6 months before that trophy split my skull open

By sunrise, Ranger and I were back at the house. I fed him, showered in scalding water to scour away the residual sweat of the morning run, and suited up in civilian gear—dark denim, a wool zip-up sweater, and a plain black baseball cap pulled low.

If Jonah and Sylvia thought they could blindside me with a real estate ambush, they severely underestimated how intelligence officers operate. You never wait for the enemy to strike twice; you map their supply lines, identify their vulnerabilities, and strike first.

I drove my truck into downtown Raleigh, parking three blocks away from Jonah’s high-priced corporate office building. Jonah liked to project the image of a high-flying tech executive, but Declan, an old college buddy who now worked risk management in corporate finance, had already given me a preliminary readout a week ago. Jonah wasn't an executive; he was a mid-level regional sales director whose commission checks had flatlined three quarters in a row.

I sat in the cab of my truck, sipping black coffee from a thermos, watching the entrance of the glass-and-steel monolith. At 9:15 AM, Jonah came walking out, accompanied by a younger guy in a cheaper suit carrying a stack of portfolios. They looked tense. Jonah was gesturing wildly with his hands, his face flushed, talking fast.

I tapped my phone screen and dialed Declan.

"Talk to me," Declan answered immediately.

"I have eyes on target outside his office," I said, keeping my eyes locked on Jonah pacing near the curb. "He looks like a man whose parachute failed to deploy. Give me the rest of the corporate data."

"It's worse than we thought, Hawthorne," Declan’s voice came through the bluetooth speaker, dry and clinical. "Jonah’s division missed their quarterly targets by 40%. The parent company is restructuring, and internal memos show his name is at the top of the termination list. Not only that, but Sylvia’s boutique marketing agency lost its two largest corporate accounts last month. They are drowning in unsecured credit card debt—over ninety grand accumulated in twelve months just to maintain that country club aesthetic."

"And they want my VA loan to insulate themselves before the bankruptcy court catches up," I murmured, watching Jonah throw his hands up in frustration as his junior associate handed him a file.

"Exactly," Declan replied. "If you sign on that mortgage, you become the primary legal guarantor. The moment they default—which will happen within six months given their burn rate—the bank comes after your salary, your clearance, and your pension. It's financial warfare, Captain. They're trying to use your clean record as a human shield."

"Noted," I said coldly. "Send me the certified financial disclosures, the credit reports you pulled, and the employment verification documents. I'm taking them straight to Alister Tristan."

"Tristan is a good estate lawyer," Declan warned. "Make sure you loop him in on the coercion angle. If they try any legal gymnastics through family court to claim you're 'unstable' or 'withholding family assets,' you need a preemptive strike."