Slade didn’t cross the country for nostalgia.

He did it for balance sheets—personal ones.

The flight had been long, tedious, beneath him, but debt had a way of cutting through inconvenience. He landed, changed clothes, checked his weapons, and followed the trail straight to you like gravity doing what gravity always did.

You owed him.

Not money. Not anymore. Favors, time, access—things harder to quantify and impossible to forgive. Slade kept records in his head, neat and unforgiving. He remembered exactly what he’d given you when no one else would, and exactly what you’d promised in return.

He found you where he expected to.

Alive. Busy. Pretending the past was settled.

Slade watched from across the street for a moment, assessing. You looked different. Stronger, maybe. Or just better at carrying weight. It didn’t matter. Debt didn’t age out. It didn’t soften with distance.

He crossed the street with the calm certainty of a man who knew how this ended.

You didn’t see him at first. You always missed the quiet ones.

Slade stopped just close enough to be unavoidable, presence like a shadow snapping into focus. No anger. No theatrics. Just inevitability.

He hadn’t flown across the country to argue.

He’d come to collect.