Page 98 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir
That’s another test.
I sit anyway. Not because he told me. But because Ididn’tflinch.
“Let’s not pretend we’re here for small talk,” I say.
He smiles, thin and sharp. “Good. I don’t enjoy wasting time.”
He taps a panel beneath the table. A quietpingsounds, and a screen illuminates between us, invisible from outside the room.
On it: my file. The long one.
Battle records, prisoner logs, psych evaluations. There’s footage too—grainy black-and-whites of raids, of me dragging comrades out of burning compounds, of me covered in soot and blood and not flinching when someone screamed my name.
Dowron watches my reaction.
I give him nothing.
“You’ve endured,” he says, almost admiring. “No one expected you to come back whole.”
“I didn’t.”
He chuckles, just barely. “Well, you’re functional. That’s enough.”
He leans forward, steepling his fingers.
“The world changed while you were buried, Kalev. And not just politically. Strategically. The war’s been rebranded. Sold as a necessary but tragic chapter. The Alliance is cleaning house.”
I glance at the footage flickering beside us. “You mean erasing the evidence.”
“If you like,” he says lightly. “But we prefer ‘restructuring operational risk.’ It sounds nicer.”
I hate how calm he is. How clean.
Dowron never dirtied his hands. He just pulled the strings that moved the knives.
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
“Closure.”
That word again. Everyone’s so damn obsessed with it. Like it’s a currency they can trade for peace.
He swipes the screen. Another image appears.
Leah.
Not a mugshot. A surveillance capture—her tucking Clancy into bed, light spilling across her shoulder, hair pulled back. She looks older. Tired.
Alive.
I keep my face blank.
Dowron watches.
“She’s a variable,” he says, voice measured. “Untethered. No oversight. And with her background...”
He doesn’t need to say it.
“And what?” I ask flatly.
