Author's Note:
This isn't a scene about healing. It's a scene about revelation.
While Niv sleeps—unburned, untouched—Jaime tries to make sense of what he witnessed. Sera, who sees more than she admits, makes the call she's been dreading. And halfway across the world of power and blood, a man who terrifies nations pauses for his daughter.
The silence in this chapter says more than gunfire ever could. Let it linger.
Sera's penthouse, post sunrise
Niv lay on the couch, hoodie half-zipped, one arm tucked beneath his head. Asleep. Calm. Entirely unhurt.
Sera stepped in barefoot, her oversized black tee brushing against her thighs. The skyline outside flickered faint gold—the kind of light that arrived just before the world stirred.
Across the room, Jaime stood near the glass wall, silent as stone. The assault rifle slung across his chest felt heavier than usual. So did his thoughts.
His left leg, beneath the cargo pants, was wrapped in an advanced compression sheath—lightweight, metallic, humming faintly. The grazes across his ribs and shoulder were already sealed. Painless. Cooling.
It didn't make sense.
The medics Niv had called in weren't local. They weren't cartel. They weren't anything Jaime could place.
They came in silent—no patches, no names, no questions. Clean black gear.
Expressionless. Efficient.
He'd been stabilized en route. One injected him with something that felt like ice in his veins. Another slid a bone-knitting sleeve around his leg. A third hovered a scanning disc over his shoulder, and the pain just… stopped.
No words exchanged. No explanation.
And it worked. Better than anything he'd ever seen.
Jaime had once dragged himself four kilometers through Iraqi dust with a hole in his gut and only morphine to keep him from blacking out. He'd been patched up in private clinics, stitched by battlefield surgeons. He knew what fast looked like. He knew what good looked like.
This was different. This was surgical warfare medicine. Private sector bleeding-edge. Maybe even off-books.
Now he was standing. Healed. Stabilized. Combat-ready again within hours.
He didn't understand it. But he remembered who summoned them.
Jaime looked at Niv—peaceful, still.
Unhurt. Untouched. Like he'd been born in fire and just walked through another one.
Sera knelt beside the couch, brushing a curl of hair from Niv's forehead. She kissed him there—soft, precise—and then looked at Jaime.
"Did you call him?"
Jaime nodded. "Around 4AM. Gave him a full brief."
Sera's brow furrowed slightly at that.
"Everything?"
A shrug. "Everything that mattered. He's your father."
Right. Of course. Loyalty could be deep—and still not be hers.
She reached for her phone and dialed.
On the other end, in a quiet compound outside Mexico City, Felix Marino stood in an open-air terrace lined with hanging orchids and bulletproof glass.
Shirt sleeves rolled, a half-cup of espresso cooling beside classified intelligence briefs.
The phone lit up. Sera.
He answered on the second ring. "Mija."
"I'm okay," she said softly. "We're okay."
"I heard. Jaime said you handled yourself."
"I wanted to wait a little before telling you," she continued. "About him. About... Niv."
A pause.
Then Felix said, "You were always going to tell me. But I want you to come home."
Sera exhaled. "The semester's done. I was going to say the same thing."
Felix nodded to himself. But behind his steady eyes, a thought stirred:
Thank God I made that call. Another inch of pride, and I might've greeted him like the others. And that would've been a mistake.
"Bring him," he said.
Sera blinked. "What?"
"To Mexico. You said he saved your life. I want to meet him."
She hesitated—then smiled slightly. "Okay. Just… don't scare him."
Felix let out a low breath. Not quite a laugh.
"If he scares easy, he has no business near you."
Sera tilted her head, amused but wary. "Dad."
He didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice had a weight to it.
"I'm not the one he's afraid of."
That gave her pause.
"You looked into him."
"I did," he said evenly. "Then I stopped. A friend told me—'If you value your peace, don't keep digging.' So I stopped."
Sera went quiet.
"He'll tell me when he's ready," she said at last.
"I hope so," Felix replied. "Because if he doesn't… someone else eventually will."
He reached for his espresso, now cold. It didn't matter.
"I'll have the jet ready."