The guard worked in silence, splinting the broken fingers with practiced efficiency. His touch was clinical but not rough. The kind of hands that had done this before, maybe on a battlefield somewhere.
“You were military, yeah? Special forces. Too skilled for regular army. SEALs, maybe?”
The guard tensed slightly.
“Okay not the SEALs. Ranger?” Sabin winced as the guard wrapped the splint tight. “You know, I have a friend who was a Ranger.Mais, ‘friend’ is a complicated word. He’s dating my sister—or was, before everything went to hell. Dom Wilde. You know him?”
Something about the name made the guard’s hands falter. Just for a moment. Barely noticeable. But Sabin noticed everything.
“You do know him.”
The guard finished with the splint and reached for the antiseptic, dabbing it on the cut at Sabin’s temple from yesterday’s interrogation. His mask had shifted slightly with his movements, revealing just a sliver of skin above the neckline of his tactical shirt.
A tattoo. The edge of something black inked into skin.
Sabin squinted, trying to make it out in the harsh fluorescent light. A raven? No, a wing. Part of a larger design that disappeared beneath the shirt.
“The Wilde family has enough connections to burn Praetorian to the ground,” Sabin said quietly. “If you’re thinking about which side to be on when this all ends, that’s worth remembering.”
The guard stiffened. For the first time since he’d entered the room, he looked directly at Sabin. Through the narrow eye slits in the mask, Sabin caught a flash of piercing blue.
Familiar blue.
The guard finished cleaning the cut and gathered the medical supplies. As he stood, his mask shifted again—just enough.
Sabin’s heart stopped.
That jawline. The shape of those eyes. The way he moved.
It couldn’t be.
The guard turned to leave, but Sabin’s voice stopped him.
“Brennan?”
The guard froze.
“Brennan Wilde?”
The world tilted sideways. Because it was impossible. Brennan Wilde was dead. Killed on an op two years ago. The entire Wilde family had mourned him. Dom had been devastated. Cade had gone off the deep end.
Cade.
That was it.
It had to be.
Cade Wilde, who’d betrayed his family and joined Praetorian. The resemblance between Cade and Brennan had always been uncanny—they’d looked more like twins than just brothers. The same Wilde blue eyes, the same dark hair, copper skin, and strong jaw.
It was Cade.
Mais, it had to be Cade.
But as the guard strode from the room, Sabin’s certainty wavered. The height was wrong. The movement was wrong. Cade had always been broader in the shoulders, heavier in his step.
And that tattoo.
Brennan had gotten it after a mission gone wrong in Syria. A phoenix rising. “From the ashes,” he’d said, drunk on tequila and adrenaline, showing it to Sabin and Dom at some dive bar in Virginia. “Like us. We always rise.”