Zeus raised an eyebrow.
"My daughter's name is Mila." Jasper's jaw was tight. "Not Eight."
Zeus looked at her. "What would you like to be called?"
She looked between them, tightening her fingers in my shirt.
"Both," she said quietly. "I'm both."
Zeus smiled. "Then both it is." He looked back at us. "Could you get the first aid kit from the bathroom, Mila? Please."
She looked at me, not Zeus.
"Go ahead, pequeña," I said.
Mila let go of my shirt slowly, like she needed to memorize where I stood before she left. Then she ran down the hallway.
Zeus clasped his hands behind his back. "Please sit. There's no need for weapons here." He nodded at Jasper's katana. "We're civilized people having a conversation."
"Civilized," Jasper repeated, hollow.
"I've been honest with her from the beginning," Zeus said. "About Nadia. About you. About what I trained you to do. She knows you didn't know she existed. She knows I kept it from you." He spread his hands. "I haven't hidden my role in this."
"Stop talking," Jasper said.
Mila came back with the white plastic kit. She set it on the coffee table and came straight to me, stood close enough that the heat of her body pressed through my shirt.
"Thank you, sweetheart," Zeus said. Then to us: "Sit. Let me tend to your wounds before we go further."
I wrapped my hand around the pistol grip. Jasper's knuckles went white on the katana.
"Or don't," Zeus said, level as ever. "You can stand there bleeding while she watches. Show her exactly what I've been protecting her from."
Guards stepped out of alcoves I'd clocked on the way in and dismissed as empty. Armed, covering every angle. I'd caught the architecture and missed the men inside. That stung worse than the wound in my side.
Rage crawled up my spine with nowhere to go. We had wounds, no numbers, and no advantage. And Mila stood right there, watching us prove Zeus right.
Jasper locked his jaw. He vibrated with it, but the math was simple.
He set the katana on the coffee table. I put my pistol beside it.
"Excellent," Zeus said. "Now we can talk like adults."
One of the guards collected our weapons. Another patted us down and found the backup knife in Jasper's boot, the secondpistol at my ankle. They took everything except the comm unit I'd wrapped in my boot lining. The guard passed right over it.
Zeus gestured to the chairs across from the couch. We sat because armed guards and a nine-year-old left us no choice.
Mila stayed standing. She held her wooden sword loosely but ready. She'd positioned herself where she could see all of us, exactly between Zeus and us.
Zeus settled onto the couch and picked up a stuffed rabbit that had slipped between the cushions. He set it on the armrest like everything in this room had a spot he'd assigned it. "I know this isn't what you expected."
"From the man who trained children to be weapons?" Jasper's voice could have cut glass.
"From the man who's kept her alive for nine years." Zeus's tone held steady. "I could have terminated the pregnancy. Nadia was already dying. The extraction was risky. I chose to save the child. And I've spent every year since making sure she has the skills to survive in a world that would kill her the moment it discovered whose daughter she is."
Mila looked at Jasper. He held her gaze, and I could read the effort in the set of his mouth, the flat line of his shoulders. He pressed his hands flat against his thighs, fingers spread, the way he held himself when every instinct told him to move and the guns in the room told him to stay still.
I pulled toward him. I needed to touch him, to put my hand on the back of his neck the way he let me do when we were alone. I kept my hands on my knees.
