I'd been in Paris three weeks, and the city hadn't changed. The streets still smelled like butter and cigarettes and old stone. The light still hit the buildings at angles that made you want tobelieve in something. The Seine still carved through the center like a promise the city kept making to itself.
But I had changed.
I wasn't that kid anymore. I was a man on the run, looking over my shoulder at shadows that knew how to stay hidden. And the past I'd spent a decade trying to outrun had finally caught up.
My fucking past.
Would I ever be able to outrun it?
The question circled in my head like a vulture, patient and relentless. I'd tried. God knows, I'd tried. Joined the Navy at eighteen. Made it through BUD/S. Earned my Trident. Climbed the ladder to SEAL Team Six. Got loaned out to the Agency for the kind of work that didn't make it into official reports.
I'd built a life on discipline, on precision, on being the kind of operator who got the job done and didn't leave loose ends.
But loose ends had a way of finding you, anyway.
Three weeks ago, I'd gotten the call. Not official. Not through channels. A voice I hadn't heard in years, low and urgent, telling me to disappear. Telling me they were coming.
I didn't ask who "they" were. I already knew.
The past. The nine of us. The things we'd done before we became anything else.
So, I'd pulled leave—I had plenty stacked up—and booked a flight to Paris. Technically, I was still assigned to SEAL Team Six. Technically, I was on loan to the CIA. Technically, I'd promised a couple of Agency guys I'd do some light work while I was here, keep my hand in, pull per diem to cover expenses.
The system had rules. I knew how to work them.
But this wasn't about the system. This was about survival.
And the men I was running from? They knew how to work the system, too.
The apartment I'd rented was in the 11th arrondissement, a neighborhood that didn't try too hard to be charming. No tourists clogging the sidewalks. No overpriced cafés with English menus. Just narrow streets, cracked pavement, and locals who didn't give a shit who you were.
Perfect.
I kept my head down. Paid cash when I could. Avoided patterns. Changed my route every time I left the building. Basic tradecraft, the kind of thing that became instinct after enough years in the field.
But Paris had a rhythm, and eventually, I fell into it.
Often, I'd walk to a café three blocks over. The woman behind the counter never remembered my order, but she always got it right—pain au chocolat and black coffee. I'd sit at the counter by the window, watching the street wake up, cataloging faces, movements, anything that felt off.
Nothing ever did.
Other times, I'd wander. I told myself it was reconnaissance, staying mobile, staying aware. But the truth was simpler.
I was looking for them.
My brothers. The other eight. Not by blood. By circumstance. Deeper than soul. The men who'd meant more to me than my own life.
We'd saved each other as boys. Survived things that should have killed us. Built something out of nothing—a family, a code, a reason to keep breathing when the world told us we weren't worth the air.
And then we'd walked away. All of us. Left that life behind, went legitimate, scattered to the winds.
But the past didn't care about legitimacy. It didn't care about new lives or clean records or the years we'd put between who we were and who we'd become.
It was coming for us. And I didn't know if the others even knew yet.
I'd tried reaching out. Burner phones, encrypted messages, dead drops in cities I wasn't even in. Nothing. Radio silence.
Either they were already gone, or they were hiding better than I was.
