Chapter 6
RETH
Present
Rowan Capello is not a man who summons people.
He makes that clear through architecture—the way his study sits at the opposite end of the estate from Valeria's rooms, the way his schedule runs on a different clock entirely, the way entire days pass on this compound without his presence registering at all.
He moves through this world like a weather system that hasn't decided yet whether to rain.
Present. Pressure-bearing. Not yet committed to what it's going to do.
I've lived under his roof for thirteen years.
I know his footsteps from four corridors away.
I know the sound of his study door when he goes in there to not be disturbed versus when he's in there and waiting.
I know the way Valeria's posture changes when he enters a room—that barely perceptible tightening, the string tuned up half a note—and I know she'd die before she admitted it.
What I owe Rowan Capello is not gratitude. It's not loyalty. It's something colder and more precise than either of those things.
He's the reason I'm still alive.
Not because he protected me. Not because he cared.
But because at some point in those early years, when Valeria was still deciding exactly what she was building, Rowan looked at a twelve-year-old boy who'd said not yet and decided that boy was worth investing in.
He brought in the trainers. Krav Maga first, then Judo, then the kind of close-quarters combat that doesn't have a name because the people who teach it prefer it that way.
Languages. Surveillance. The architecture of a kill.
He pushed the curriculum harder every year, adding layers, adding pressure, testing load-bearing capacity the way an engineer tests a bridge—not to keep it standing but to find the exact point where it fails.
He found my limits and then he moved them. Repeatedly. Without sentiment.
I hated him for it on the days it broke me. I relied on it on the days it saved my life.
That's the mathematics of what Rowan Capello is to me—a debt I can neither repay nor forgive, owed to a man who built a weapon and handed it to his wife. Whether he knew what she'd do with it is a question I stopped asking somewhere around year four, when the answer stopped mattering.
So when Yusuf, his personal assistant, finds me in the east corridor after the debrief with Valeria and says, ‘Mr. Capello would like a word,’ I don't read it as an invitation.
I follow Yusuf to the study and go inside alone.
The room smells like old paper and cedar burning in the fireplace—the smell of money that's been in one place long enough to stop announcing itself.
Floor to ceiling shelves. A desk the size of a small country, clear except for a single closed folder and a glass of something amber that hasn't been touched.
Rowan is standing at the window with his back to me.
His navy suit is fitted so precisely it looks like he was poured into it.
Even the way he holds himself, arms loosely locked behind his back, is calculated for maximum disregard.
He still carries that quality of absolute patience that I've come to understand isn't calm so much as it is calculation running so far ahead of the present moment that the present moment never rattles him.
He doesn't turn when I come in. I close the door and wait.
Outside, the estate grounds stretch in the early morning light—the garden, the east wall, the tree line beyond it. I've mapped every inch of it. Exit points, blind spots, the gap in the cameras along the north perimeter that maintenance still hasn't fixed because I haven't told them to.
“Sit,” Rowan says.
I sit.
He lets another thirty seconds pass. Then he turns, picks up the glass, and looks at me the way he always has—measuring, unhurried, the look of a man taking a reading on something he built and wants to know the current state of.
“You've been productive,” he says.
“That's the job.”
“Mm.” He moves to the chair behind the desk and sits, setting the glass down without drinking from it. He opens the folder, scans the first page. “Sixteen jobs in three months. Clean. No exposure.” A pause. “Valeria's pleased.”
I remain silent.
“I'm not.” He closes the folder. “It’s not a sustainable operational tempo. You're being run hard. Harder than the work requires.”
I look at him steadily. “I'm managing.”
“You are.” He leans back, fingers laced. “For now.”
The fire pops behind me. Neither of us reacts.
“What do you want, Mr. Capello?”
Something shifts in his expression—not quite a smile.
The acknowledgment of one. He appreciates the directness the way he always has.
Notes it without rewarding it. “I want you functional for the next decade. What I have instead is my wife running you at a pace that serves her and not the operation.” A beat.
“She's fixating. I've seen the pattern before.”
I keep my face exactly where it is. “That's a concern for Valeria.”
“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 say I designed this engine or I 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 saying all of them to 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.
I owe Rowan Capello a debt I will never say out loud.