He should have been in bed. Clara had been curled against him when he’d slipped out, her hair brushing his chest, herbreathing steady. Safe, for once. His body had wanted to stay. His mind hadn’t let him.
The door clicked open behind him. Jonas stiffened, then forced his shoulders loose. He didn’t need to look to know who it was.
“Can’t sleep either?” His voice was low, roughened by hours without speaking.
Bás leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, the picture of a man who’d carried too much and didn’t know how to set it down. His silhouette filled the doorway, broad and immovable, but his eyes were tired. “No.” The word was flat. He pushed off the frame and stepped inside, slow and deliberate. “Feels unfinished. Like Hansen’s ghost is still prowling, waiting for the right moment to remind us he never really left.”
Jonas swallowed. His fingers twitched against the keys.Not a ghost. Not for me.
The silence stretched. Screens flickered. Somewhere in the compound, a pipe clanged, the sound sharp in the stillness. Jonas’s pulse skittered too fast, too thin. He hated how his throat felt tight, how words burned in his chest, pressing to get out.
“It wasn’t just the beatings.” The admission was soft, almost swallowed by the hum of machinery.
Bás stilled. Slowly, he lowered himself into the chair opposite Jonas, bracing his forearms on his knees. His eyes never left Jonas’s face.
Jonas stared at the screens, unable to meet them. His mouth was dry. “He took… more. Everything. And I let the shame bury me alive.” His voice cracked on the last word, splintering.
Silence. Then the sound of leather creaking as Bás’s fists flexed, hard. His jaw worked, the muscle ticking violently. For a moment, Jonas thought he might break something—the chair, the desk, the wall.
“You should never have carried that alone,” Bás said finally, voice low and fierce, like stone grinding against stone.
Jonas laughed, a hollow sound. “What was I supposed to do? Stand up in the debrief and say,Oh, by the way, he…” His throat closed, words choking. He dragged a hand down his face. “I couldn’t. Not then. Not ever. Not until… Clara. I didn’t want you to think I was weak. I was ashamed.”
Bás’s expression was thunder. “Jonas. Look at me.”
Reluctantly, he did.
“There isn’t a second,” Bás said, each word deliberate and heavy with conviction, “not one second, I’ve ever thought of you as weak. You’re the man I trust most when it comes to keeping us alive. If you say the road is clear, we move. If you say stand down, we stand the fuck down. I never question it. None of us do.”
Jonas’s breath hitched. He wanted to argue, to protest that he’d failed, that Rykov had died, that he’d broken. But Bás didn’t give him the chance.
“And shame?” Bás’s mouth twisted, his accent thickening with rage. “Shame belongs to the bastard who hurt you. Not to you. Never to you.”
Jonas stared, searching for pity, for disgust, for disappointment. He found none. Just fury on his behalf and loyalty so solid it made his chest ache.
The weight he’d carried, the suffocating, crushing shame, shifted, even if only slightly. Lighter. For the first time in years, he wasn’t alone inside the silence.
Bás reached across and gripped his shoulder, firm, grounding. The pressure sent heat flooding through Jonas’s arm, an anchor dragging him back to earth.
“We’ll find them,” Bás said, his eyes burning. “All of them. End this once and for all. And then, maybe, we can get back to the business of living.”
Jonas’s throat was tight again, but for a different reason. He managed a nod, fingers tightening on the armrest.
Living. The word echoed, terrifying and tantalising all at once.
He turned back to his screens, Oliver’s face glaring at him from the grainy CCTV. Jonas’s hands steadied on the keys. He wasn’t doing this alone. Not anymore.
The silence stretched after Bás’s words, heavy but no longer suffocating. Jonas let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. His chest hurt from it, as though his ribs had been pulled too tight for too long and were only now expanding again.
Bás’s hand was still on his shoulder. Solid. Certain. Jonas nodded once, grateful, though words still wouldn’t come.
For a long moment, they sat in the hum of machines. The monitors flickered, faces and names scrolling, CCTV feeds catching shadows that might matter or might not. The work pulled at Jonas like it always did. He leaned forward, fingers hovering above the keys, grateful for the familiar rhythm, the order he could force on chaos.
Bás leaned back in his chair but didn’t move to leave. His eyes were sharp and watchful, but softer now, as if seeing Jonas more clearly for the first time. “All right,” Bás said, tone shifting from raw to business, “show me what you’ve got.”
Jonas’s fingers flew, dragging one window across another, connecting dots most men would miss. “Oliver’s movements look messy at first, but they’re not. He’s been setting up new accounts, laundering money through old shell corps. I started tracing them yesterday.” He tapped another key and a map bloomed, lit with blinking points across Europe. “Prague. Geneva. Madrid. But look here.”
He zoomed in on the UK. One tiny dot pulsed in the Welsh borders, close enough to the mountains to make Jonas’s stomach twist. “That’s not one of his known businesses,” Jonassaid. “It’s a holding company registered to a shell estate. No public records. I wouldn’t have found it if I wasn’t digging through tax anomalies.”
