steady, “I need to start from the beginning.”
Niko’s chest tightened.
He needed to hear it.
He dreaded hearing it.
And he knew—deep in his bones—that whatever came next was going to change everything he thought he understood about the past.But he nodded anyway.
****
Ethan hadn’t plannedto tell it like this.
Not in a room full of men who measured truth by threat vectors and probabilities.Not with Niko sitting across from him, close enough that Ethan could see every flicker of emotion he hadn’t managed to bury.
But once the words started, there was no clean way to stop them.
“It started the morning I left you,” Ethan said, his voice steadier than he felt.
Saying it out loud dragged the memory up sharp and whole.
His father standing in the doorway of his apartment like he owned the air itself.No warning.No pretense.Just inevitability.