The goodbye was a quiet, fragile thing, fractured by everything they couldn't say.
He knelt by her side of the bed in the grey pre-dawn light, his packed bags a silent accusation by the door. Elara was propped up, her face pale against the pillows, her hands resting on the vast curve that held their children.
"Don't go," she whispered, the words a final, breathless plea.
"I have to," he answered, his voice thick. He brought her hand to his lips, kissing each knuckle, then pressed her palm flat against his chest, over his heart. "Feel that? It beats for you. For them. Every second I'm gone, it's beating its way back here."
"Take us with you," she said, a tear escaping. "We're a part of you. You can't just leave us behind."
"It's because you're a part of me that I can do this." His eyes, usually so cold and commanding, were pools of raw, terrified love. "If I take you, I'm bringing my heart into the line of fire. I can't fight if I'm busy holding my heart. I have to know it's safe. Here. In this fortress you built."
He leaned in, his forehead touching hers. Their breaths mingled, a silent communion. "You are my greatest strength, Elara Vance. And my only vulnerability. Let me do this. Let me be the shield."
She closed her eyes, more tears slipping through. She knew she'd lost the argument the moment he'd conceived it. He was a general, and this was his strategy. "Come back to me," she breathed, her lips finding his in a kiss that tasted of salt and promise. "You come back, or I swear I'll build a fortress in hell to drag you out."
A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. "That's my warlady." He kissed her again, deeper, pouring a lifetime of love and fear into it. Then he pulled back, his hands cradling her face. "I love you. More than my next breath. Tell them."
He stood before she could answer, his mask of command slamming back into place. He gave a last, long look to the shape of her under the blankets, then turned and walked out. The sound of the bedroom door closing was the loudest sound she'd ever heard.
---
From her window, Elara watched the choreographed departure. A decoy motorcade of black SUVs left from the front entrance, flashy and obvious. Fifteen minutes later, a single, unremarkable sedan exited the underground garage, slipping into the morning traffic. Cassian was in the second car. She knew it. She felt the pull in her chest, a physical severing.
Two days later..
The penthouse, now a command post, felt both emptier and more crowded. Michael, Cassian's head of security, and his wife Hannah, a former combat medic, moved with quiet efficiency, checking systems. Daniel was a statue by the monitors. Thomas paced, his phone to his ear, coordinating with Prescott on the cyber-front. Sophie sat with Elara, holding her hand, her own face drawn but trying to project calm.
"This is the plan," Elara said, her voice surprisingly steady. She looked at Michael. "You are the sword. Hannah, you're the medic. Daniel, you're the eyes. Thomas, you're the ears. Sophie, you're the heart. And I…" She looked at the bank of security feeds, the blueprints of the building pulled up on a screen. "I am the architect of this defense. We hold this ground. For him."
---
The call came to Serena's private line just past noon. It was from a hospital in Westchester, a nurse with a clipped, professional tone.
"Ms. Vance? We have a Robert Vance here. He was brought in after collapsing at his club. He's asking for you. He's quite distressed."
Serena's blood ran cold. She knew. In her bones, she knew it was a trap. Robert was a pawn, weak and obvious. But the sound in the nurse's voice… the specific club named… it was real. He was really there.
She found Elara in the command center. "It's Robert. He's in the hospital. It's a trap."
Elara's face tightened. "You can't go."
"I know it's what they want," Serena said, her voice low and fierce. "But that man, for all his failings, is still your father. He is alone. And I spent twenty-four years being someone who abandoned people. I will not start my real life by doing it again." She squeezed Elara's hand. "Cassian's man, Doyle, will be with me. We'll be careful. It pulls one element away from here. Perhaps that's part of their design, but we can use it. We'll be the visible target, so you can be the hidden stronghold."
It was tactical, and it was maternal, and Elara couldn't fault it. She nodded, her throat tight. "Signal every five minutes. Or we send the cavalry."
---
Serena's departure was the first domino.
The attack began not with a bang, but with a digital whisper.
Thomas was the first to notice. "I'm getting latency spikes on the external sensors. It's… it's like they're being gently muffled."
Then the lights flickered. Once. Twice.
"Michael!" Elara called out.
"On it!" he barked, moving to the hardwired secondary systems.
A high-pitched whine pierced the air, then died, leaving a profound silence. All the monitors went black. The ambient hum of the penthouse's climate control ceased. The only light now was the grey daylight filtering through the bulletproof windows.
"Total blackout," Hannah stated, already pulling emergency battery lamps from a cabinet. "Primary, secondary, and tertiary grid feeds are down. This is a coordinated physical cut."
"Comms are jammed," Thomas said, slamming his laptop shut. "Everything. Cellular, encrypted bands, even the hardline is dead. We're in a bubble."
Daniel drew his sidearm, moving to the reinforced front door of the penthouse, peering through the digital peephole, which was now offline. He used the manual slit. "Movement in the lobby. Four… no, six figures. Tactical gear. They're not trying to be subtle. They're clearing the building."
A heavy, rhythmic thud began on the penthouse's main door. Not an attempt to pick the lock. A battering ram.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
The sound was monstrous in the silent apartment.
Elara's mind, trained for crisis, snapped into a hyper-focused calm. "Michael, the door will hold against that for maybe ten minutes. Hannah, get the medical kit and the emergency birth kit from the nursery. To the safe room. Sophie, Thomas, with me."
She moved not like a pregnant woman on bed rest, but like a general. She went to a wall panel in the library, the one behind the false bookshelf she'd designed. She input a manual code. A section of shelving slid open, revealing not just the safe room door, but a separate, smaller terminal with a standalone battery pack. It was wired directly into the building's internal sensor network—her own secret system, independent of Cassian's tech.
On the grainy black-and-white feed, she saw them. Men in black, moving with professional lethality up the stairwell, disabling cameras as they came.
"They're on floor 58. Sixty-seven seconds to reach this floor at their pace," she said, her voice eerily calm.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
The whole frame of the front door shuddered.
In the kitchen, Hestia stood frozen, her hands clutching a tea towel, her face ashen. Serena had asked her, just yesterday, "Hestia, you've been so quiet. Is everything alright?" She'd just shaken her head, muttering about missing her sister.
Now, as chaos swirled around her—Hannah rushing past with kits, Thomas trying to get a signal by a window, Daniel bracing against the shuddering door—Hestia let out a small, choked sound.
Elara looked over. "Hestia, get to the safe room, now!"
But Hestia didn't move. She was staring at the front door as if it were the mouth of hell. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. Then her voice rose to a broken wail. "I'M SO SORRY! I HAD NO OTHER CHOICE!"
Time seemed to slow. Everyone turned.
Tears streamed down Hestia's wrinkled face. "He said they would deport her! My Maria! They showed me papers! They said they would send her back and she would die there! All I had to do was… was leave the service door to the roof access unlocked last night when I took the linens up. Just a door! I didn't know… I didn't know it would be this!"
Horror dawned on Elara's face. The roof. They hadn't just come from the lobby.
"Hestia, no!" Daniel yelled.
But it was too late. Spinning with a desperate, tragic energy, Hestia sprinted across the open living room—not towards the safe room, but towards the front door. Her hands fumbled with the complex manual deadbolts Cassian had installed, the ones that could only be opened from inside.
"STOP HER!" Michael roared, raising his weapon, but he couldn't fire. She was Hestia.
With a final, wrenching sob, Hestia threw the last bolt and yanked the heavy door open.
She wasn't met by the men with the battering ram. They were still down the hall. She was met by the leader, a tall, cold-eyed man who stood right there, having already come silently down from the roof. He looked at the weeping old woman, then past her, into the heart of the penthouse. He didn't shoot her. He simply pushed her aside, and she collapsed in a heap of guilt and grief.
Four armed men flowed in behind him, weapons raised.
The enemy was inside the fortress.
In that moment of sheer, silent terror, as Michael and Daniel brought their weapons up, as Thomas shoved Sophie behind him, a different kind of wave hit Elara.
It was a deep, internal pressure, a warm, sudden rush that soaked through her clothes and pooled at her feet. A sharp, squeezing pain clamped around her lower back and radiated around her stomach, stealing her breath.
She looked down, then up, meeting Hannah's wide, understanding eyes across the room.
The strategic chaos, the breached door, the raised guns—it all faded into a distant roar.
Her water broke. And the first real contraction, a vise of pure purpose, gripped her body.
The enemy was in the room. And the twins were coming.