“Beck,” Ella warns.
He makes a zipping gesture with his fingers over his lips and tosses the key away. Good. One more word from him and he’d be eating through a straw.
Kate smiles as she gestures at the plate. “Is that for me?”
I nod, and her eyes lift, surprised. “Ryder…”
“It’s food,” I mutter.
“It’s effort,” she corrects gently, and kisses my shoulder like punctuation.
I don’t know how to respond to that, so I don’t. We settle down to eat, and I put Julian down in his bouncer, the dogs sprawled nearby like living walls. Conversation drifts around us—Quinn walks in talking about town projects, Ava teasing Zane as she feeds Luella, and Beck being unbearable until Quinn puts Oliver in his arms and his dad mode is activated. It’s warm and familiar in a way I never thought I’d want.
For a few minutes, it almost feels like I could do this whole staying and sticking around thing. Then a shrill, insistent pulse from my phone cuts clean through everything. Rook’s head snaps up immediately, and Ash follows, muscles tightening.
Kate’s smile fades. “Ryder?”
I don’t answer as I pull the phone from my pocket. The alert on the screen makes my blood run cold. There’s a compound perimeter breach back in the home we left a week ago. My thumb taps the live feed, and the image loads—rain blurring the lens just enough to make everything feel unreal, but the shapes moving through my property are not unreal at all. They cross the perimeter swiftly, stepping over the snow-damp ground with the kind of discipline that doesn’t belong to thieves or lost hikers.
They reach the main structure, and there is no hesitation as one of them tries to force the door open. I built my home to be impenetrable, so the only way they are going to get in is if they hack my system or bomb their way in. They are not patient enough for the former, so I watch as they set up explosives by the steel doors and move back.
I mute the sound then, rage coursing through me as I watch the door fly inwards, metal shrapnel going everywhere.
Within seconds, they are inside—dark figures passing room to room. They tear through the place with purpose, opening cabinets, overturning furniture, ripping down panels. They are looking for me.
When they don’t find what they came for, they stop searching and start destroying, and I can almost feel it through the screen—the tantrum of men denied their prize.
In the foreground of the feed, a figure steps forward, taller than the others, unhurried, as if this is not battle but ceremony. I recognize him immediately. Hassan Yusuf Barre. He wasn’t among the first eight, but this time he’s come himself. My jaw locks so hard it aches.
Kate’s fingers dig into my sleeve. “Oh my God…”
He pauses, tilting his head slightly toward one of the cameras, then his gaze locks dead on the lens. I unmute the feed, and his voice comes through low and clear. “I’m coming for you, Morgan.”
Then he gives a small signal, and they all walk out. Then my home erupts—fire blooming through steel and glass, the compound engulfed in flames.
Kate’s breath catches sharply, and Julian fusses, startled by the sudden tension. The dogs are rigid at our feet. Her face is pale,eyes fixed on the phone in my hands and the words Hassan spoke like a promise.
Zane’s voice is the first to cut through the kitchen. “What the hell was that?!”
I look up and my family is watching me like they’re watching a fault line crack open beneath the house. I don’t answer in the kitchen, not with babies here. They are far too young for that.
“Family meeting. Now!” I say instead, and my voice leaves no space for argument.
The room shifts immediately. Daisy and Aria are ushered toward the younger ones, put on babysitting duty, doors close, and the house rearranges itself until only the adults remain, gathered in the dining room like this is court.
Dad sits at the head of the table, Zane stands with his arms crossed, Jace is quiet, eyes sharp, soldier brain already planning strategies, while Beck hovers near the wall, restless energy barely contained.
Ella is upright beside her husband Cole, jaw tight, her fury barely leashed. Tessa sits with a tablet in front of her, like she can hack God if she needs to. Quinn’s expression is calm in that corporate way that means disaster is being processed efficiently. Ava’s arms are folded, her gaze on Kate for half a second before returning to me.
Kate sits without really sitting, Julian against her chest, like she doesn’t trust the chair to hold her. She didn’t want to let him go with the other kids, and I didn’t have it in me to tear him away from her, not after everything we’ve been through.
Now that it’s just us adults, they all look at me, waiting for answers.
“There’s no clean way to say it,” I begin, because there isn’t. “I know you all have a hint as to what I do since I’ve come through for you in one way or another, but I’m a contract worker. Private, off-the-books kind of jobs that governments pretend don’t exist.”
I pause to let that sink in before I continue. “About a year ago, in LA, I had a contract. Yusuf Aden Barre.”
Jace’s face hardens immediately, familiar with the name. “Al-Shabaab?”
