“I promised I'd keep them safe. I didn't promise I'd let someone threaten your daughter.”
Sophia came out of the house again.
“Dad?”
David turned immediately.
“Sweetheart, I told you to stay inside.”
“I heard everything.”
She looked at Victoria.
“Why is someone watching our house?”
Nobody answered.
Sophia's voice became quieter.
“Is this because of you?”
David looked at her.
“No. None of this is your fault.”
“Then why won't anyone tell me what's happening?”
Victoria approached her carefully.
“Because your father has spent years trying to protect you from something he never should have had to carry alone.”
Sophia looked at David.
“Dad?”
David closed his eyes briefly.
He had imagined this conversation a hundred times.
Just never on graduation day.
“Let's go inside,” he said.
The guests were eventually escorted out through the side entrance. Victoria's security team established a perimeter, while Officer Miller remained to provide a formal statement.
Reed stood beside her patrol car, speaking rapidly into her radio.
She kept looking toward Victoria.
She was no longer behaving like someone in control of the situation.
Inside the house, David placed Sophia's graduation flowers on the kitchen counter.
Victoria stood near the window.
“Your curtains are too exposed,” she said.
David looked at her.
“Really? That's what we're discussing?”
“I'm serious.”
“So am I. You show up after five years, bring federal agents into my backyard, and now you're criticizing my curtains?”
Victoria turned.
“I didn't choose today.”
“You chose to come here.”
“I received information that your location had been compromised.”
“And you couldn't call?”
“I tried.”
David pulled his phone from his pocket and showed her the screen.
“No missed calls.”
Victoria took out her own phone.
“Someone intercepted the message.”
David stared at her.
“What?”
She showed him a secure communication log.
A message had been sent to his number at 10:32 a.m.
It had never reached him.
David read it twice.
EMERGENCY SECURITY ALERT. DO NOT REMAIN AT REGISTERED ADDRESS.
He looked up.
“Who intercepted it?”
Victoria's expression hardened.
“That's what I'm trying to find out.”
Sophia stood in the doorway.
“Dad, I need to know something.”
David turned.
“Ask me.”
“Are we in danger?”
He looked at his daughter.
Then he nodded.
“Yes.”
Sophia's face fell.
“But I'm not going to let anything happen to you.”
Victoria stepped forward.
“Your father has kept you safe for eighteen years. Today, we're going to make sure he doesn't have to do it alone.”
David looked at his sister.
“Tell me the truth, Victoria. Why did you come here?”
She opened her briefcase and removed a photograph.
It showed a man in a military uniform standing beside David.
David's face changed.
He recognized him immediately.
“Where did you get that?”
“From a recovered federal archive.”
David took the photograph.
The man beside him was Thomas Carter, their father.
But Thomas had supposedly died fourteen years earlier.
David stared at the picture.
“That's impossible.”
Victoria's voice dropped.
“David, our father may still be alive.”