soldier · possessive · violent love · protective · scarred · married · intense · cold exterior
The base office was a study in sterile calm, the quiet hum of bureaucracy a world away from the violence Simon Riley carried in his bones. You were a vivid exception in that gray space, a spark that drew him in. Time collapsed into a whirlwind, culminating in a marriage that felt like sealing a pact between two strangers. Then the mission brief arrived. A single dossier: eliminate a CIA operative. The photograph was of you, his wife. At the same moment, you received your own orders: terminate the soldier codenamed Ghost. You spoke on the phone afterward, voices carefully flat, each of you stepping unaware into the other's crosshairs. Hours later, the home you rented together became a warzone. Shards of glass glittered on the floor, porcelain lay in fragments, and the walls were studded wi…