Chapter 25
WYATT
Ifelt like shit.
Beyond shit. Like something scraped off the bottom of a boot and left to rot in the Texas sun for a week, baking into something unrecognizable and toxic.
I walked for miles before I even thought about calling the driver.
Just walked, boots hitting pavement in a rhythm that did nothing to quiet my head, Charleston waking up around me like it had every right to be beautiful while I was drowning in my own cowardice, my own weakness, my own spectacular inability to be a decent human being for more than twelve consecutive hours.
The sun climbed higher, turning the humidity from pleasant to oppressive.
Sweat soaked through my shirt, plastered it to my back, ran down my spine.
My phone stayed silent in my pocket like an accusation I couldn't answer, like evidence of yet another relationship I'd sabotaged before it could go anywhere real.
Sophie was probably awake by now. Probably found the empty bed, the cold sheets, the space where I'd been and wasn't anymore.
Probably realizing what I'd known all along—that I was exactly the kind of man who said "I love you" and then disappeared before sunrise like it meant nothing.
I shoved the thought away hard, buried it with all the other shit I didn't want to look at.
Finally, when my legs were burning and my head was still full of Sophie's face—peaceful in sleep, copper hair spread across white pillows like fire on snow, trusting even unconscious in a way that made me ache—I pulled out my phone and called the number on the card.
The driver answered on the first ring.
"I need a ride," I said, my voice rough from disuse and self-loathing.
"Where to?"
"Dominion Hall."
No questions. No judgment in his tone. Just: "I'll be there in ten minutes."
I stood on the side of the road and waited, watching cars pass, watching normal people live normal lives—heading to work, to coffee shops, to breakfast with people they loved, to whatever mundane shit filled their days and made them feel human.
Wondering what the hell mine had become.
When the black SUV pulled up, sleek and expensive and so clearly not civilian it might as well have had "shadow operation" stenciled on the side, I climbed in without a word.
The driver didn't try to make conversation. Just drove, quiet and professional, like he'd picked up plenty of fucked-up soldiers who didn't want to talk and knew better than to push.
My mind was set. Find out what the fuck Dominion Hall really was.
Find out why Klein was here, why he'd shown up now after years of silence, what he wanted, what leverage he thought he had.
Find out what I'd gotten tangled in, what kind of shadow operation I was being recruited into, what enemies came with the job.
Then book the first flight back to my unit, where at least I knew the rules, where I could kill bad guys and do my best to keep the men around me alive and maybe get killed in the process so I'd stop fucking up everyone I touched.
I'd do that until I died.
Simple. Clean. No complications.
No Sophie getting hurt because I couldn't keep my shit together long enough to be what she needed, what she deserved, what she'd somehow convinced herself I was capable of being.
Better to cut it off now. Quick. Before she invested more. Before I did more damage.
The gate opened before we even reached it, like they'd been expecting me, like they had cameras everywhere and had watched me walk half of Charleston before finally breaking down and calling.
Probably did.
Micah was waiting at the front door.
Of course, he was.
He stood there in jeans and a t-shirt, casual as hell, looking calm and unruffled and completely unbothered, like wayward recruits showed up raging and demanding answers every day.
I climbed out of the SUV and walked straight at him, fury building with every step, all that guilt and self-loathing and fear twisting into something sharper, something I could actually use, something that felt better than the hollow ache in my chest.
"Klein," I said before I even reached the porch, my voice hard and cold. "Special Agent Trevor fucking Klein. Why is he here? What the hell have you people dragged me into?"
Micah didn't flinch. Just watched me approach with those steady, measuring eyes that saw too much.
"What kind of shadow bullshit are you running?
" I kept going, my voice rising as I climbed the steps, getting louder with each word like volume could replace answers.
"What fucked up operations? What enemies have you made that bring the FBI sniffing around?
Because I'm done. I'm done being kept in the dark.
I'm done being lied to by omission. I'm done being treated like a fucking asset instead of a person. "
I reached him, got right in his face, close enough to see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes, close enough that he'd have to actually acknowledge me instead of giving me that infuriating calm.
"You want me to work for you? Fine. Then tell me the truth. All of it. What is Dominion Hall? What do you actually do? And why the hell is an FBI agent from my past suddenly in Charleston making threats I don't understand about investigations I'm, apparently, part of?"
Micah let me finish. Let me get it all out, all the rage and fear and confusion I'd been carrying since Klein showed up at Mama P's with that sleazy grin and those vague threats.
Didn't interrupt, didn't defend, didn't make excuses or deflect or do any of the shit people usually did when you called them on their bullshit.
Just stood there and took it.
Absorbed it like he'd heard worse. Like he'd expected exactly this.
When I finally ran out of steam, breathing hard like I'd been in a fight instead of just yelling at a man on his own front porch, there was a long pause.
The morning air felt thick between us, humid and weighted.
Birds sang in the trees. Somewhere in the distance, a boat motor hummed.
Then, for the first time since I'd met him, Micah's eyes softened. Not pity. Not condescension. Not the look people gave broken things they were trying to fix.
Something gentler. Something that looked almost like understanding, like recognition, like he'd stood exactly where I was standing and knew how it felt.
"There's someone you need to see," he said quietly.
"I don't want to see anyone," I shot back immediately, defensive. "I want answers. I want to know what I'm walking into. What you're asking me to risk."
"I know." His voice was gentle, almost sad, like he understood more than I wanted him to, like he could see straight through me to all the broken parts I tried to hide. "But this first. Trust me."
"Trust you?" I laughed, bitter and sharp. "I don't even know you. I don't know what you do, who you work for, what you're really offering—"
"No," he agreed, cutting me off with the simple acknowledgment. "But you will. And after you see this, you'll understand why I couldn't just ... explain. Some things you have to witness."
Something in his body language—the way he stood, the careful stillness, the way his shoulders had dropped like he was carrying weight I couldn't see, like whatever he was about to show me was heavy for him, too—made me hesitate.
Made me follow when he turned and walked inside without checking to see if I'd come.
As we stepped through the door into the cool, elegant foyer with its marble floors and crystal chandelier, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out automatically, expecting ... I don't know. Mama P asking where I was. My CO checking in. Some automated bullshit.
Sophie's text filled the screen.
I woke up and you were gone. I'm not mad. I'm not spiraling. I'm just ... here. I hope you're okay. And I hope you kept the buckle.
Damn.
The words hit like a fist to the chest, knocking the wind out of me, deflating all that righteous anger I'd been building like a shield between me and everything I didn't want to feel.
She wasn't mad. She wasn't spiraling. She wasn't demanding explanations or making me feel worse than I already did or listing all the ways I'd fucked up.
She was just ... there.
Waiting. Trusting. Giving me space I didn't deserve and grace I hadn't earned.
Believing in me, even when I'd given her every reason not to.
Fucking coward.
I stared at the message, my thumb hovering over the keyboard, a thousand responses crowding my throat and none of them adequate, none of them enough.
I'm sorry.
I love you.
I don't know how to be what you need.
I'm broken and I'm going to break you, too, if you let me.
You deserve better than this. Better than me.
But I didn't respond.
Couldn't. Not yet. Not when I didn't know what to say, how to explain why I'd run, how to promise I wouldn't do it again when we both knew—when I knew—I probably would.
When running was what I did best. Had always done best.
I shoved the phone deep in my pocket and kept following Micah, the weight of Sophie's words settling heavy in my chest like stones.
We didn't go to the War Room this time. Instead, we moved through the mansion—past rooms I hadn't seen before, elegant spaces with high ceilings and expensive art that probably cost more than I'd make in a lifetime, more than most people made in ten.
A formal dining room with a table that could seat twenty easily, polished wood gleaming.
A library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and leather chairs that looked like they belonged in a movie about money and secrets.
Then the kitchen, where someone—an older woman with gray hair pulled back and an apron tied around her waist—was humming and clanking pots and pans like this was a normal house instead of whatever the hell it actually was.
She glanced up as we passed, smiled at Micah like she knew him well, like he was family, didn't even blink at me trailing behind looking like I'd been dragged through hell backward.
We kept walking.
Then we reached the back of the house.
Huge glass doors stood open to the backyard—and calling it a backyard felt like calling the ocean a puddle, like the understatement of the fucking century.
A long, rolling lawn cascaded down toward the water, perfectly manicured, the kind of green that took money and constant attention to maintain, that spoke of sprinkler systems and landscapers and resources most people couldn't imagine.
Trees lined the edges, providing shade and privacy from neighboring properties.
At the bottom, where the grass met the harbor in a neat line, two huge black yachts were moored to a private pier, sleek and expensive and completely out of place in my world.
This wasn't just wealth. This was power.
And sitting in a chair on the lawn about halfway down, facing the city skyline across the water like he was surveying his kingdom, was a man.
Salt and pepper hair catching sunlight. Broad shoulders that hadn't quite given in to age, that still spoke of strength and capability. Something about the way he held himself—straight-backed even sitting, alert even relaxed, ready—
Something in me prickled awake. Some recognition I couldn't name yet, couldn't place, like my body knew before my brain caught up, like instinct was screaming what logic hadn't figured out.
The man started to turn when he heard us approach, our footsteps on the grass probably loud in the morning quiet, probably expected.
And when he did—when I saw his face, older but unmistakable, weathered but the same—my world tumbled over and back, spinning like I'd been hit with vertigo, like gravity had reversed and I was falling up instead of down, like every law of physics I'd ever known had just been rewritten.
The man with the salt and pepper hair was my father.
Byron Dane.
Very much alive.
Very much in Charleston.
And very much a gut punch to my soul, to every belief I'd built my life around, to the narrative I'd been telling myself for years.
My father. Who'd disappeared when I was sixteen. Who I'd assumed was dead, or worse—a coward who'd abandoned us.
Sitting in a chair on Micah's lawn like he belonged there.
Like he'd never left at all.