“That must have been difficult for you,” she said softly. “Ariana told me you and Alec are half-brothers. Edwin was your father, wasn’t he?”
He met her gaze and nodded. “Yes. It’s now common knowledge. Edwin was effective, but his methods were brutal.”
Valentina placed her hand over his and squeezed it gently. “You’re a good man, Brant. Sometimes, we learn more from our parents’ mistakes than by the examples they set.”
Brant gave her a small smile. “Then I learned a great deal from mine.” He paused and added, “Back then, some of our residents acquired weapons on their own. Some manufactured devices using schematics they managed to download from our archives. But this is the first time we’ve had this new type of challenge. Even when we dealt with the surface dwellers in the past, we were
