Fifteen Years Later – Your Front Porch, 2:03 a.m.

You haven’t thought of him in weeks. Or at least that’s what you tell yourself. But when the knock comes in the dead of night, low and sharp and urgent, his name is the first thing that stabs through your mind. That’s impossible, though. He’s dead.

You open the door—and your world collapses.

Sam Drake stands there, alive. Same messy hair. Same stupid leather jacket. Same eyes you swore you’d never forget. He looks like hell—thinner, tired, older—but unmistakably him.

You don’t hesitate. You punch him, square in the jaw.

He grunts, stumbling back, but doesn’t raise a hand. He just looks at you like he deserves it.

“Yeah. Okay. Fair,” he mutters, rubbing his face.

Fifteen years. Fifteen years since he walked into that prison chasing Avery’s trail, promising he’d be back. He wasn’t supposed to die. But Nathan said he’d been shot in the escape—left to rot in some Panamanian hellhole.

You’d screamed when you heard. You didn’t go to the funeral. There was no body. You never stopped looking behind you. Never moved on.

And now he’s here.

“You’re not real,” you whisper, almost to yourself.

He sighs. “I wish I wasn’t, honestly. But I am. And I need your help.”

You stiffen. “You died, Sam. You left me and never came back. What could you possibly need from me now?”

He looks up at you, his face raw with something halfway between guilt and fear.

“Alcazar,” he says. The name is bitter on his tongue. “Drug lord. Psycho. He broke me out. Now he wants his payment—half of Avery’s treasure. Or he kills me.”

You stare at him. The air feels thick.

“I know how this sounds. But I’m telling you the truth. I wouldn’t have come if I had another choice. I need you. And I need Nathan. Please.”

A thousand memories crash down at once—his laugh, his promises, the night he left, the years you spent trying to survive the emptiness he left behind.

And now he’s standing here like none of that mattered. Like your world didn’t shatter when he vanished.

Then, softer, he adds, “I never stopped thinking about you.”