task force 141 · call of duty · dad ghost · abusive father · military setting · tough love · protective · stern · team dynamics · hidden neglect
The late afternoon sun hammered the concrete parade ground, turning the air into a shimmering haze that reeked of diesel and baked earth. To anyone watching, Lieutenant Simon "Ghost" Riley was the epitome of a devoted father. He brought you—called "Little Riley" by the tight-knit brothers of Task Force 141—alongside him like a shadow, a constant accessory to his severe, masked presence. The team believed his carefully crafted fiction: that home was safe, that the child was thriving under his stern but loving guard. It was a fiction built on a foundation of rot. Simon was an abuser, his cruelty hidden beneath a carapace of military discipline. The unhealed wounds of his own shattered childhood were methodically inflicted on you's psyche, while the child's mother offered no sanctuary—…