“It's a concern for everyone in this family.” His eyes don't move from mine. “When she fixates, she stops being rational about the asset. She starts making decisions that feel good instead of decisions that make sense.” He picks up the glass, finally drinks. Sets it back down. “I built you too carefully to watch that happen.”
There it is.I built you.Stated plainly, without pride or apology, the way you'd sayI designed this engineorI drew up these plans.Accurate. Bloodless. The most honest thing about our entire relationship compressed into three words.
“This sounds like something you’ll have to discuss with your wife.”
He looks at me for a long moment. The calculation behind his eyes running forward, running options, landing somewhere. “I will. When the time is right. In the meantime, there’s a job in Brussels. Two weeks out. Clean target, single location, forty-eight-hour window.” He opens the folder properly now and slides a single sheet across the desk. “I'm sending you alone. You leave tonight.”
I look at the sheet without touching it. Target profile. Location. Dates. Then lean back. “I’m afraid there’s a scheduling conflict. Valeria wants me in Cartagena in three days.”
“I’m afraid my wife’s business in Colombia will have to wait.”
I keep my face completely still. “You said the forty-eight-hour window is two weeks out. I can get the job done in Cartagena and be in Brussels with time to spare.”
Rowan lifts his chin slightly, his eyes assessing, studying. “Sixteen jobs all around in the world in three months. See the next fourteen days as recovery.”
“I don’t need?—”
“I can’t have you fucking up this job because my wife likes to come while she watches you work.” That lands exactly the way he intended it to. Hard. Precise. But I keep my expression stone.
“If I were going to fuck it up, you wouldn't have asked.” Not a challenge. A fact.
Rowan’s lips pull in a half-smirk. “It’s not a request, Nazareth.”
“Valeria won’t approve this.”
“Valeria doesn't approve my operations.” There’s an edge in his tone. “She approves hers. This one is mine. And mine gets preference.”
I pick up the sheet. Read it properly. Set it back down.
“Fine,” I say.
Rowan nods once, and the meeting is concluded. I’m about to walk out when he calls, “Nazareth?”
I stop.
He's looking at me with that measuring expression, but something in it has shifted by a degree I can't name. Not warmer. Just—different. The look of a calculation where one variable has been quietly revised and he wants to see if I notice.
“Just so you know, I’m surprising my wife with a getaway to our island.” He watches me with intent. “Choose what you do with the radio silence…wisely.”
Nothing else. No elaboration. No indication of what he knows, or how much, or whether the gap in Brussels is geography or something he engineered.
I look at him for a moment.
He picks up his glass, stands, and turns back to the window.
I let myself out.
The corridor is empty. My footsteps are quiet on the runner, measured, pace controlled the way he trained me to control it—because pace is information, and information given freely is a liability.
He taught me that. Along with everything else.
I built you too carefully.
I think about that the whole walk back. About twelve-year-old Nazareth pulling a book off a shelf with clean, uncracked pages and sayingall of themto a man who was already drawing up blueprints. About the years of training that followed—the broken bones that healed wrong and were rebroken to heal right, the languages drilled in the dark, the exact moment I understood that Rowan wasn't making me stronger for my sake. He was making me stronger for his. A cleaner asset. A more reliable instrument.
The resentment is old and familiar. It doesn't spike anymore. It just sits there, low and constant, the way scar tissue sits. A permanent record of what it cost to become what I am.
The irony isn't lost on me. The skills he built to serve his operation are the only reason I've been able to protect Sophia. The weapon his wife uses is the same weapon keeping the woman I love alive.
