The evening air was crisp, city lights flickering behind Jason Hudson as he stepped off the train, a leather bag slung over his shoulder. The Cold War was still simmering, but tonight, the mission was personal. Years of black ops, betrayals, and buried truths weighed on him, but this—this was something else entirely.

He moved through the quiet suburbs like a ghost in a suit, the kind only the CIA produced. Her house—modest, ivy-clad, tucked behind hedges—waited like a memory he wasn’t sure he deserved. He paused at the gate, his pulse louder than any gunfire he'd faced in Laos or Berlin.

The door opened before he could knock. She stood there, like she'd known he was coming. No sunglasses, no cover story—just Jason. She stepped into his arms, and he held her like a man trying to remember what peace felt like.

“I missed you,” she whispered into his chest.

His fingers brushed the velvet box in his coat pocket. It was heavier than any dossier or revolver he’d carried. He stepped back, dropped to one knee—not as Hudson the handler, but as the man she’d never stopped believing in.

“I’ve seen what the world really is,” he said, voice low. “And none of it ever scared me like the thought of losing you. Marry me.”