The man was stunning.Powerful.
Victor found himself unable to look away.The man’s stillness was magnetic.He laughed when the others laughed, but his gaze swept the horizon with quiet vigilance.That kind of awareness came from years of danger—and yet there was calm in him too.Balance.Victor wondered, fleetingly, what it would be like to be seen by a man like that.To have someone’s trust.Someone’s arms.The thought startled him.Get your head straight, Dane.
He shifted in the seat, focusing again on the surf, but the thought lingered.Family.Love.Concepts he’d studied like foreign languages but never learned to speak.Growing up in a Russian orphanage, groomed for espionage before he could spell the word, hadn’t left much room for trust—or softness.The Directorate had taken him in, molded him, turned him into something useful.But useful wasn’t the same as whole.
A gust of wind rattled the car.He inhaled the scent of salt and rain.He loved this place.Hawaii had always called to him, ever since he’d watched Hawaii Five-0 reruns late at night in the orphanage common room.He’d learned the language, the music, the cadence of aloha.And now he was here—on the edge of paradise, watching men being labeled as evil by the only organization he’d ever trusted, but something in his gut telling him that something was not right.
Victor leaned forward, elbows on his knees.If this is wrong—and it feels wrong—how the hell do I make it right?
He pulled out his phone, scanning his encrypted messages.There were a few contacts he could still trust—hackers and analysts who hadn’t yet sold their souls to the Directorate.Maybe it was time to start asking questions.Quietly.Carefully.
His watch buzzed once—an alert from Marcus’s system.A reminder.Operation Recovery: Two days from now.0400 hours.
They’d breach before dawn, day after tomorrow.
Victor closed his eyes for a moment, letting the weight of it settle.He could already picture how it would go.The Directorate would descend on the compound to drag Hawkins back and eliminate anyone in their way.His thoughts turned immediately to the hot guy in the surf.He would die tomorrow if the Directorate had their way.
He exhaled sharply.You need your head straight, Dane, he told himself again.If you hesitate out there, you’ll get yourself killed—or worse, captured.And he knew what “captured” meant in Directorate terms.He still had the scars.
He looked back toward the beach one last time.The laughter carried up the wind again, bright and real.Drew’s arm slung around Kael’s shoulder.The sight twisted something deep inside him.
Victor swallowed hard.“Maybe they’re not the enemy,” he murmured.
Then he straightened, snapping the lens cap back onto the camera.The motion felt final, like closing the lid on something that had been alive only seconds ago.He had no idea how this would all end—whether he’d walk away from it, or vanish into the long list of names no one spoke about again.What terrified him most was realizing he wasn’t sure he cared.The Directorate had taken so much from him that the idea of dying didn’t scare him half as much as the thought of living a life no one would remember, a life no one would mourn.
Chapter Ten
Morning sunlight spilledacross the compound, painting everything gold, wrapped as it was in quiet.For the first time in months, there was no tension humming in Kael’s muscles, no missions waiting, no targets to stalk.Just the sound of waves striking rock and the soft murmur of his team in the distance.From his spot on the cliff’s edge, he could see the shimmer of the ocean stretching out forever, the wind carrying the scent of salt and hibiscus.
It should have felt peaceful.Instead, it felt wrong.
He’d been awake since dawn, unable to shake the prickling unease that had lodged beneath his skin.Every instinct whispered that something was shifting.Maybe it was the way the surf broke too rhythmically, or how the air felt too still.Maybe it was the way Drew’s laughter from the compound below—soft, unguarded—felt like something borrowed from another life, something too fragile to last.
Kael rubbed the back of his neck and started the perimeter walk, boots crunching along the path that wound through the scrub and palm.Keanu and Tane were already up, fixing the outer generator.Niko sat cross-legged near the trucks, eyes half-closed, pretending to meditate but really just napping.When he climbed the stairs from the garage to the command center he found Luka, hunched over his screens.
“Morning, boss,” Luka called without looking up.“Coffee’s on the burner.”
