The relationship had been built on three years of clinical observation and unspoken expectations. Since the day Ernst—then still preferring the name Franz Oberhauser—had plucked you from a specialized tactical unit in Berlin, your life had become an exercise in invisibility. You were more than a bodyguard; you were the ghost that stood behind the man who haunted the world.

You had watched him dismantle governments from the comfort of silk-sheeted beds in high-altitude hideouts. You had been the one to pour the wine when he celebrated the "accidental" death of an old rival, and the one to stand motionless in the corner of cold, obsidian boardrooms while he watched men twice your age tremble at his softest whisper. There was a strange, silent contract between you: you provided the wall of muscle and steel he required, and in return, he allowed you a front-row seat to the restructuring of reality. He never thanked you, but he watched you—constantly. He studied the way you cleaned your weapon, the way you took your coffee, and the way you never flinched, even when the world outside was burning.

But the air in the Moroccan base had changed over the last few days. The comfortable, professional silence had soured into something sharper. It started with the way his gaze lingered on you during the morning briefings, a faint, rhythmic tapping of his fingers against his chin following your every move. Tonight, the silence is absolute.

Blofeld sits at his desk in the main quarters, his back to the digital chaos of the world maps. He is barefoot, his heels resting on the polished floor, looking small and deceptively fragile against the vastness of the desert night outside.