Aeris
Sleep didn't come.
My body was heavy, my head pounding with the slow rhythm of healing, but my mind wouldn't shut up.
Every word they'd said replayed like a scratched record."Your father saved us.""He told someone to protect you.""You were supposed to stay invisible."
They knew my father.
And all this time, while I was being swallowed alive by silence and bruises and zip ties, they were watching.
"Protecting," they called it.
I wasn't sure what made me sicker—the weight of their guilt, or the possibility that there was truth buried underneath it.
The hallway was darker than I expected.
Warm light bled from under the door at the far end, a faint glow that tugged at my curiosity. The house creaked under my slow footsteps. I clutched the wall as I moved, legs still weak, but steady enough to carry me if I kept my pace careful.
The air was colder out here. Sharper.
Like secrets lived in the walls.
I reached the door and found it ajar.
Not wide open.
Not locked.
Just... inviting.
The room smelled like cedar and paper and something older. There were shelves lining one side, a heavy desk on the other, and stacks of files too neat to be random.
A flickering lamp cast shadows on a corkboard in the corner—cluttered with maps, scribbled notes, red thread pinned between photographs.
I shouldn't be here.
But I stepped in anyway.
My fingers skimmed the edge of a photo pinned near the top.
And everything inside me stopped.
It was my father.
Smiling.
He stood with a tall man in uniform, one arm slung around a small boy with black hair and solemn eyes.
Ronan.
Another photo.
A boy with a split lip and a crooked grin—Silas, unmistakable even then.
And next to him… Kade. Even younger, but those eyes were the same. Heavy. Still. Unreadable.
My father was in all of them. Hands on shoulders. Holding their backs straight. Like he wasn't just there.
Like he was theirs.
I swallowed hard, picking up a folder that had been carelessly tucked behind the shelf. The label read simply: A. VALE.
My name.
Inside were medical reports. Old ones. Foster paperwork. Legal custody transitions. Letters—one from my father, printed in clean, firm handwriting.
"If anything happens to me, keep her safe. You know the plan. Burn this once the transition is complete."
It wasn't signed with his name.
Just a letter: D.
I didn't know who he wrote it to.
But I had a feeling I was sleeping under the same roof with them.
Footsteps in the hallway snapped me back.
I turned fast, the file still in my hands.
Ronan stood in the doorway, eyes locked on mine. He didn't look surprised.
He just nodded once.
"I figured you'd find it eventually."
He didn't move.
Didn't scold me. Didn't ask what I was doing in a room clearly meant to stay closed.
He just stood in the doorway, eyes unreadable.
The file trembled in my hands. Not because I was afraid—Because for the first time in years, I was this close to the truth. And I didn't know if it would set me free or break me even more.
"You knew I'd find it?" I said, voice flat.
Ronan stepped inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click. The sound felt final.
"Eventually, yeah." He crossed the room slowly, pulled the chair behind the desk, and sat like he belonged there. Like he'd done it a hundred times.
Like this was his world, and I'd just tripped into it.
I held up the folder. "You kept a file on me."
"We didn't start it. Your father did."
"And you just… added to it?"
He nodded. "Updates. Check-ins. Medical info. Just in case."
"In case of what?" My voice sharpened. "In case I broke?"
He looked me dead in the eyes. "In case we lost you."
The words hit harder than I wanted them to.
Because for a second—just a second—I saw it. Not in his words, but in the way his fingers curled against his thigh, the way his shoulders pulled tight, the way he blinked a second too late.
This wasn't just duty.
This was regret.
It made my chest ache in a way I didn't want to name.
"You were supposed to stay safe," he said after a long pause. "Your father's plan wasn't perfect, but it was smart. We had one job: keep you invisible. Keep you distant. You were already grieving, already isolated. We thought we could play into that. Hide you in plain sight."
"By tormenting me," I snapped. "By making me the most hated girl in school."
He looked away. "By making you untouchable."
"That's not protection, Ronan. That's psychological warfare."
"I know."
There was no defense in his voice. No excuse. Just… acceptance.
And somehow, that was worse.
I sat in the leather chair across from him, still gripping the folder like it might vanish if I blinked.
"I want everything," I said quietly. "No more cryptic lines. No more half-truths. Tell me who you really are. Tell me what the hell my father was into. And tell me why you care."
His eyes flicked to mine.
And for the first time, I saw it.
The wall he'd kept around himself for four years cracked—just a little.
"I was nine when I met your father," he said. "He pulled me out of a blacksite in Eastern Europe. I won't go into details, but I wasn't supposed to come back. I saw things kids aren't supposed to survive. But he didn't just save me. He gave me a name. A future. A reason."
He leaned back, folding his arms.
"When he died, I owed him more than my life. I owed him everything."
"And you turned that debt into... surveillance?" I asked bitterly.
He didn't flinch.
"No," he said. "We turned it into loyalty. And somewhere along the way... we turned it into something else."
I narrowed my eyes. "What does that mean?"
He looked at me like I was the only thing in the room worth noticing.
"You think this is just about orders? About a mission we're bound to finish?"
He leaned in slightly, elbows on his knees.
"I stopped following orders the day I saw you flinch at your locker. That was the first time I thought maybe your father had underestimated the world. Maybe we had."
My throat tightened. I looked away.
Because hearing that—seeing that—made everything harder.
The hate I'd carefully built up between us didn't feel like armor anymore.
It felt like a lie.
"I don't trust you," I whispered.
"You shouldn't," he said without hesitation. "But maybe one day… you won't have to fight so hard not to."