Whywould Rebecca want it to disappear? She had zero connection to Bjorn. Which suggested she was operating on behalf of someone else. So if another person had directed her, they hadn’t needed to explain the contents. They’d only needed to convince her the file was dangerous. That it would hurt someone. That it would destroy something.
Alaric’s mouth tightened. It was easy to imagine a threat crafted specifically for Rebecca’s weak point. Not money. Not loyalty. Not ideology. Asingle human lever.
Do it, and youlive.
Refuse, and you or someone youlove pays forit.
He didn’t know who had said it. He didn’t know if it had been spoken at all. But the missing archive suggested intent, and intent suggested a person who understood exactly what that death-trigger file represented.
The file should have been held unopened and protected until Bjorndied.
And someone had made sure it was gone before his death could ever trigger its release.
That knowledge settled heavily, not as shock but as power. It meant forethought. It meant someone watching the clock, understanding the mechanism well enough to know exactly when to act, especially considering his father’s doctors had warned he was unlikely to survive much longer. The missing archive wasn’t just a problem of security. It was a warning, one that pointed forward as much as it pointedback.
His mind followed that warning where it always went when intent and timing converged. Not to the moment of impact, but to what was left behind once the damage wasdone.
When he closed his eyes, he didn’t see Rebecca’s death. He saw what came after. The stairwell sealed off. The way bodies were positioned once everything had already gone wrong. The way an ordinary space could be transformed into amanipulated scene, arranged just enough to tell a story and hide therest.
It wasn’t emotion pulling him backward through memory. It was pattern recognition. Someone had shaped the aftermath, supervised what could be seen, decided how the event would read to anyone arriving late. Damage first. Narrative second.
He also saw Sera.
Sera standing rigid and pale with blood on her hands that wasn’t hers. Sera meeting Vidar’s gaze without blinking while she lied in public because any other option would have made the situation worse.Sera at his side, quiet and steady when the only thing he’d wanted to do was rip the building apart until it coughed up the truth.
He couldn’t afford to make decisions based on what he wanted.He could only afford what he could prove.
The door opened without a knock.
Magnus walked in with the kind of confidence that came from knowing exactly where he stood and not needing permission to occupy space. He took the chair opposite where Alaric stood without ceremony and dropped a slim folder on the table between them. No coffee. No small talk. Magnus didn’t waste time cushioning hard things.When action was required, he moved first and dealt with the consequences afterward.
Alaric remained standing.
His brother didn’t comment on it, but he would have registered the choice instantly. Magnus didn’t play status games for sport, but he respected them. Who stood, who sat, who gave ground. Those details told him how hard a conversation was going toget.
Alaric let the silence stretch instead.The difference between them had always been visible in rooms like this.Magnus could look warm even when he was preparing to destroy someone.Alaric could look cold even when he was trying to protect what mattered.
After a full beat, Magnus exhaled slowly. “This doesn’t get easier the longer we stare at it.”
Alaric felt the pull of everything he was refusing to look at. The ache in his ribs. The heat still lingering in his blood. The knowledge that Sera was somewhere else in the house, close enough to reach if he let himself turn away from this. He didn’t. He forced his focus forward, into the narrow channel where decisions lived, where hesitation got people killed.
“Staring at it won’t change the outcome,” heconfirmed. “So, talk.”
Magnus opened the folder but didn’t slide it forward. He didn’t need paper for this. The folder was proof. Something physical and necessary, apresence on the table that anchored what he was about to say to facts rather than intuition.”This isn’t about guilt,” Magnus began. “I need that said first.”
Alaric didn’t respond. He didn’t nod. He didn’t offer acknowledgment. Silence was the only permission he ever gave at this stage, and Magnus knew better than to expect anythingelse.
“This is about exposure,” Magnus continued. “Vectors. Proximity. Opportunity.”
Alaric folded his arms and stayed where he was, unmoving. “You’re circling.”
Magnus’s mouth twitched. “You’ve always hated preambles.”
His lips ticked upward in a humorless smile. “Because they’re where people hide what they actually mean.”
Magnus leaned back slightly. Not defensive. Calculating. “Fine. Then we do it in bullets.”
He ticked the first point off with his fingers.
