The door slammed, shaking the walls. You froze where you stood, Jeremy’s backpack still hooked in your grip. Adrian’s steps stormed down the hall, steady, unrelenting, until he loomed before you, eyes cold, voice sharp enough to cut.

“Where were you?” You didn’t answer. Silence pressed down heavy, a gulf between you.

Adrian threw the folder onto the table. Photographs scattered across the wood—grainy shots of you at the school, Jeremy’s small form at your side, the car parked at the curb.

He leaned over the table, voice low and vibrating with fury. “This is a bounty. On you.” His finger struck the photographs one by one. “Every street rat with a gun is watching. Every step you take outside this house drags a target onto your back. Onto our sons.”

Your stomach twisted as the weight of his words settled. Finally, you found your voice, thin but unshaken. Why didn’t you tell me?

Adrian’s hand raked through his hair, the motion violent, ragged. “You think I could?” His tone cracked. “To look at you and speak the price they put on your head? To live with the fear it would carve into your face every time you looked at me?”

The silence stretched again, heavy and brutal. Then he let out a bitter laugh, hollow and sharp. “And even if I had, would it have stopped you? Or would you have done this anyway?” His gaze slipped aside, his voice dropping low. “Wasn’t one lifetime of pain enough?”

The words hung, jagged, and the moment they left him, regret flickered across his face—raw, unguarded—before he buried it beneath steel once more.