Morning. She's in the shower. I can hear the water running. The steam curling under the bathroom door. The ordinary sounds of a morning routine that has become the architecture of my happiness: her shower, then mine, then coffee, then the island where she works on client assessments while I take calls and we exist in shared space without needing to fill it.
I go to the closet. Pull her bag — the one she brought from her old apartment, the one that sat in the guest room for two weeks before she stopped pretending she'd ever sleep there again. I open it on the bed. Start packing.
Her clothes. The dark sweater. Jeans. Things she'll need. Practical. Efficient. The way I prepare for operations: essentials only, nothing sentimental, everything chosen for function. Halfway through, I stop. The Heaney sits on the nightstand. The battered copy of collected poems that she brought from her old life, the one that falls open to "Scaffolding" with the pencil marks I found the first night she slept in her own room. The poem about trust. About two people building something fragile and real.
I put it in the bag. A man packing a survival kit who can't stop himself from including what she loves.
The water stops. The bathroom door opens. She comes out in a towel, hair damp, and sees me. Sees the bag. Sees her clothes folded inside it. Sees the Heaney on top.
The moment her face changes is the moment I know I've already lost.
"What is this?"
"You're leaving. Tonight."
"Excuse me?"
I stand. Face her. Give the tactical briefing as if logic will make this acceptable: Viktor is hunting her specifically. Elena's betrayal means security is compromised at every level. I can't protect her and fight a war simultaneously. The New Hampshire property is remote, defensible, staffed with contractors outside our network. She'll be safe. I'll end this. She comes home.
She doesn't move. The towel. The damp hair. The bag on the bed between us like a barricade.
"You made this decision without asking me."
"I made this decision to keep you alive."
"You made this decision like my father used to." Her voice is quiet. Even. More devastating than if she screamed. "Like I'm a piece on a board that gets moved when it becomes inconvenient."
"Siobhan—"
"My whole life, men have made decisions about me. Where I go. Who I marry. What I'm allowed to know. What risks I'm allowed to take." She pauses. "I thought you were different."
"Iamdifferent?—"
"Are you?" She looks at me with eyes that are measuring, assessing, running the analysis the way she runs every analysis: clinically, completely, without mercy. "Because right now you look exactly like my father."
The words hit like rounds from the Glock I carry. Padraig O'Brien. The man who traded his daughter for an alliance from a prison cell. The man who decided her fate without asking her opinion. The man I have defined myself against since the night I told her,"if we do this, you choose it. You come to me."
I gave her the door to knock on. I told her the choice was hers. I promised that I would never take from her, only receive what she offered.
I'm packing her bag.
"Your purpose iscontrol." She's not yelling. She's diagnosing. Ward Risk Advisory reading the room, assessing the crisis, delivering the findings. "You can't control Viktor, so you're controlling me. You can't guarantee my safety, so you're removing me from the equation. Not because it's best for me. Because it's the only variable you can still manage."
Every word is accurate. Every word is a scalpel laid against a vein.
"I can't lose you."
"Then don't send me away."
Silence. The penthouse holds its breath. I can hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen and the traffic fourteen floors below and my own heartbeat and hers, or I imagine I can, the way I've imagined I could hear her through walls since the first night she moved in and didn't knock.
"You promised me together." Her voice cracks on the word. The first crack. "In the car before the raid. In our bed. You said together, Nico. Was that a lie?"
"It wasn't a lie."
"Then keep the promise. Trust me. Let me stand beside you."
I close my eyes. See Finn's hand. The missing finger. The pliers. I see Siobhan in that chair. Her ring finger. The one that carries my promise. I see Viktor's face, pleasant and patient, doing to her what he did to Finn but worse, longer, with the specific cruelty reserved for the thing your enemy loves most.