ALEXANDER
I sat at the head of the conference table, fingers steepled beneath my chin, eyes fixed on the young man at the far end of the room. He was making a presentation—something about restructuring the security rotations for the borders.
Normally, I would have absorbed every word, every statistic, every projected outcome. I never let my attention slip, not in meetings, not in training, not anywhere.
But today… today was different.
His voice faded in and out like a distant echo, and all I could think about was Faye’s face across the breakfast table—calm, steady, determined in that quiet way she had. The way she spoke about it. The way she looked at me when she did. I’d brushed it off. I’d walked away before I could let it settle too deeply.
Yet here I was, sitting in a room full of
