Michael hadn’t slept in three days.
The house was quiet,Leo’s breathing steady behind the closed door, Erica curled on the far edge of their shared bed like she was still guarding the boy with her own body. But Michael sat in the kitchen, gun parts laid out on the table like puzzle pieces he no longer had the will to solve.
His thumb moved idly over the serial number carved into the Beretta’s slide. Something about that number used to ground him. A weapon was simple: load, aim, fire. No ambiguity. No emotion.
Now?
Now, he had a child whose last name was his. And more than that a child who asked about him.
A child who remembered pain.
A child he had to live for, not just kill for.
Michael didn’t know how to do that.
The old world was thinning around him.
He’d spent sixteen years wo
