Chapter 3
CONNOR
Paris wasn't supposed to be like this.
I'd come here once before, a lifetime ago—fourteen years old with a school group, all of us strutting down cobblestones like we owned the place. We'd been idiots. Loud, cocky kids from Brooklyn who thought the world owed us something just for showing up.
I remembered my first sip of beer that trip, standing along the Seine at sunset, the bottle warm in my hand. One of the guys—Denny, I think—had pointed at a homeless man pissing against the stone embankment, and we'd all laughed like it was the funniest thing we'd ever seen.
Freedom. That's what Paris had meant back then. No rules. No consequences. Just possibility stretching out in every direction.
Now, I was back.
But freedom wasn't on the menu this time.
I'd been in Paris three weeks, and the city hadn't changed.
The streets still smelled like butter and cigarettes and old stone.
The light still hit the buildings at angles that made you want to believe in something.
The Seine still carved through the center like a promise the city kept making to itself.
But I had changed.
I wasn't that kid anymore. I was a man on the run, looking over my shoulder at shadows that knew how to stay hidden. And the past I'd spent a decade trying to outrun had finally caught up.
My fucking past.
Would I ever be able to outrun it?
The question circled in my head like a vulture, patient and relentless.
I'd tried. God knows, I'd tried. Joined the Navy at eighteen.
Made it through BUD/S. Earned my Trident.
Climbed the ladder to SEAL Team Six. Got loaned out to the Agency for the kind of work that didn't make it into official reports.
I'd built a life on discipline, on precision, on being the kind of operator who got the job done and didn't leave loose ends.
But loose ends had a way of finding you, anyway.
Three weeks ago, I'd gotten the call. Not official. Not through channels. A voice I hadn't heard in years, low and urgent, telling me to disappear. Telling me they were coming.
I didn't ask who "they" were. I already knew.
The past. The nine of us. The things we'd done before we became anything else.
So, I'd pulled leave—I had plenty stacked up—and booked a flight to Paris.
Technically, I was still assigned to SEAL Team Six.
Technically, I was on loan to the CIA. Technically, I'd promised a couple of Agency guys I'd do some light work while I was here, keep my hand in, pull per diem to cover expenses.
The system had rules. I knew how to work them.
But this wasn't about the system. This was about survival.
And the men I was running from? They knew how to work the system, too.
The apartment I'd rented was in the 11th arrondissement, a neighborhood that didn't try too hard to be charming. No tourists clogging the sidewalks. No overpriced cafés with English menus. Just narrow streets, cracked pavement, and locals who didn't give a shit who you were.
Perfect.
I kept my head down. Paid cash when I could. Avoided patterns. Changed my route every time I left the building. Basic tradecraft, the kind of thing that became instinct after enough years in the field.
But Paris had a rhythm, and eventually, I fell into it.
Often, I'd walk to a café three blocks over. The woman behind the counter never remembered my order, but she always got it right—pain au chocolat and black coffee. I'd sit at the counter by the window, watching the street wake up, cataloging faces, movements, anything that felt off.
Nothing ever did.
Other times, I'd wander. I told myself it was reconnaissance, staying mobile, staying aware. But the truth was simpler.
I was looking for them.
My brothers. The other eight. Not by blood. By circumstance. Deeper than soul. The men who'd meant more to me than my own life.
We'd saved each other as boys. Survived things that should have killed us. Built something out of nothing—a family, a code, a reason to keep breathing when the world told us we weren't worth the air.
And then we'd walked away. All of us. Left that life behind, went legitimate, scattered to the winds.
But the past didn't care about legitimacy. It didn't care about new lives or clean records or the years we'd put between who we were and who we'd become.
It was coming for us. And I didn't know if the others even knew yet.
I'd tried reaching out. Burner phones, encrypted messages, dead drops in cities I wasn't even in. Nothing. Radio silence.
Either they were already gone, or they were hiding better than I was.
To keep myself sane, I revisited the landmarks from that first trip. The Eiffel Tower, standing like a rusted monument to ambition. Notre-Dame, scaffolding still clinging to its bones. The Louvre, all glass and grandeur and tourists taking selfies in front of art they'd never actually look at.
I tried to recapture that feeling from when I was fourteen. That sense of possibility. That belief that the world was big enough to hold whatever version of yourself you decided to be.
But it was impossible.
The world wasn't that big. And the version of myself I'd tried to become? It was cracking at the seams.
Still, I kept moving. Kept painting.
Yeah. Painting.
I'd picked it up years ago, on a deployment that stretched too long, in a country I couldn't name.
One of the local contractors had been an artist—watercolors, mostly.
He'd shown me the basics, and something about it had stuck.
The focus. The control. The way you could take chaos and turn it into something deliberate.
I painted in private. No one knew. Not my teammates. Not the Agency guys. It was mine, and I wanted to keep it that way.
In Paris, I'd found a little shop in the Marais that sold supplies. The owner was an older man, soft-spoken, with paint-stained hands and a habit of recommending colors I'd never have picked on my own.
I went there twice a week. Bought canvases, brushes, oils in shades that reminded me of the city—burnt umber, Prussian blue, cadmium yellow.
The routine helped. Gave me something to anchor to.
And then there was the woman.
I noticed her the first time at the café near the river.
She'd walked in like she belonged there, all long lines and quiet confidence. Dark hair, unstyled, falling over her shoulders. A camera slung across her body like an extension of her arm. She ordered something in French that sounded easy, natural, like she'd been doing it her whole life.
She wasn't trying to be noticed. That's what caught my attention.
Most people, they broadcast themselves. They want you to look. But she moved through the world like she was cataloging it, not performing in it.
I watched her sit by the window, notebook open, pen moving slowly across the page. She didn't take pictures. Didn't check her phone. Just sat there, present in a way most people had forgotten how to be.
I told myself it was nothing. A coincidence. Paris was full of beautiful women who knew how to exist without apology.
But then I saw her again.
And again.
At first, I chalked it up to patterns. Same neighborhood, same routines. But the third time—standing across the street from the paint shop, camera raised, shooting the facade—my instincts kicked in.
The people I was running from weren't above sending a beautiful woman after me. They'd done worse.
So, I did what I always did at work.
I looked her up.
It wasn't hard. A photographer in Paris, young, American, probably here on some kind of program. I pulled what I could from open sources, cross-referenced faces, ran her through databases I technically wasn't supposed to have access to anymore.
She was clean.
No red flags. No connections. Just a woman with a camera, trying to make something of herself in a city that didn't care.
I should have stopped there.
But I didn't.
Because once I knew she wasn't a threat, something shifted. I started hoping to see her. Started adjusting my route just slightly, telling myself it was coincidence when our paths crossed.
She had a way of moving through the world that made you want to follow. Not in a predatory way. In a gravitational way. Like she was pulling light toward her without even trying.
And her eyes—Christ, her eyes. Dark, expressive, the kind that held weight without demanding anything in return. She looked at things like they mattered. Like every shadow and reflection and in-between moment deserved attention.
She made beauty look effortless. Like she didn't know what she really looked like. Like she'd never stood in front of a mirror and cataloged her own power.
I admired that. More than I wanted to admit.
The invitation to the art showing came from the paint shop owner. He handed it to me on a Thursday afternoon, folding the card into my bag with the same care he used when wrapping canvases.
"You should go," he said in accented English. "Good people. Good wine."
I almost said no. Art showings weren't my scene. Too many bodies, too many exits to track, too much noise.
But something made me say yes.
Maybe it was the routine. Maybe it was the boredom. Maybe it was the nagging hope that she'd be there.
And she was.
I spotted her across the room the moment I walked in. She stood near a painting, head tilted, studying it like it held answers she was still working out. The candlelight softened her features, made her look younger, more open.
I moved toward her without thinking, drawn by the same pull I'd been fighting for weeks.
When I got close enough, I said her name.
"Mila."
She turned, surprise flickering across her face before it settled into something more measured. Recognition. Curiosity.
"Connor," I added, because I hadn't introduced myself before. Because I wanted her to know.
"Connor," she repeated, testing it. Her mouth curved slightly, like she approved. "You've been following me."
"Coincidence," I said, though we both knew it wasn't.
"Is it?"
"Paris is smaller than it looks."
She smiled at that, a real one, and something in my chest loosened. "Why are you in town?" she asked.
"Vacation."
"Vacation," she echoed, skeptical. "You don't seem like the vacation type."
"What type do I seem like?"
She studied me, her gaze moving over my face, my shoulders, the way I stood. Assessing. "The kind who doesn't stop moving."
I almost laughed. She wasn't wrong.
"What about you?" I asked. "Why Paris?"
"Photography residency," she said. "Twelve months. I'm three weeks in."
"You like it?"
"I'm still deciding."
Her honesty surprised me. Most people would have gushed about the city, about the opportunity. But she gave me the truth instead, and I respected that.
"What do you photograph?" I asked.
"Moments," she said. "In-betweens. Things people don't usually notice."
"Like what?"
"Like you," she said, and my pulse kicked.
Before I could respond, before I could ask how long she was staying or if she wanted to grab coffee somewhere quieter, a voice cut through the room from behind me.
"Connor Ward."
I froze.
Fuck.
Every instinct I had screamed threat. My hand moved automatically toward the pistol tucked into my waistband, hidden beneath my sport coat. I ran through scenarios in half a second—exits, cover, how fast I could move Mila out of the line of fire if this went sideways.
But I forced myself to turn slowly. Controlled. Giving nothing away.
And then I saw him.
It took me a second to place the face. Older than I remembered. Harder. But unmistakable.
"Micah Dane," I said, relief flooding through me so fast it almost knocked me off balance.
We shook hands, his grip firm, steady. A warrior's grip.
"Mila," I said, turning back to her. "This is Micah. Old friend."
She smiled, polite, reading the shift in energy. "I can leave you two to talk."
"No," I said, too fast. I didn't want her to leave. Didn't want to lose whatever thread we'd just started pulling.
But Micah's expression stayed serious. "I need a couple of minutes, Connor."
The tone. That's what got me. Not the words. The tone.
I looked at Mila, hating this. "Can I come find you after?"
Micah cut in before she could answer. "Might take longer than a couple of minutes."
Mila's smile didn't falter, but something flickered in her eyes. Disappointment, maybe. Or understanding. "I'll run into you by accident tomorrow," she said, and walked away.
I watched her go, cataloging the sway of her hips, the way she moved through the crowd like water finding its path.
Then I turned back to Micah, shaking my head. "Why the hell did you have to go and do that?"
His expression shifted, humor gone. "We need to talk. In private."
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My awareness expanded, taking in the room—exits, bodies, faces, anyone who didn't belong.
Was this a trap?
Had the art dealer been bought? How could I have been so fucking stupid?
But Micah leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I know you're on the run. And I want to help."
That knocked me back a step. Literally.
"How the hell—"
"Not here," he said.
I scanned the room again, looking for Mila. Found her near the bar, talking to some guys with too-quaffed hair and European smugness. Half of me wanted to tell Micah to fuck off, that I'd stay with her instead.
But I couldn't ignore what he'd said.
Micah Dane wasn't a man who tracked you down to feed you bullshit. He was serious. Solid. The kind of operator you wanted at your six when everything went to hell.
"Is there a team outside?" I asked, voice low. "Getting ready to stuff me in a van?"
Micah actually laughed. "No. But if you want to avoid that scenario, maybe you should listen to what I have to say."
I looked at Mila one more time. She glanced back, just for a second, and something passed between us. A promise, maybe. Or a question.
Then I nodded.
"Lead the way," I said.
Wondering what the hell I'd just gotten myself into.