The family dinner had ended three hours ago, but Kasper could still taste the ashes of his own words. Heroes don't come home with two hundred thirty-seven confirmed kills. The look on Carmen's face when he'd said it—like watching her son die all over again—was burned into his retinas.
He sat on the edge of his childhood bed, staring at the telephone number scrawled on a piece of paper. Sean Covington, San Isidro. The last time they'd spoken was graduation day, when they'd all promised to stay in touch and pretended they believed it.
Four years. Four years of trying to become the kind of person his family could love without flinching.
His hands shook as he reached for the rotary phone. Just once. Just enough to make dialing impossible.
Coward.
But maybe Sean would understand. Maybe someone who'd chosen the same path would know how to live with what they'd become. Or maybe he'd just confirm what Kasper already suspected—that there was no going back from Costa del Sol, no bridge between the weapon he'd had to become and the son his family needed.
Only one way to find out.
The operator connected him after three tries and a handful of small coins. Static crackled across the international line before Sean's voice cut through, sharp and familiar.
"Covington Security Services. You better have money or blood, because I don't do charity."
"It's Kasper."
Silence. Then a low whistle.
"Well, shit. The Void Killer himself. I was wondering when you'd crawl out of whatever hole you've been hiding in." Sean's voice carried that old competitive edge, but something else underneath—something that sounded almost like relief. "Heard you went home to play house with the civilians."
"How's that working out for you?"
"About as well as you'd expect." Kasper's laugh came out bitter. "I nearly pulled a gun on a fish vendor yesterday. At a market. With my mother."
"Amateur. I did pull a gun on a fish vendor. Turned out he was just enthusiastic about his red snapper." Sean's chuckle held no humor. "The real question is whether you feel bad about it or whether you're pissed that you hesitated."
The words hit like a physical blow because they were true. Part of him—a larger part than he wanted to admit—was angry that civilian life was making him soft.
"Both," Kasper admitted.
"Yeah, that's the problem right there. You're trying to be something you're not anymore. We're not civilians, hermano. We're weapons that learned to think. The sooner you accept that, the easier it gets."
"Is that what you did? Accepted it?"
"Fuck yes. You know what I do now? I take the contracts nobody else wants. The ones that require getting your hands dirty. I sleep in different cities, carry three different passports, and trust absolutely no one." Sean's voice carried dark satisfaction. "And you know what? I sleep like a baby. Because I'm not pretending to be something I'm not."
Kasper felt something cold settle in his chest. "You don't miss it? Having people who know you?"
"Know me?" Sean laughed, and it sounded like breaking glass. "Nobody knew me, Kasper. Not really. They knew the kid who wanted to be a hero. But that kid died the first time I had to choose between completing a mission and saving someone who trusted me."
"Who did you choose?"
"The mission. Every time." The words came out flat, final. "And that's the difference between us and them. When it matters—really matters—we make the hard choice. We do what needs doing. That's why your family looks at you like you're a stranger, because on some level, they know that if it came down to them or the mission, you might hesitate."
"That's not—"
"Isn't it? Tell me honestly, De La Fuente. Your sister's boyfriend turns out to be a threat to national security. Orders come down to eliminate him. What do you do?"
The question hung in the air like cordite. And the terrible thing was, Kasper wasn't sure of the answer.
"I thought so," Sean said quietly. "Look, you want my advice? Stop trying to go backward. You can't unfry an egg, and you can't unknow what people are really capable of when they stop pretending to be civilized. Find work that uses what you are instead of fighting it."
"What if I don't want to be this anymore?"
"Then you're fucked. Because this is who we are now. The only question is whether you're going to be honest about it or keep torturing yourself trying to fit into a world that doesn't understand what it takes to keep them safe."
The line went dead, leaving Kasper alone with the echo of his own doubts and hands that wouldn't stop shaking. Sean's words carved into him like shrapnel—true enough to hurt, wrong enough to resist.
Because if he wasn't, then coming home had been the cruelest joke of all.
Lucas answered on the second ring, and immediately Kasper could picture him—probably elbow-deep in some mechanical project, tools scattered across every surface.
"¡Kasper! Holy shit, man, we were just talking about you. Maria, get over here—it's the famous hermano!"
Background noise, shuffling, then Maria's voice joining the call: "We heard you were back home. How are you doing? Really doing?"
The warmth in their voices was almost unbearable. These were people who'd found a way to be happy after everything they'd trained for, everything they'd seen. The question was whether that happiness was real or just another kind of lie.
"I'm..." Kasper searched for words that wouldn't sound like weakness. "I'm having trouble adjusting."
"No shit," Lucas said, but gently. "You went through hell down there. We saw the reports. What you did in Costa del Sol—it was necessary, but that doesn't make it easy to live with."
"How do you do it? How do you live normal lives after everything we trained for?"
Lucas and Maria exchanged a look that Kasper could hear in their brief silence.
"We don't," Maria said finally. "Live normal lives, I mean. We found work that lets us use our training for something constructive. Lucas runs tech support for Association operations while I handle medical support. It's not normal, but it's..."
"It's honest," Lucas finished. "We're not pretending to be something we're not. We're just being the best version of what we became."
"But you're happy." The words came out more accusatory than Kasper intended.
"We're content," Maria corrected. "There's a difference. We've accepted that we changed, that we can't go back to who we were before the academy. But that doesn't mean we can't build something good with who we are now."
"What if your families can't accept who you are now?"
Another silence, heavier this time.
"Then that's their choice," Lucas said quietly. "But it doesn't change our responsibility to be honest about what we are. Kasper, lying to your family about who you've become isn't protecting them. It's protecting yourself from having to face what you're afraid of losing."
Kasper's grip tightened on the phone receiver until his knuckles went white. The truth of the words made his throat close up.
"Which is?"
"Their love," Maria said simply. "But real love—the kind worth having—survives honesty. The kind that doesn't... maybe that's not love at all."
"What if the truth is too much? What if what I did in Costa del Sol is something they can never understand?"
"Then you find people who can understand," Lucas replied. "But you don't torture yourself trying to be someone you're not anymore. That helps nobody."
"Speaking of which," Maria added, "there's someone you should talk to. Dr. Helena Vega, in Valparaíso. She used to work with Association veterans who had trouble transitioning. Might be worth a conversation."
"You think I need therapy?"
"I think you need to talk to someone who understands that some experiences change you permanently," Maria said. "And that the goal isn't to forget who you became, but to figure out how to be that person in a way that doesn't destroy everything you care about."
After they hung up, Kasper sat in the growing darkness of his childhood room. Outside, Nueva Kareana was settling into evening—normal people finishing normal days, unaware that their safety had been purchased with the kind of choices that left permanent stains on your soul.
But Lucas and Maria had found a way forward. Not backward, but forward. The question was whether Kasper had the courage to try.
Valerian took two days to return his call, and when he did, his voice carried the polished authority of someone who'd grown comfortable with power.
"Kasper. I was wondering when you'd reach out." No preamble, no small talk. Valerian had never wasted words, and apparently four years hadn't changed that. "I assume this isn't a social call."
"I need advice. From someone who understands family complications."
"Ah." Valerian's tone shifted, becoming more carefully neutral. "Having trouble reconciling the man you became with the son they remember?"
"Something like that."
"Let me guess. They love you, but they're afraid of you. They want to help, but they don't understand what kind of help you need. And you're caught between wanting to be honest with them and wanting to protect them from the truth of what you've done."
The accuracy was unsettling. "How did you—"
"Because I live it every day." Valerian's voice carried unexpected vulnerability. "My family knows I work for the Obsidian Syndicate. They don't know what that work entails. They assume it's bureaucratic, political maneuvering. They have no idea that last month I orchestrated the disappearance of three cartel lieutenants who were trafficking children through Buenos Aires."
"How do you live with that? The deception?"
"By accepting that some truths are weapons," Valerian said quietly. "And that loving someone sometimes means not using those weapons against them. My family's peace of mind is worth more than my need to be fully known."
"But doesn't it eat at you? Living a lie?"
"I don't live a lie. I live a partial truth. When I'm with my family, I'm their son, their brother. That's real. When I'm working, I'm something else entirely. Both are authentic, just... compartmentalized."
"And that works for you?"
"Most days. But it requires discipline, and it requires accepting that there are parts of yourself your family will never know." Valerian paused. "The question is whether you can live with that distance, or whether hiding pieces of yourself feels like another kind of death."
Kasper's voice came out rougher than he intended, strained from three conversations that had peeled away layers he'd tried to keep intact. "What if the distance is already there? What if they're already afraid?"
"Then you have a choice to make," Valerian said. "You can keep pretending everything is fine and watch the distance grow. Or you can be honest about what you've become and give them the chance to decide whether they can love that person too."
"And if they can't?"
"Then at least you'll know where you stand instead of slowly dying from the uncertainty."
After Valerian hung up, Kasper stared at the phone for a long time, his hands trembling with exhaustion and something that might have been hope. Three conversations, three different approaches to the same fundamental problem: how do you love people when you've become something they might not be able to understand?
Sean's answer: accept that you can't, and stop trying.
Lucas and Maria's answer: find a way to be honest about what you are.
Valerian's answer: compartmentalize and protect them from the worst truths.
But none of them had given him what he really needed: a way to be the person his family deserved without losing the edge that had kept him alive.
Maybe there was only one person who might understand that particular paradox. And maybe it was time to stop being afraid of what that conversation would cost him.
The Cargill estate sat on the outskirts of Nueva Kareana like a fortress disguised as a gentleman's club. Kasper had called ahead—a brief conversation where Zariff's voice had carried immediate understanding, as if he'd been expecting this moment for weeks. "Come tonight," he'd said simply. "We'll talk."
Now Kasper approached on foot, noting the discrete security measures—cameras that tracked his movement, sensors that probably recorded his heartbeat, the kind of professional-grade surveillance that suggested the man inside took his privacy seriously.
The butler who answered the door was polite but thorough, conducting a weapons check that found both of Kasper's concealed pistols and the knife in his boot. Professional work.
"Mr. Cargill is expecting you in the study," the man said, leading Kasper through halls lined with paintings that probably cost more than most people's houses.
Zariff Queen—though here he was simply Elias Cargill, successful businessman and devoted father—stood with his back to the door, staring out at gardens that managed to look both elegant and defensible. Without his signature art deco mask, he looked younger than Kasper remembered. Thirty-five, maybe, with the kind of lean strength that came from constant training.
"You look like hell," Zariff said without turning around.
"Feel worse."
"Good. That means you still have enough humanity left to recognize when you're broken." Zariff turned, and his eyes—darker than Nailah's but with the same intensity—studied Kasper with professional thoroughness. "Sit. Tell me what's really wrong."
Kasper settled into a leather chair that probably cost more than his family's car. "I don't know how to be home."
"Elaborate."
"I spent a year becoming something that could survive Costa del Sol. Now I'm back, and I don't know how to turn it off. I see threats everywhere. I catalog weapons in my mother's kitchen. I followed my sister on her dates like she was an enemy asset." The words tumbled out faster than he intended. "And the worst part is, I don't know if I want to turn it off. Because if I do, what happens when real threats come? What happens when the people I love need me to be dangerous again?"
Zariff was quiet for a long moment, his expression unreadable.
"You know what your real problem is?" he said finally. "You think there are only two choices: be a weapon or be vulnerable. But that's not true."
"What's the third option?"
"Be both. Selectively." Zariff moved to the bar, pouring two glasses of something that smelled expensive and looked like liquid amber. "I've been doing this for fifteen years. Do you think I turn off my training when I come home to Nailah? Do you think I stop being dangerous because I'm playing father?"
"No."
"Correct. But I've learned the difference between being ready and being activated. Between being capable of violence and being controlled by the need for it." Zariff handed him a glass. "Your family doesn't need you to stop being what you are. They need you to learn when to be it."
"How?"
"Practice. Discipline. And accepting that it's going to be uncomfortable for a while." Zariff settled into the chair across from him. "You spent a year training yourself to see everything as a potential threat because in Costa del Sol, everything was a potential threat. Now you're somewhere safe, but your training doesn't know that."
"So I retrain?"
"You expand your training. You learn to read environments the way you learned to read threats. You develop the same hyperawareness for safety that you have for danger." Zariff's voice carried the authority of experience. "It's harder than staying activated all the time, but it's the only way to have both."
"What if I can't learn that? What if I'm too damaged?"
"Then you find work that uses what you are productively, and you accept that some relationships will have boundaries." Zariff's honesty was brutal but not unkind. "But you don't give up on being human just because being human is complicated."
They sat in silence for a while, drinking expensive whiskey and watching shadows lengthen across the garden. Finally, Zariff spoke again.
"There's a doctor in Valparaíso. Dr. Helena Vega. She understands the kind of training we've been through, the kind of choices we've had to make. Not therapy in the traditional sense—practical training for people who need to function in both worlds."
"You've used her?"
"For three months, after a particularly difficult operation. She helped me understand that being a father and being Zariff Queen weren't contradictory—they were complementary. Both required protecting what mattered, just in different ways."
Kasper felt something shift in his chest. Not relief, exactly, but the possibility of relief.
"Will you call her?" Zariff asked.
"Yeah. I think I will."
"Good." Zariff stood, moving to his desk. "One more thing. Your family situation—they're afraid because they don't understand what you've become. But they're also afraid because they can sense that you're not happy. People who love you want to see you at peace, not just safe."
"What if I don't know how to be at peace?"
"Then you learn. One day at a time, one choice at a time. You choose to be present instead of vigilant. You choose to trust instead of verify. You choose to love instead of protect." Zariff's smile was sad but genuine. "It's the hardest thing you'll ever do, but it's also the most important."
As Kasper left the estate, the city lights of Nueva Kareana spread out below him like a constellation of possibilities. For the first time since coming home, he felt something other than the crushing weight of his own contradictions.
He felt hope.
Tomorrow, he would call Dr. Vega. He would start the difficult work of learning to be both the man who'd survived Costa del Sol and the son his family needed. He would practice being human again, one careful choice at a time.
But tonight, he would go home and sit with his family and try—just try—to be present instead of alert. To love instead of protect.
It was a start.