Chapter Four #2
They stared at each other, breathing hard, both knowing they’d crossed lines neither of them could uncross.
Finally, Tane stepped in close and gripped Victor’s chin, forcing his gaze up.
“You don’t get to stay half-in,” he said, voice low and deadly calm. “Not with my team. Not with me. You either try—really try—or you hand over the intel and walk away. I will not stand here waiting for you to disappear like I am worth nothing.”
The admission slipped out before he could stop it.
He released Victor abruptly and turned away, stalking toward the garage.
****
Victor stood there long after Tane disappeared into the garage, the echo of his footsteps fading into the hum of the compound.
The lights along the perimeter buzzed softly, insects drawn to them in lazy spirals, the night settling back into itself as if nothing seismic had just cracked open between two men in the middle of it.
I will not stand here waiting for you to disappear like I am worth nothing.
The words lodged in Victor’s chest like shrapnel. He hadn’t meant it like that. He hadn’t meant any of it. He’d been talking about contingencies, about reality, about the way his life had always ended—with him alone and moving on before the ground collapsed beneath his feet.
He’d meant to protect himself.
Instead, he’d cut deeper than any blade.
For the first time in his life, Victor wondered if survival was actually worth the cost.
He dragged a hand through his hair and turned away from the camper, walking without direction, letting muscle memory guide him along the edge of the compound. The night air was cool, carrying salt and oil and something green he couldn’t name. Hawaii had a way of feeling alive, even in the dark.
“Rough night?”
Victor stopped.
A man stepped out of the shadows near the fence line, hands loose at his sides, posture relaxed but alert.
Drew. Kael’s partner. Victor knew him as Wraith.
There were not many in the black ops community that didn’t know him.
He had always viewed him as a traitor to the Directorate, to their truth, to the better world that he thought he had a part in making.
Turns out all of it was shit, and he had been played as much as Victor had been.
“Something like that,” Victor said, the words coming out flatter than he felt.
Drew studied him for a moment, really studied him, the way operators did when they weren’t sure if the threat was external or internal. Then he nodded toward a low concrete barrier half-hidden by shadow. “Mind if I sit?”
Victor shrugged, a short lift of one shoulder. “It’s a free country.”
They sat, the concrete cool even through Victor’s clothes. The compound breathed around them—generators humming, boots on gravel, and a burst of laughter from somewhere deeper in the buildings. Life continuing, oblivious to the fact that Victor’s chest felt like it had split clean down the middle.
“Place like this,” Drew said after a moment, “it has a way of making you confront yourself. Noisy in all the wrong ways. Quiet in the ones that matter.”
Victor snorted softly. “You always talk like that, or is this a special occasion?”
Drew’s mouth curved. “Only when I’m trying to make a point, help a friend and not get punched in the face in the process.”
The tension eased a fraction.
“I’m going to take a stab in the dark,” Drew said then, voice turning serious, “and say that you hurt him.”
Victor winced. “I didn’t mean to.”
“No one ever does,” Drew replied easily. “Intent’s overrated. Impact’s the bastard that sticks.”
Victor stared out into the dark. “You here to tell me to leave?”
Drew let out a quiet breath that might’ve been a laugh. “If that was the goal, Kael would’ve sent Luca. I’m here because I recognize the look on your face.”
“What look?”
“The one where you’re already half-packed,” Drew said. “Mentally. Where you’ve convinced yourself leaving is the only smart move.”
Victor’s jaw tightened. “You don’t know me.”
“I don’t need to,” Drew said calmly. “I know that look because I wore it for years.”
That got Victor’s attention despite himself.
“A few years back, I left Kael,” Drew went on. “Not because I didn’t love him. But because loving him made me whole, but the thought of losing him scared the hell out of me. Because when he mattered, suddenly everything else did too.”
Victor frowned. “You walked away from all of this?”
“From him,” Drew corrected gently. “From the risk. From the possibility that I could lose something that actually meant something. I told myself I was doing him a favor. That I was protecting him.”
“And?” Victor asked.
Drew huffed a humorless laugh. “Turns out distance doesn’t make you noble. It just makes you lonely. And stupid.”
Victor looked away, the words landing too close to bone.
“I thought if I left first,” Drew continued, “I’d stay in control. What I really did was give fear the steering wheel and pretend it was strategy.”
Silence stretched between them, thick but not uncomfortable.
“What if staying destroys me?” Victor asked quietly. “What if it costs more than I can afford?”
Drew didn’t answer right away. He leaned back, eyes on the stars barely visible beyond the compound lights. “Then at least you’ll know you chose it, and no one chose it for you,” he said finally. “Not habit. Not reflex. Not fear. You chose it knowing the cost.”
Victor pictured it then—his future if he left, laid out with brutal clarity.
Another city that blurred into the last. Another rented room stripped of personality.
Gear packed and unpacked until muscle memory replaced meaning.
Aliases memorized, discarded, replaced. Sleeping light, waking lighter.
Always cataloguing exits. Always alone. No one knowing him well enough to hurt him. No one knowing him at all.
It felt ... small.
Joyless.
Then he tried to imagine staying and he realized that that was way harder.
Tane’s laugh—low and unguarded, the kind that came from somewhere deep and honest. His temper, sharp and immediate but never cruel, always aimed outward at the things that deserved it.
His impossible steadiness in the middle of chaos, the way he planted his feet and made the world adjust around him instead of the other way around.
Victor saw flashes of a life that terrified him in its clarity.
Tane watching his six without being asked.
Working beside him at a table strewn with intel and half-cold coffee, arguing tactics, refining plans, trusting Victor’s instincts without needing to control them.
Fighting shoulder to shoulder, backs aligned, knowing without looking that the other would be there when it mattered.
He imagined the quieter moments too—Tane checking his injuries with hands that were firm but careful, cooking meals like it was nothing, offering space without withdrawal. Loving him not as something fragile to be managed, but as an equal who chose to stay.
And underneath it all, that same steady truth in Tane’s voice when he’d said not me—not a plea, not a threat, but a promise carved into bone that said, I will not abandon you. Not if you don’t abandon me first.
The image scared Victor more than any gunfight ever had.
Because it mattered.
Because he could lose it.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Victor admitted.
Drew smiled faintly. “Neither did I. I just knew I didn’t want to keep choosing distance.”
Victor stood abruptly. “Thank you.”
Drew clapped his shoulder. “For what it’s worth? If you leave now, you’ll always wonder. If you stay—at least you’ll know.”
Victor didn’t hesitate again.
He turned and headed for the garage, boots crunching softly over gravel. Each step felt deliberate, chosen. Not an escape this time, but an approach.
Tane wasn’t there.
Victor stood in the middle of the garage, surrounded by machines and tools that smelled of oil and metal and human effort. He tried to think like Tane. Where would he go when the anger had nowhere else to land? Training. Movement. Something physical enough to bleed the edge off.
Then he heard it.
The unmistakable thud of fists slamming into a heavy bag.
Victor followed the sound to a door at the back of the garage and pushed it open.
He stopped dead, the sound and sight hitting him together.
Tane stood inside, shirtless, still in tactical pants, hands taped, driving strike after strike into the bag. Sweat slicked his skin, muscles standing out in sharp relief as he moved—powerful, precise, relentless. Tattoos shifted over his shoulders and ribs, stories etched into muscle and motion.
He looked like violence given purpose.
Tane sensed him.
He spun, eyes blazing—then froze.
They stared at each other across the room, sweat and breath and unfinished words hanging thick in the air. The heavy bag swayed slowly, the dull thud of its motion echoing like a heartbeat neither of them could slow yet.
“I’m sorry,” they said at the same time.
The words collided in the space between them, fragile and dangerous and real.