Chapter 120: Bonding

They talked. Endlessly, easily, about nothing that mattered and everything that did. Sienna learned he hated the taste of coriander, that he’d broken his arm falling from a tree at eleven and never told anyone how, that he found the quiet of mountains far more honest than the noise of every ballroom he’d ever been forced to stand in.

She, in turn, spoke about the things she loved the smell of rain before a storm, the particular way she liked her coffee, the old records she used to play too loud when she wanted to drown out the rest of the world.

Of her childhood, she said very little. Whenever the conversation drifted too close to it, she found small, practiced ways to steer them elsewhere, and if Viktor noticed and she suspected he did, he noticed everything he never pushed.

He simply let her keep her sharp edges where she needed them, content instead with everything else she was willing to give him.

It was nothing serious. Nothing that spoiled the easy, sun-warmed mood they’d fallen into. Nothing that intensified things beyond what either of them seemed ready to name out loud.

Just two people, strangers by circumstance, bound by a marriage and slowly discovering they liked each other anyway. There was a lot of laughter in those three days. More than Sienna could remember having in years.

On the third afternoon, Viktor stepped out with Marcos to collect a few supplies from the nearest town, the low rumble of the car fading down the long gravel drive until the cabin settled into a rare, complete quiet around her.

That was when Aria called.

Sienna curled up on the wide window seat overlooking the pasture, the phone pressed to her ear, watching a pair of horses graze lazily in the afternoon light as Aria’s voice came through, equal parts scolding and concerned.

"Girl, it’s been three days. You haven’t called me. What’s happening?"

Sienna smiled faintly, tucking her knees up beneath her.

"Nothing much. We just stopped and laughed. We drank, we ate. Everything seems pretty amazing." She let out a small, surprised breath, as if the words had caught her off guard even as she said them.

"I haven’t relaxed this much since I met your uncle. And I think this might be the best thing that could ever happen." She glanced out at the pines swaying gently in the wind, the mountain quiet pressing in comfortably around her.

"Aside from the fact that he calls it a honeymoon, I call it a place to recharge before we come back to all the chaos in the city."

There was a small pause on the other end, and when Aria spoke again, her usual playful energy had dimmed into something more careful.

"Well, I wish I could’ve told you some good news, but I don’t know. Maybe this will give you something to come back to, or look forward to."

Sienna’s stomach tightened instantly, the ease of the last three days evaporating in a single breath. She sat up straighter, feet dropping back to the floor. "Tell me. Did you find something?"

"Yes, I did." Aria’s voice sharpened, businesslike now, the tone she used when she’d switched fully into work mode.

"I followed your instructions and ran the tattoo guy again, the FBI database, every detail you gave me, every instruction. And guess what? I finally found his name."

Sienna’s grip tightened around the phone. "And?"

"He’s been wanted for numerous crimes across the Middle East," Aria said. "His name is Fabio Fernandez." A pause, papers shuffling faintly in the background.

"And apparently, a couple of months ago, his son was in Philadelphia. And he went missing. So he’s here now, looking into the whereabouts of his son or whatever happened to him."

Sienna’s mind was already racing, sorting through the pieces, trying to fit them against everything else simmering beneath the surface of her new life.

"Really? Do you have any news on his son?"

"Well, you’re the invisible shadow hacker, not me," Aria said, a hint of her usual teasing creeping back in despite the weight of the conversation.

"I couldn’t go that far. So you’re going to have to find that out yourself. I’m sending you everything I found on him maybe that’ll help you find the identity of the son."

"Okay. Good idea." Sienna was already standing, pacing a slow line in front of the window, mind sharp and focused now in a way it hadn’t been in three days.

"Send that to me immediately, and I’ll see what I can find on him." Her voice dropped, quieter, more to herself than to Aria. "I really want to know who his son is, and what he knows about my family."

She hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud.

The silence on the other end lasted only a beat, but it was enough. "You think he knows something about your family?" Aria asked, her voice careful now, picking up on the sudden chill that had crept into Sienna’s tone.

"Yes." Sienna’s jaw tightened, memories she rarely let herself touch pressing close to the surface. "He’s one of the men who showed up at the school. And I think he knew something."

There was a heavy pause, and then Aria exhaled. "Okay, girl. I’ll leave you to figure that out. I need to go, this pretty girl needs some good rest."

The line clicked off a moment later, and true to her word, a small notification chimed almost instantly as the files came through everything Aria had managed to dig up on the man with the tattoo, laid out and waiting in Sienna’s inbox like a door she wasn’t sure she was ready to open.

Sienna stood there for a long moment, phone still warm in her hand, the peaceful hush of the mountains suddenly feeling very far away from the storm quietly gathering in her chest.

Sienna’s fingers were already moving. Whatever softness the last three days had settled into her fell away instantly, replaced by the sharp, focused stillness she used to fall into back when hacking had been her only real form of control in a life that gave her very little of it.

She pulled her laptop onto her knees, cracked her knuckles out of habit, and let herself sink into the familiar rhythm of it pulling threads, cross-referencing names, slipping past firewalls that would have taken most people days to even notice, let alone breach.

She dug through hidden cross-border military records, buried immigration logs, fragments of intelligence reports that weren’t meant to exist anywhere a civilian could find them.

Layer by layer, she stripped back the noise until finally, buried deep in a flagged file, a photograph loaded onto her screen.

A young man. Sharp jaw, dark eyes, a faint scar above one eyebrow.

Sienna went very still.