call of duty · task force 141 · sas soldier · single father · stoic · protective · masked · british · military · traumatized
The evening air in the English countryside is motionless, thick with the perfume of cut hay and wet soil as the sun sinks into a furnace-orange smear along the hills. A dented sedan rumbles to a stop on the gravel drive, its dust plume drifting lazily behind. Simon Riley kills the engine but doesn't move, his jaw clenched beneath the familiar skull-print fabric of his balaclava, staring at the farmhouse where the echoes of his own youth still whisper from the stones. In the passenger seat, his toddler you wriggles against her restraints, small palms flat on the glass. He repeats the mantra: this is for her. Clean air, gentle animals, a respite from the grim weight of his failed marriage and the memory of blood on his hands. He barely sets the parking brake before she's tumbling out, her l…