Chapter 35
After Mackenzi leaves, the meeting drags on for another couple of hours. Hours of tension, accusations, contingency plans, and enough hostility to choke the air out of the room.
I stand near the fireplace in the ambassador’s office, my arms crossed over my chest, while Gunnar questions him about every contact, every shipment, every threat he’s received over the last decade.
Hawk handles the logistics side—safe houses, extraction possibilities, and potential compromised personnel.
Jagger mostly leans against the wall, looking bored, but I know him well enough to see the razor focus underneath it.
Nobody trusts the ambassador anymore. Not completely.
Hell, I don’t think he trusts himself.
He sits behind his desk, looking ten years older than he did when he walked through the front door, blood staining the collar of his dress shirt where my fist split open his lip.
Part of me feels satisfied every time I look at it.
Another part of me knows I’m lucky Hawk and Jagger pulled me off him when they did, because I would’ve kept going.
There isn’t a man on this earth I wouldn’t end to protect her.
I barely hear most of the conversation, because the entire time, all I can think about is Mackenzi walking away with tears in her eyes. The devastated look on her face keeps replaying in my head.
I’ve seen grief before. I’ve watched grown men crumble after losing teammates in combat. Hell, I’ve held a friend through the worst day of their life. More than one of them.
But what happened to Mackenzi tonight is different.
Her entire reality was ripped out from underneath her.
In an instant, she learned her mother didn’t die in an accident, and that her father built his career on lies.
And somehow, through all of that, she still looked more heartbroken than angry when she walked away.
That’s what gets to me. Not the screaming or the accusations, but the pure fucking hurt in her eyes.
Eventually, Gunnar closes his notebook with a heavy sigh. “We’ll reconvene in the morning.” Nobody argues. We’ve all had more than enough. The ambassador nods stiffly, and I’m at the door before anyone else has even risen from their seat.
“Damon,” Hawk calls. I glance back, and his expression shifts slightly when he sees mine. “You good?”
Not even close, but I nod anyway because I don’t know how to explain the restless panic clawing under my skin. I need to find her. Immediately. The second I step into the hallway, the massive house feels eerily quiet. Too quiet.
I head for the east wing first, straight to her room. It’s immaculate—considering what happened in it a few hours ago—but empty. I check the upstairs library next, but she’s not there, either. Kitchen, then dining room. Every empty room makes my pulse kick a little harder.
By the time I cross toward the west, irritation mixes with the unease curling in my stomach, because she shouldn’t be alone at this moment. Not after last night. Not with the threat level we’re dealing with.
I check the music room and then the west wing. All vacant.
“Mackenzi?” I call up the stairwell, receiving no answer. Mild panic starts creeping in, the kind I usually suppress instantly during missions. But this isn’t a mission anymore. This matters too much.
I move faster through the house, trying to think where she would go if she wanted to disappear.
Her favorite reading room overlooking the gardens.
I head downstairs right away, cutting through the rear hallway toward the spot I’ve watched her read in for hours.
When I also find it empty, I curse under my breath while scrubbing a hand over my jaw.
Then I see her through the patio door, and relief hits me so hard that my knees nearly weaken.
She’s sitting at the edge of the pool, her feet dangling in the water.
Sunlight spills golden across the courtyard, catching in the dark waves of her hair and casting shimmering reflections across the water around her legs.
For a moment, I stand inside the doorway watching her. She looks heartbreakingly small out there alone. I push the patio door open and step outside, the warm air wrapping around me. She’s so lost in her thoughts that she doesn’t hear me approach. “You know you aren’t supposed to be out here alone.”
Her shoulders tense slightly before she looks up at me. Fuck. Her eyes are red and swollen. She’s been out here all alone, crying hard.
“I know,” she replies. “I just… couldn’t be in that house anymore.”
The pain in her voice wrecks me instantly. “Oh, trouble…”
She drops her gaze back to the water. I walk closer slowly, giving her space, even though every instinct in me wants to pull her against my chest and keep her there until she stops looking so shattered.
I take a seat in one of the loungers behind her before bending down to untie my boots. I pull each of them off and set them beside the chair. After removing my socks, I quickly roll my pants up to my knees.
The stone beneath my bare feet is warm from the sun basking over it. I cross the distance between us. Mackenzi glances up at me when I lower myself onto the edge of the pool beside her. I slide my feet into the cool water, and it ripples around my calves. “What are you doing?”
I wrap one arm around her waist and tug her gently into my side. “Taking care of you.” A not-quite smile flickers across her face. She leans into me slowly, resting her head against my shoulder. And just like that, some of the tension bleeding through my body finally eases.
We sit there quietly for a long time. She stays curled against me while I press slow kisses onto her hairline every few minutes. Tiny, gentle touches—the kind I never thought I was capable of. Until her. I brush my lips over the top of her head again and she exhales softly against my chest.
“Thank you,” she murmurs.
I tilt my head slightly to look down at her. “For?”
She’s quiet for a second before answering, “Sticking up for me… with my dad.”
A rough chuckle leaves me under my breath. “That’s one way to describe what happened.”
Her fingers toy with the fabric of my rolled sleeve. “I mean it.”
I stare out across the sunlit water. “Anytime,” I vow. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you.”
The words settle heavily between us, because we both know exactly how serious that promise is.
She shifts closer, nuzzling softly against my shoulder. “Mmm,” she murmurs. “Sucker punching him probably wasn’t the best way to break the news, though.”
The comment catches me so off guard, I laugh, loud and bold. “You’re not wrong.”
A tiny smile tugs at the corners of her lips. She tilts her head back enough to look at me, amusement faint beneath the exhaustion in her eyes. “He was pissed.”
I snort. “Can’t imagine why.”
She laughs softly, and the sound warms something deep in my chest. I fucking love that laugh. She sighs and looks back out over the pool.
“Honestly,” I share after a moment, “if I had a nineteen-year-old daughter dating a forty-year-old man, I’d probably react badly, too.”
“Thirty-nine,” she corrects, her lips twitching as she elbows me weakly. “Because that extra year is just gross.”
“Little brat…” I lace our fingers together and press a soft kiss to the back of her hand. The contrast still amazes me sometimes—her small, delicate hand against my callused, tattooed one. “If it makes you feel better, if I were your father, my reaction probably would’ve been different.”
“Yeah… worse.” She laughs quietly again, her smile fading gradually, though not completely.
But enough for the sadness to creep back into her expression.
I hate how quickly it returns, like grief is sitting just beneath the surface, waiting to swallow her whole the second she stops distracting herself.
“You okay?” I ask softly.
“No,” she answers honestly. “But I think I will be eventually.”
I tighten my arm around her waist. “You don’t have to figure everything out right now.”
“I know.” She nods faintly against my shoulder.
We fall quiet again, and I keep dropping absent kisses onto her hair while she watches the water. And for the first time since the breach, the panic clawing through me finally settles enough for me to inhale normally again.
Then the patio door slides open, and Jagger sticks his head outside. “Hey,” he calls, looking entirely too amused, “sorry to interrupt whatever Nicholas Sparks scene this is, but your kid is on the phone.”
My brows furrow in confusion. “My son?”
“Last I checked. Unless Mackenzie has a twenty-something kid you don’t know about.”
Mackenzi shifts immediately, shaking her head at him. “You should take it.”
Gabriel rarely calls me, so I know it must be important. Still, I hesitate, because leaving her feels wrong. I press a quick kiss to her temple and pull myself up from the pool’s edge, water dripping from my legs onto the stone. “I’ll come find you when I’m done.”
Mackenzi nods softly. “I’ll be here.”
I squeeze her shoulder once before heading inside.
Jagger falls into step beside me. “You’re smiling.” He nudges me with his elbow.
“I’m literally not.”
He grins. “That’s the same face I had.” I glance over at him, unsure whether I want him to continue his thought. “Yup, right before I wound up with a houseful of kids and a woman I never saw coming.”
“Shut up.” I flip him off without slowing, a smile pulling at my lips at how right he is.
When I reach the office, I take a seat behind the desk and answer on speaker. “Gabriel?”
A pause crackles through the speaker. “Uh… hey.”
My chest tightens unexpectedly. Every time I hear his voice, I realize exactly how much I’ve missed. It’s not a little boy on the other end of the phone anymore.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, everything’s fine.” He clears his throat awkwardly. “Mom told me to call and invite you to parents’ weekend.”
Surprise flickers through me.
“Parents’ weekend?”
“At school,” he says quickly. “Next month.”
I lean back against the chair. “When exactly?”
He tells me the dates before clearing his throat again. “But I figure you probably won’t make it.”
His words hurt. Not because he said them cruelly, but because he genuinely expects me not to come. Because I taught him not to expect me.
I close my eyes briefly. “I’ll do everything I can to be there.”
The phone falls silent for a moment.
“Really?” The hope in his voice hits harder than any bullet I’ve ever taken.
“Really,” I confirm, suddenly realizing this might be the first conversation we’ve had in years that isn’t tense from the start.
“I know I’ve been a shitty father,” I say before I can stop myself, the line falling silent again.
“But it was never because I didn’t want to be around, Gabriel.
” I stare out the office windows at the courtyard where Mackenzi still sits beside the pool.
“It’s because I wanted to give you a better life than I had.
Because I wanted you to have opportunities I couldn’t have dreamed of. ”
My son exhales slowly through the speaker. “I know.”
Those two simple words hit me like a freight train. “You do?”
“Mom explained some stuff after you came to campus.” He hesitates. “About your jobs.”
I rub a hand across the back of my neck. “Well… it still doesn’t excuse missing things.”
“No,” he admits. “But I get it more.”
Emotion lodges unexpectedly in my throat.
“How’s school?” I unexpectedly open the floodgates. Gabriel starts talking about classes, professors he hates, stupid fraternity drama, and a soccer tournament coming up. I listen quietly, smiling despite myself every few minutes.
It’s easy, shockingly easy. And somewhere in the middle of the conversation, I realize how badly I’ve wanted this. Not perfection. Just this. A normal talk with my kid.
I laugh softly at something he says and hear his own laugh reply down the phone.
“How are things going with that girl?” I ask casually.
“Kenz? Yeah… We ended that like two weeks ago.”