30. Ronan
Ronan
Location: Outer Banks, North Carolina — Night
Iwake up with my hand already reaching for a weapon that isn’t there.
The room is dark, quiet, safe.
Too safe.
Lena stirs beside me, sensing the shift even before I fully come back to myself. Her hand slides over my chest, grounding. Familiar.
“You felt it too,” she murmurs.
I don’t ask how she knows.
“I did,” I say quietly.
Something moved.
Not here.
Not yet.
But somewhere underground, someone screamed.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit there for a long moment, forearms braced on my knees. The ocean wind softly rattles the windows. Normal sounds. A normal life.
And still—
“He punished them,” I say.
Lena sits up slowly, pulling the sheet around herself. “Malenkov.”
“Yes.”
She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t ask how I know.
She just nods. “Because the signal got through.”
“And because that’s how men like him respond when they lose control.”
I stand and cross the room, pulling on jeans, already shifting into command mode. The calm Ronan disappears. Lieutenant Pierce steps forward.
I activate the secure terminal.
Delta Five answers immediately.
Aaron’s face fills the screen first. He looks grim. “We just got movement.”
“Talk to me.”
“Eastern Europe. One of Malenkov’s holding facilities went into full lockdown about an hour ago. Internal discipline protocols triggered.”
My jaw tightens.
Jase swears softly. “He retaliated.”
Miles adds, “Heavy. Lights-on isolation. Food restriction. Increased rotations.”
I close my eyes for half a second.
That confirms it.
“They heard us,” I say. “And someone paid for it.”
Silence drops over the call.
Then Aaron says, “That makes this official.”
“Yes,” I agree. “We’re done waiting.”
Lena steps into view behind me, hair loose, eyes sharp. She doesn’t hide. Never has.
“I found something else,” she says.
Every head snaps toward her.
She lifts a file onto the shared screen—photographs, archived intelligence, blurred faces pulled from sealed NATO reports.
“This is Viktor Malenkov before he became the Warden,” she says. “Psychological warfare architect. Specialized in post-capture neutralization.”
Miles goes still. “That’s not interrogation.”
“No,” Lena says calmly. “It’s long-term erasure.”
Aaron exhales. “Jesus.”
“He keeps prisoners alive because broken legends are more valuable than dead ones,” she continues. “If Ronan’s men disappear quietly, they become ghosts. If they break publicly? They become warnings.”
I stare at the screen.
At the facilities.
At the timelines.
At the pattern.
“He’s been waiting for me,” I say.
Lena meets my gaze. “Then he won’t expect what comes next.”
I turn back to the team.
“Delta Five,” I say evenly. “We move to hunter status—no command oversight. No signatures. We don’t rush. We don’t announce.”
Jase smiles grimly. “We dismantle.”
“Yes.”
Aaron nods. “Extraction priority?”
“All of them,” I answer without hesitation. “Alive.”
“And Malenkov?” Miles asks.
I pause.
Just long enough.
“That depends,” I say quietly, “on whether my men are still breathing when we reach them.”
The call ends.
The house is quiet again.
Lena steps closer, sliding her arms around my waist from behind. Presses her cheek to my back.
“They think you’re dead,” she says softly. “So do your men.”
“No, now they know I’m alive.”
She tilts her head up. “And they realize you’re coming?”
I turn, cupping her face gently.
“They won’t,” I say. “They won’t realize it until I’m standing in front of them.”
Her eyes shine—not with fear.
With faith.
I kiss her once—slow, grounding.
Then I rest my forehead against hers.
“We’re going to bring them home,” I promise.
And somewhere deep underground…
Men who think they’ve been forgotten
are about to learn
their commander never stopped hunting.