This isrobbed.
“This was it,” he mutters under his breath, not even fully aware he’s speaking. “This was the one.”
The one he’s been chasing for years. The one who taunted him. The one who sent tapes. The one who touched what was his—
My chest tightens at the direction of that thought. I hate that it lands there. I hate more that some part of me understands exactly what that broken edge in his voice means, even if I don’t let myself name it too clearly.
I feel it too, but differently.
I don’t feel robbed of strategy.I feel cheated.
Cheated out of looking Mikhail in the eye. Cheated out of deciding for myself what I wanted his end to be. Cheated out of knowing why.
And I hate that King took that from us.
We find him in the far wing near tactical storage, leaning against a crate like nothing in the world shifted. The hallway is dimmer here, harsher somehow, lit by overhead strips that turn everyone a little ghostlike. He looks exactly like he always does after violence—still, unreadable, dangerous in the most ordinary posture imaginable. One boot crossed over the other. Arms loose. Face empty. Like the world can burn and he’ll still have enough time to sharpen his knife afterward.
Jon doesn’t hesitate.
He closes the distance in three strides and shoves him hard enough that King’s shoulders slam into the wall with a sharp crack that ricochets down the corridor.
“What the hell did you do?” Jon demands, voice low and lethal.
King doesn’t shove back.
He doesn’t flinch.
He barely blinks.
“He wasn’t walking out of here,” King says calmly.
“That wasn’t your call!” Jon roars.
The sound echoes down the hall, hard and violent enough to make the soldiers nearby freeze mid-step. A corporal carrying a crate stops cold. Two younger recruits at the intersection go dead still like they’re trying to disappear into the concrete. Everybody on this base knows the difference between anger and command. This is neither. This is personal.
I step in fast, instinct overriding thought.
“Jon—”
He doesn’t hear me.
“You don’t get to decide that!” Jon snaps, shoving him again, harder this time. “You don’t get to take that choice away!”
“He tortured her,” King shoots back, finally some heat breaking through the calm. “He tortured me. You think he deserved a cell and a conversation?”
“That wasn’t about what he deserved!” Jon fires back. “It was about what we needed!”
The words slam into the space between them and stay there.
I can feel the air getting heavier, thick with years of loyalty and betrayal and rage. These aren’t just soldiers arguing over protocol. These are men who’ve bled for each other. Men who’ve carried each other through fire. Men who know exactly where to cut because they know exactly what matters.
Jon grabs King by the collar this time, shoving him harder. Fabric bunches in his fist. King’s boots scrape against the floor. For one dangerous second, I think King might finally swing back just to make the whole thing simpler. He doesn’t. That almost makes it worse.
“I chased him for years,” Jon growls. “Years. You think I wanted him dead? Of course I did. But not like that. Not without answers.”
King’s jaw tightens. There’s a flicker there now—something between fury and grief, buried so deep most people would miss it. I don’t.
“You were never going to get answers,” he says flatly. “Men like him don’t give those. They just take.”
