I leaned one elbow casually against the bar, posture relaxed but eyes locked on his.
“Complicated,” I repeated quietly.
“Right.”
The bartender returned and slid the double shot across the polished but scarred wood surface.
I wrapped my fingers around the glass.
But I didn’t drink yet.
I let it sit there.
A physical barrier between us.
My father’s eyes shifted — calculating now. Not emotional. Strategic.
He was assessing risk.
Assessing whether this encounter threatened the life he had built under false death.
“Elena,” he said quickly, leaning closer.
“Please. Let me explain—”
“No.”
My voice dropped lower. Sharper. “You don’t get to explain.”
I held his gaze.
This bastard hadn’t just disappeared.
He had engineered disappearance.
The plane crash that killed my mother and my little brother wasn’t an accident — It was orchestrated — by him.
A detonation disguised as tragedy.
Why would a man ever kill his own wife and only son?
His funeral had been televised.
People had sent condolences.
Charities had been established in his “memory.”
All of it had been manufactured.
The realization no longer shocked me the way it once had.
It didn’t paralyze me.
It angered me — deeply — but anger had become something I understood how to control.
Fear had once ruled my reactions.
Four years of training had replaced fear with focus.
