I stiffened. "How do you?—"
"Dad told us," Gideon said. "Not the details. Just that you'd been busy."
I exhaled slowly. "Yeah. Paris."
"What else?" Lucas asked.
So, I told them.
Not everything. But enough.
The assignments. The close calls. The times I'd been shot at, the times I'd almost been caught. The work that kept me up at night and the work that made me feel like I was doing something that mattered.
They listened, asking questions, nodding along.
And I realized, with a sharp pang of embarrassment, that most of this was news to them.
They told me about their careers in turn.
All special forces. Every one of us had seen our fair share of combat.
We'd scattered across the globe.
Different branches. Different missions. Different wars.
And now here we all were again.
Brothers. Family.
Another byproduct of our father leaving.
We'd had to find our own paths. Build our own lives. And in doing so, we'd lost track of each other.
But not anymore.
"What about Micah?" I asked.
The mood shifted slightly.
Gideon took a sip of his beer, then said, "He comes next."
I frowned. "Next?"
"He’ll get an invite," Caleb said. "Just like we did. Just like you."
I sensed there was a catch.
There was.
Jacob leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Amelia needs to help."
I went still. "What?"
"Her sources," Jacob said. "They're the closest we've come to The Vanguard's tentacles. We need the intel. So we can do something. Finally strike back instead of waiting to get hit."
My stomach twisted.
"I'll try," I said. "But her morals are sound. She believes in her work. She's not going to hand over her sources just because I ask nicely."
