The black SUVs moved through the midnight streets like shadows. Thomas rode in the lead vehicle, his knee bouncing with a frantic energy. Daniel sat across from him, checking the action on a sound-suppressed pistol.
"Remember," Daniel murmured, his voice the only sound in the tense quiet. "Cassian's face is all over the news right now as the grieving, responsible father. Any noise we make becomes his noise. This is a ghost operation."
"I know," Thomas bit out, his eyes fixed on the tablet showing the building's schematics. "We go in silent, we get her, we vanish. Isabelle is not a target. She's evidence."
The vehicles slid to a stop a block from the luxury condominium, a sleek glass tower that had never quite filled up. Robert's contact in management had disabled the specific suite's alarm and left a service stairwell door propped open.
Thomas led the way, Daniel and three other operatives—Kai, Jin, and Mason—moving behind him with the fluid silence of predators. They took the stairs up twenty-three floors, their breaths the only sound. At the door to the private hallway, Thomas paused, listening. He could hear it: a woman's voice, raised in a shrill, unhinged monologue, muffled by the door.
---
The world had narrowed to the ache in her shoulders, the bite of zip-ties on her wrists, and the sound of Isabelle Peralta's voice. It was a relentless, scalding stream of self-justification that filled the cold, empty luxury of the condo.
"They never appreciated me!" Isabelle spat, pacing before the floor-to-ceiling windows, the glittering skyline a backdrop to her unraveling. The knife in her hand caught the city lights—a cheap, serrated kitchen knife she'd found in the barren kitchenette. She waved it not with menace, but with theatrical emphasis. "Robert was a hollow man, a failure! I gave that house structure! I gave Lena ambition, polish! I made her a contender! And Elara… that sullen, stubborn girl. I took her in when no one else wanted her! I gave her a roof! And this is my thanks? To be painted as a monster?"
Sophie remained silent, her head bowed, playing the exhausted captive. But her mind was a live wire. The SOS signal from her watch had vibrated against her skin minutes ago. A single, sustained pulse. He was here. Thomas was outside.
She had to create an opening. A distraction. Isabelle's narcissism was the key.
"She was never grateful, you know," Isabelle continued, her voice dipping into a wounded whine. She stopped pacing and stood directly in front of Sophie, the knife hanging limply at her side. "Even as a child. She'd look at me with those big, quiet eyes… judging. Lena adored me. Lena knew what I sacrificed."
This was the crack. Sophie lifted her head, meeting Isabelle's gaze. She didn't glare. She looked at her with an expression of profound, weary understanding.
"Of course she didn't see it," Sophie said, her voice soft, raspy from disuse. "Children rarely do. They only see what's withheld, not what's given under… difficult circumstances."
Isabelle blinked, thrown by the empathy. "What?"
"You were in an impossible position," Sophie continued, leaning forward as much as her bonds allowed. "Married to a man who saw through you, raising another woman's difficult child, trying to secure a future for your own daughter in a world that values name over merit. That's a crushing weight. A lonely one."
Isabelle's defiant posture softened a fraction. The knife point lowered toward the floor. "It was… it was a prison. Of my own making, perhaps, but a prison. And no one… no one ever asked if I was happy. If I was fulfilled."
"They used you, didn't they?" Sophie pressed, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. "The people who gave you this legal strategy. They didn't care about you. They just needed a face. A grandmother's face. They used your pain, your valid grievances, for their own cold game."
A tear, real and shocking, welled in Isabelle's eye. The grandiosity melted, leaving behind a raw, pathetic core of self-pity. "He said… he said I would be a hero. That I would finally be seen as the savior. That the children would be mine to love properly." She sobbed, a wet, ugly sound. The knife clattered from her fingers onto the polished concrete floor. She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. "But they'll never love me! They'll hate me, just like she does! I've lost everything! Lena's gone, Robert despises me, and I'm just… I'm just a joke!"
She collapsed into a heap of expensive fabric and despair, weeping uncontrollably, completely absorbed in the tragedy of herself.
The guard by the door, a bored mercenary with a low tolerance for hysterics, rolled his eyes. He turned his back, putting his fingers in his ears with a grimace of irritation, leaning against the wall as if he could physically block out the noise.
It was the window.
Sophie held her breath.
The condo door, which had been silently picked and disabled minutes before, swung open without a sound. Thomas entered first, his movements fluid and predatory, his eyes instantly finding Sophie. Relief and fury warred in his gaze. Behind him, Daniel and two other men—ex-special ops who worked exclusively for Cassian—flowed in like shadows.
Daniel signaled. One man went to the weeping Isabelle, calmly and efficiently patting her down for other weapons before stepping back, leaving her to her meltdown. She didn't even notice.
Thomas and the other man approached the guard. The guard, his ears plugged, sensed a change in air pressure a second too late. He started to turn. A cloth soaked in a fast-acting, odorless anesthetic was clamped over his nose and mouth. His eyes widened, then fluttered shut. Thomas caught his slumping body and lowered him silently to the floor, propping him against the wall as if he'd simply dozed off.
The whole operation took less than twelve seconds. Pin-drop silence, maintained.
Then Thomas was at Sophie's side, a small, wicked-looking blade appearing in his hand. He sawed through the plastic ties with two careful strokes. "Can you walk?" he whispered, his voice rough with emotion.
She nodded, her eyes never leaving his face. He helped her up, her legs buckling. He simply scooped her into his arms, cradling her against his chest. Daniel draped a thick, woolen blanket over her.
They moved back toward the door, a silent procession. As they passed Isabelle, who was now rocking and muttering to herself, Sophie spoke one last time, her voice clear in the quiet room.
"Get help, Isabelle. Before they use you up and throw you away."
Isabelle didn't look up.
And then they were gone, the door clicking shut softly behind them, leaving only the echo of sobs and a sleeping guard in the tastefully appointed tomb.
---
In the back of the darkened SUV, speeding toward the hospital, Sophie shook. It wasn't the cold; it was the adrenaline crash, the delayed terror. Thomas held her tightly, the blanket wrapped around her, his chin resting on top of her head.
"I'm sorry," he murmured into her hair, his voice breaking. "I'm so sorry, Sophie. I lost you. I looked away for a second and I lost you."
"You found me," she whispered back, her face pressed against the solid warmth of his chest. She could hear his heart hammering. "You always find me."
After a few minutes of silent comfort, she pulled back slightly, the strategist in her reawakening. "Thomas, listen. Isabelle… she's not the mastermind. She's a puppet. A loud, messy, spiteful puppet."
"What did she say?"
"She talked about 'him.' A faceless 'he' who provided the legal strategy, who promised she'd be a hero. J's people. They gave her the judge, the CPS agent, the narrative. But her motivation… it's all theater. She wanted the spotlight. She wanted to be the tragic heroine who 'saved' the babies from Elara's 'madness.' She wanted to be loved, finally, unconditionally." Sophie's voice was laced with a mix of pity and disgust. "She's a cat's paw. J's hands are still clean. This whole custody play? It's his, but she's the one holding the smoking gun, covered in her own fingerprints."
Thomas absorbed this, his mind connecting it to Robert's financial digging. "So we have a corrupt judge and agent, bought by J. And a insane petitioner, manipulated by J. But no direct line to him."
"Exactly," Sophie said, a shiver running through her. "He's still a ghost. And he's still out there."
The SUV pulled into the hospital's secure underground entrance, reserved for dignitaries and disasters. As they stepped out, Thomas didn't release her hand. He held it tightly, his thumb stroking over her scraped knuckles.
The elevator ride was quiet. When the doors opened to the hushed chaos of the private wing, they were immediately engulfed. Elara, from her bed, let out a choked cry of relief. Serena rushed forward, clasping Sophie's face. Robert hovered, nodding gruffly. Cassian gave Thomas a look that spoke volumes—gratitude, solidarity, approval.
Amidst the quiet reunion, the murmured questions about her well-being, the offered tea, Thomas never let go. He stood beside her, an anchor in the flurry.
As the initial wave subsided, he gently pulled her aside, into the relative quiet of an alcove by a window overlooking the city's dawn-tinged skyline.
"Sophie," he began, his usual sarcasm, his casual deflection, completely absent. He looked exhausted, earnest, and utterly terrified in a way she'd never seen.
"Thomas, you should sit, you look—"
"I am tired, Sophie," he interrupted, his voice low and intense. "I am so tired of playing the platonic knight. The charming, useless cousin. The man who stands in the wings with a clever quip. The pretense that this…" He gestured between them, his gaze burning into hers. "…that this is just partnership, just two people passing the time in a crisis, is a weight I can no longer carry."
Sophie's breath caught. Her heart, which had been hammering with fear, now stuttered for a different reason.
"In that condo," he continued, taking both her hands in his, "when I didn't know if you were alive… it carved something out of me. I don't want to just rescue you, Sophie. I don't want to just stand beside you. I want to stand with you. On solid ground. I want to argue with you over pottery and cybersecurity protocols for the next fifty years. I want your infuriating, brilliant, lioness heart next to mine, not just when the world is ending, but when it's blessedly, boringly quiet." He swallowed hard. "I want us to be serious. Truly, deeply, unironically serious. You and me."
The words hung in the space between them, more vulnerable than any confession made in the dark. He was offering her not a fling born of adrenaline, but a future. A choice.
Before she could answer—before the yes that was swelling in her chest could find her voice—Daniel appeared at the end of the alcove, his face grave.
"Thomas. Cassian needs you. Now. It's about J."
The moment fractured. The world and its wars rushed back in. But Thomas didn't drop her hands. He held them tighter, waiting, his eyes pleading for an answer, even a fragment of one, before duty pulled him away again.
Sophie looked at their joined hands, then up into his earnest, weary face. A slow, real smile, the first in what felt like years, touched her lips. She didn't say yes. She didn't say no.
She simply raised their clasped hands and pressed a firm, deliberate kiss to his bruised knuckles. A promise. A claim.
It was enough. For now, it was everything. He let out a shaky breath, nodded, and with one last, lingering look, he turned to follow Daniel, leaving Sophie with the warmth of his hands and the terrifying, wonderful shape of a future that was no longer just about survival.