The door opened, and Shannon looked up. In walked her father and Ian Chase. Both were dressed sharply but looked exhausted.
“What is it?” she asked, voice steady on the surface.
Ian didn’t speak. He nodded to Mike instead.
Shannon’s father stepped closer, taking a seat across from her. His voice was low. “It looks like General Barrett Haines is in this up to his eyeballs.”
She frowned. “No.”
“It’s not confirmed,” Ian added carefully. “But the trail runs clean. From the Academy pipeline to Germany. He was upstream of almost every move we’ve traced.”
“It doesn’t sit right,” she said. “He’s?—”
“I know,” Mike said gently. “I know him too.”
Shannon blinked, jaw flexing. Then she whispered, “Dante’s blood type is B positive.”
Mike looked over at her, brows lifting.
“He needs a kidney,” she said. “Jamie started the process.”
Ian inhaled deeply. Mike didn’t look away.
Shannon tried to keep her voice level, but it cracked at the edges. “We beat Krueger. We got out. We stopped two nukes. And now…” She broke.
Her hands came up to cover her face as the sob caught—sharp and sudden. Not just fear, but bone-deep exhaustion. A breaking that had waited weeks to arrive. “I can’t lose him, Dad.”
Mike was already moving, crossing the room in two strides. He crouched in front of her—not as an executive. Not as a major. As her father. He pulled her into his arms without a word and let her cry against his shoulder. No shushing. No fixing. Holding.
She gripped his jacket like she was drowning.
“It’s okay,” he murmured. “You don’t have to be the strong one every second.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do if he?—”
Mike pulled back just enough to meet her eyes. “Then we’ll find what to do. You hear me? I will tear apart every donor registry in the world. I will carry that kid to a transplant if I have to. But you’re not going to lose him. Not after everything he’s survived.”
Ian looked away, giving the moment its dignity. His closed fist pressed against his heart.
Mike held her like a father should.
FIFTY-TWO
DANTE’S SUITE
The ICU wing had quieted. The buzz of machines and the soft shuffle of nurses' shoes faded to a background hum. Outside Dante’s room, the lights were dimmed. Inside, it was just them.
Shannon sat curled up in the corner lounge chair with her knees drawn toward her chest and her hoodie sleeves pulled past her wrists. Her hair was damp from a recent shower. Her eyes were shadowed with fatigue, but she hadn’t left. Not once.
Dante lay half reclined and shirtless on the adjustable bed, no longer tethered to anything that beeped or bled. The central line in his neck was gone. The arterial shunt from his wrist—gone. The Foley catheter was removed five days ago. The peritoneal site in his abdomen had healed well enough to start his new routine two nights earlier. It was his new life.
He could breathe again. Sit up. Swallow food without wincing. And he could see her now—really see her—not as his caregiver or a soldier or a sentinel. But as his.
He turned toward her, watching until she noticed. “I remember waking up in the plane.”
Shannon sat up straighter, the blanket falling from her lap.
“Your voice was the first thing I registered,” he said. “I thought I heard Roe’s British accent too.”
