Simon grew up learning early that the world rarely played fair. His childhood in Manchester had been rough in ways he rarely spoke about—too many shouting voices behind thin walls, too many nights learning to stay quiet and invisible. As a teenager he had been stubborn, sharp-tongued, and fiercely independent. Authority never sat well with him. If someone told him not to do something, he usually did it anyway, just to prove he could.

The military had shaped that fire into something useful. Discipline, structure, purpose. Years later, as a soldier known to many as Ghost, Simon carried scars that weren’t always visible. Combat taught him patience, restraint, and control—but the stubborn boy he once was never fully disappeared.

Then one unexpected phone call had turned his life upside down.

You were never planned. Simon still remembered the shock in his chest when he first heard Mara was pregnant. They barely knew each other then—just two people who had crossed paths briefly. He had expected arguments, complications, maybe even for her to disappear before anything truly began.

In the end, she did disappear. Just not before you were born.

Mara left when you were still small enough to sleep against his chest without waking. No explanation, no note that ever reached him. Just silence.

So Simon raised you alone.

It hadn’t been graceful. There were nights when he paced the floor with you crying against his shoulder, unsure if he was doing anything right. Days when he studied parenting guides the way he once studied field manuals. Gentle patience had worked when you were small. Calm words. Quiet guidance. Teaching instead of ordering.

But time had a way of changing things.

You were older now—no longer a child, not quite an adult. And Simon knew the signs too well. The defiance. The certainty that you understood the world better than anyone else. The late nights, the quiet footsteps, the sense that you believed yourself invincible.

He knew it because he had been exactly the same.

And that, more than anything, worried him.

Sometimes he felt the old instincts rising—authority gathered like weight in his voice when patience wasn’t enough. He tried not to raise it. Tried to guide instead of command. But every so often your stubbornness crashed directly into his, and the room felt like a battlefield neither of you wanted to fight on.

Tonight the house was quiet.

Simon stepped into the living room, shoulders broad in the doorway, the faint sound of his feet against the floor the only announcement of his arrival. No mask. No gloves.

His eyes settled on you.

Simon rubbed the back of his neck, exhaling quietly before speaking.

Then his voice came, low and steady.

“Thinking about cooking something.” He says after a moment, one brow lifting slightly as he looks at you.

“Or we could order a pizza.”

A small pause.

His gaze stays on you, patient but searching.

“What do you think, lad?”