Chapter Seven
Morning came softly, filled with love and light—golden and slow—spilling through wide panes of glass and warming the wood beneath his bare feet.
Niko followed Ethan and the sound of voices down the hall, the low hum of life already in motion, and stepped into an open-plan space that stole his breath for a second time since arriving.
The kitchen and dining area opened out toward the lake in a sweep of glass and timber, clean lines softened by warmth. Stone countertops, wide and inviting. A heavy wooden table built to be used, not admired. Shelves lined with cookbooks and mismatched mugs. It wasn’t sterile. It wasn’t staged.
It was lived in.
Lucy stood at the stove, sleeves rolled, hair pulled back, wooden spoon in hand, and authority in every movement.
The smell of coffee, butter, and something sweet filled the air.
Tane was at the counter beside her, carefully slicing fruit exactly the way she’d instructed, while Victor stood at the sink rinsing dishes with the focused seriousness of a man on a mission.
Luca hovered nearby, stirring something in a pan under Lucy’s sharp eye.
“No, not like that,” Lucy said, tapping Luca’s wrist lightly with the spoon. “Gentle. You’re cooking eggs, not interrogating them.”
Luca muttered an apology and adjusted, earning a satisfied nod.
Across the room, the rest of the team was utterly useless.
Drew sat cross-legged on the floor, holding a plush bee aloft and making exaggerated flying noises. “Incoming,” he announced gravely. “Bee is approaching the target from the west.”
Kael lay on his stomach nearby, chin propped in his hands, nodding along like this was a serious briefing. “Negative,” he countered. “Wind conditions are unstable. Bee needs to abort and regroup.”
“Abort?” Poppy gasped, clutching her own stuffed bee to her chest. “He’s brave.”
Keanu crouched beside her, laughter in his voice. “He is very brave. Best pilot I’ve ever seen.”
Poppy beamed. “He flies fast.”
Drew dipped the bee dramatically. “Fastest in the room.”
Poppy giggled again, the sound bright and infectious, and Drew looked momentarily undone by it.
They were completely, hopelessly enthralled.
Lucy glanced over her shoulder, took it all in, and snorted. “At least someone’s having fun,” she said, before turning back to the stove and clapping her hands once. “Victor, plates. Tane, juice. Luca—don’t burn that.”
So, this was Poppy.
She was three, give or take. Auburn curls escaping a messy ponytail. Bright blue eyes that missed nothing. She sat cross-legged on the rug, clutching a stuffed bee in one hand, laughter bubbling out of her as Kael made ridiculous buzzing noises.
Niko felt it land in his chest like a physical blow.
No wonder.
Ethan appeared at his side without a word, already moving toward his daughter with single-minded focus.
“Morning, bug,” Ethan said, dropping to one knee.
“Daddy!” Poppy shrieked, launching herself at him.
Ethan caught her easily, lifting her up and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “What have you got there?”
“Bee,” she declared seriously. “He flies.”
“Yes, he does,” Ethan said solemnly.
Kael glanced up at Ethan. “You training her early or what?”
Ethan snorted. “She already outranks all of you.”
Niko watched it all, something tight and tender winding through him.
Ethan turned then, one arm still around Poppy. “Pop-pop, this is Niko.”
Poppy studied him with the seriousness of someone deciding whether he was acceptable.
“He’s big,” she announced.
Niko laughed. “I’ve been told.”
She smiled at that, wide and bright. “You can sit with me.”
Ethan shot him a knowing look.
Niko sat, heart already lost. “Hey, Poppy. I like your bee.”
“He’s brave,” she said. “But not scary.”
“I think that’s the best kind of brave,” Niko replied.
She nodded, satisfied.
Ethan leaned close. “You’re done for.”
Niko smiled, soft and certain. “Yeah. I’d die for her.”
Ethan’s expression gentled. He knew.
Breakfast unfolded easily after that. Plates passed. Coffee poured. Poppy perched between Kael and Luca, stealing bites and giggling like she’d known them forever.
“So,” Drew said eventually, glancing around. “This place.”
Ethan lifted a brow. “What about it?”
“The house. The hangar. The toys,” Kael said lightly. “Impressive.”
Niko felt his spine straighten. “Let’s be clear,” he said mildly. “We’re not here to recruit him. Or steal his shit.”
Tane grinned. “Admit it, you want to fly that jet.”
Ethan shot Niko a look. “In your dreams.”
Niko grinned back. “We’ll see.”
Conversation turned more serious then—Gregory, assets, pressure points.
Kael leaned back in his chair, gaze sharpening. “So, let’s talk scope. What’s he still got his hands in?”
Victor added, “And what’s already burned? Money, shell companies, logistics—how much of his network is actually bleeding?”
Drew’s tone was lighter, but his eyes weren’t. “Because from where I’m sitting, this isn’t just one pissed-off father. This feels bigger.”
Ethan listened, answering what he could, choosing his words with care. “Some of it’s gone. Some of it’s exposed. And some of it...” He exhaled. “Some of it’s still very dangerous.”
Luca frowned. “Dangerous how? Directorate-adjacent dangerous, or full-scale war dangerous?”
“After breakfast,” he said finally, “let’s go back to the office. I’ll show you what I’ve been doing.”
Niko watched him. Despite everything—abuse, loss, control—Ethan had built an empire. Had saved lives. Had raised a beautiful child. And Niko was so damn proud of him
****
The conference room was deliberately unremarkable.
That had been the point.
Concrete walls softened by wood panels. A long table scarred with use. Chairs chosen for comfort over intimidation. Floor-to-ceiling screens along one wall, currently dark, reflecting the faces of the men seated around the table.
Black Tide.
Ethan stood at the head of it, hands resting on the edge of the table, pulse steady. He could feel the quiet weight of attention settle on him—the scrape of chairs as men adjusted, the soft hum of the building’s systems, the faint smell of coffee still clinging to jackets from breakfast.
This part—this he knew how to do.
What he didn’t know how to do was stand in front of men like these and let them see how much of himself was embedded in the wreckage on those screens.
Every line item, every red node, carried a memory: nights spent staring at code until his vision blurred, mornings waking with the echo of his father’s voice still in his head.
He pushed it down. This wasn’t confession. It was context.
“All right,” he said quietly, and the room stilled. “Let me show you what I’ve been burning.”
He tapped the tablet in his hand, and the screens came alive with a low, resonant hum, light washing across the room as data resolved into focus.
Diagrams first. Clean. Simple.
A web of companies bloomed across the display—shipping firms, logistics contractors, agricultural exporters, energy holdings. Lines connected them, some bold, some faint.
“These are my father’s legitimate interests,” Ethan said. “At least on paper.”
Kael leaned forward. “That’s a lot of paper.”
“It’s supposed to be,” Ethan replied. “Volume hides patterns.”
He swiped again.
The diagram shifted. Several nodes dimmed. Others flared red.
“These,” Ethan continued, “aren’t legitimate. They’re laundering points. Shells stacked three and four deep. Profits looped, scrubbed, reintroduced.”
Victor frowned. “That kind of infrastructure doesn’t happen overnight.”
“No,” Ethan agreed. “It took decades.”
Ethan let his gaze drift briefly around the table.
Kael’s expression was sharp and assessing.
Victor was tight with restrained anger. Drew looked almost impressed despite himself.
Luca was already thinking three steps ahead.
They weren’t just listening—they were mapping it, slotting it into their own mental frameworks.
That realization steadied Ethan more than he expected.
Another swipe, and the soft sound of fabric shifting followed as the men leaned closer, attention narrowing.
Spreadsheets replaced the diagrams—numbers scrolling, columns highlighted.
“I started by bleeding him,” Ethan said. “Quietly. Currency fluctuations. Contract failures. Delayed shipments that never quite made sense.”
Drew let out a low whistle. “You destabilized his cash flow.”
“Yes,” Ethan said. “And once the money stuttered, the alliances followed.”
He remembered the first time it happened—one partner quietly pulling out, another suddenly unreachable. The way his father had gone still at the dinner table, eyes narrowing just a fraction too late. Ethan hadn’t smiled then. He’d waited. Patience had been his sharpest weapon.
Video footage appeared next—grainy drone views of remote airstrips cut into jungle clearings, container ships idling just beyond port limits under cover of darkness, long lines of trucks moving along desert roads without lights, without markings, without permission.
“These are the drug routes,” Ethan said. “Cocaine, fentanyl, synthetic variants. Guns come back the other way.”
Luca’s jaw dropped. “You shut these down alone?”
“Not alone,” Ethan corrected. “I didn’t pull triggers. I removed permissions. Cut success to fuel, canceled insurance. Access.”
Keanu shook his head slowly. “You made it impossible for them to operate.”
“Yes.”
Kael sat back. “That’s ... surgical.”
Ethan exhaled. “It had to be. If I moved too fast, he’d have adapted.”
And he would have punished someone for it. That truth sat heavy in Ethan’s chest. Every slow move, every measured strike, had been as much about protecting strangers as it was about survival. He wondered briefly how many lives had bent without breaking because of those delays.
He paused, letting the last image linger, letting them absorb the scale of what they were seeing, then brought up the final set of files.
This time, the room went very quiet.
“These,” Ethan said, “are what’s left.”
A single corridor of movement highlighted on the screen, glowing against a muted map. One supply chain. One convergence point. Ports, roads, airspace, all funneling toward the same narrow throat.
“My father’s final major operation,” Ethan continued. “A combined gun and narcotics run. Bigger than anything he’s attempted before.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed. “Why now?”
“Because he knows he’s losing,” Ethan said. “And because this is his exit play.”
Drew cracked a grin. “Bold strategy.”
“Desperate one,” Luca corrected.
Ethan nodded. “This ends it. If this route collapses, so does everything holding his remaining power together.”
Ethan folded his arms loosely, grounding himself. Saying it out loud made it real in a way spreadsheets never had. This wasn’t another cut or bleed. This was a severing. He felt the weight of it settle, equal parts relief and inevitability.
Kael folded his arms. “And you can’t do it alone.”
Ethan met his gaze. “No.”
Admitting that cost him more than he expected. He’d built all of this on the assumption that he would finish it alone—that solitude was the price of control. But looking at them now, he felt something unfamiliar thread through his resolve. Possibility.
There was a beat.
Then Drew glanced at his watch. “Well. I don’t have anything scheduled tomorrow.”
Keanu smiled faintly. “My calendar’s wide open.”
Victor shrugged. “I can make room.”
Luca leaned back in his chair. “You’ve already done the hard part.”
Ethan felt something unexpected loosen in his chest.
Kael nodded once. “Looks like you just found a team.”
Ethan smiled.
Maybe—just maybe—he didn’t have to do this alone after all.