Ryker murmured something into his comm. Noah stepped forward to cover the entrance. Charlie and Atlas moved towardthe rear of the house, double-checking every door, every fallen body.
The war was over.
But not the fallout.
Not the healing.
That would take time.
And maybe—for the first time—I’d let myself have that time.
Not just as a planner.
Not just as a woman who'd clawed her way up from nothing.
But as a daughter.
A sister.
A woman in love.
A survivor who’d stopped running.
Ryker crouched beside Silas, his presence steady, the way a brother’s should be in the aftermath of everything falling apart.
No one said much. The house creaked with settling grief.
It wasn’t until Silas spoke—his voice hoarse and hollow—that anyone broke the silence. “What does this mean?” he asked, eyes fixed on Caroline’s face, his thumb brushing the blood away from her cheek like it mattered. “What she told me?”
A heavy silence dropped over the brothers.
“Could Dad really have had another family?” Silas continued, hollow now.
A stunned breath rattled out of Elias.
“What the hell happens if it’s true?” Charlie asked, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “If we have brothers and sisters out there we’ve never met?”
No one had an answer.
Silas looked up slowly then, his voice breaking as it cut through the room. “What do we do if they were just kids—like we were? If they didn’t ask for any of this but still ended up tied to it because of him?”
The weight of it hung there. The pain of it.
I suspected none of them had ever really gotten the whole story—not from their father, and definitely not from Caroline. The Department had made a habit of stealing people’s lives, and it had stolen theirs before they’d even been old enough to understand what they’d lost.
Still cradling Caroline’s body, Silas looked broken in a way that had nothing to do with grief and everything to do with betrayal.
And yet, despite the silence, despite the blood, not one of his brothers turned away. No one tried to run from it.
Instead, Ryker moved closer and rested a steadying hand on Silas’s shoulder. “Then we find them,” he said quietly. “Whatever it takes.”
Elias nodded, jaw clenched. “If they’re out there, we do right by them. That’s what Dad would’ve done, even if he fucked it all up.”
Atlas looked toward the windows, his voice gruff. “We should’ve known him better. All of us.”
They stood there, heads bowed, weapons slack at their sides—not soldiers anymore, not operatives. Just sons.
The room dropped into a deeper stillness.
