The first thing Milo did after entering the penthouse was to jump on the couch. The concept of him making a trampoline out of anything that springs is still mysterious.
Salvar stood in the center of the penthouse living room, still wearing his sunglasses from the flight, luggage at his feet, and watched Milo treat the furniture like a personal trampoline with the unbothered energy of a child who had never once in his life considered consequences.
The walls were matte and warm toned, with clean lines, the kind of interior that looked like someone had taken the concept of calm and rendered it in paint. Salvar turned slowly and looked at everything.
Kitchen attached to the living room. Balcony visible through the glass doors, plants lined along the railing, green and clearly maintained by someone who took the job seriously. A pool beyond that, catching the Thornvale afternoon light.
Two bathrooms and guest rooms with closed doors. Stairs led up to where his room waited.
And at the end of the hall on the ground floor a door painted in the specific yellow of a child's imagination stood out in the entire house.
Salvar walked to it and pushed it open.
Sun, rainbow, grass and artificial clouds hanging from his bed.
Everything a five year old would design if handed an unlimited budget and zero adult supervision.
The walls were murals. The floor had a soft mat in the shape of a meadow.
There was a small tent in the corner with fairy lights inside it and a bean bag the color of a strawberry.
Salvar stared at it for a long moment.
Then he turned around and looked at Milo still jumping on the couch.
Whoever designed that room had paid attention to a child they had never met and gotten every single detail right.
He made a mental note to find out who and say something about it later.
"Milo," he called.
"WHAT."
"Come here."
Silence.
Then the jumping stopped.
Milo appeared in the hallway at a speed that suggested his legs had been waiting for this specific piece of information his entire life. He looked at the open door. He looked at Salvar. He looked at the room again.
He walked inside very slowly the way children do when something is so good they need to approach it carefully to make sure it is real.
"Waoow!" Milo exclaimed.
Salvar leaned against the doorframe and chuckled while watching Milo discover the fairy light tent.
Skyler appeared at his shoulder.
Salvar's expression did not change, but something in it flattened.
"Your room is there," Salvar said, pointing at the door beside Milo's without looking at him.
"Thank you," Skyler said professionally.
They stood in silence for three seconds.
"Ground floor and right beside Milo?" Salvar observed.
"Yes."
"Convenient?" Salvar asked in the tone of someone filing information away rather than making conversation.
Skyler said nothing.
An hour later Milo had completed a full inventory of the penthouse, declared the balcony plants his personal garden, asked four times if the pool was warm, and discovered the playground, visible from his room window.
He pressed his face against the glass and whined with a frequency that suggested structural damage to the window was possible.
"Uncle Sal, can I go to play?"
"No. You need to rest after jumping around the house."
"Uncle Sal."
"Milo."
"Uncle Saaaaal, the playground is right there."
Salvar looked up from where he was attempting to unpack and immediately regretted making eye contact with whatever expression Milo had deployed. It was the expression of someone who had studied sad eyes as an academic discipline and graduated top of the class.
He closed his suitcase.
"Fine, but only for one hour."
Milo exploded with joy.
Skyler was already at the door by the time they reached it, jacket on, professionally ready, radiating the energy of someone who had transitioned seamlessly from airport mode to playground mode without being asked.
Salvar looked at him. He doubted although he made sure to ask them for full freedom of decision, he doubted Skyler was a seed planted by his parents to keep en eye on him and Salvar decided to test it.
"Are you supposed to tell them everything?" Salvar asked, his voice was pleasant but his eyes were not. "Or can I organise a party in the penthouse?"
"A party is strictly forbidden since Milo is still a child, and it certainly wouldn't be appropriate." Skyler looked at him with the particular expression of someone recalibrating their assessment of the person they had been assigned to protect.
Salvar smile widened. He leaned in and asked, squinting his eyes at Skyler, "So your priority lies only towards Milo? What about me? Is your bigmouth going to report everything I do?"
"Duty cannot be disclosed," Skyler replied skillfully and carefully like a man defusing something that looked simple but probably was not.
Salvar held his gaze for one more second.
Then he rolled his eyes and walked ahead.
In the corridor Milo grabbed Salvar's hand and swung it back and forth, humming Twinkle Twinkle with the peaceful contentment of someone whose entire world was currently correct while Skyler tagged behind them.
Salvar glanced back at him, and an evil idea crossed his mind to
Then he crouched slightly and whispered, "Milo, listen to me."
Milo stopped humming, and he looked up with eyes that understood immediately that something fun was about to happen.
"Do you want to play lock and key?"
Milo's entire face transformed.
He nodded so hard his whole body moved.
Salvar carried him and began to run while Milo's cheer ran wild.
Salvar did not do the lazy jog of an adult humoring a child. He was actually running, the kind with direction and purpose, and the muscle memory of someone who had spent a previous life doing things that required moving fast through spaces without being caught.
Milo shrieked with delight from his arms, the sound bouncing off the corridor's ceiling.
Behind them, Skyler moved.
He was fast.
Professionally fast, which came from seven years in a field where being slow had consequences.
But Salvar had something Skyler did not.
He had died once and spent months in a cell before that, and the body remembered things the mind tried to forget. His training from a previous life lived in his muscles like an old language.
He knew how to move in a way that looked like running but was actually something more deliberate than that.
He cut left.
Then right.
Reading the corridor the way he had once read rooms full of people who wanted him dead.
Skyler stayed closer than expected.
Salvar spotted the elevator bank across the corridor and made a decision.
He hit the button repeatedly with the focused urgency of someone who understood that the universe rewarded people who pressed elevator buttons faster.
The doors opened.
Salvar ran in.
The thing about running into elevators without looking first is that elevators are occasionally already occupied.
Salvar discovered this.
Specifically, he discovered it by colliding with the person inside at a speed that sent the latter stumbling backward. Milo clutched against his chest as he became the sandwich between him and the other person.
Salvar's sunglasses hit the elevator floor with a small, definitive crack.
And in the next seconds, terrible silence followed.
Milo blinked from his position against Salvar's chest.
Salvar looked up.
The man he had run into was tall and broad-shouldered.
Dressed in something dark and expensive and red eyes and looked down at him with an expression that was absolutely impossible to read.
Salvar's mind went completely quiet the way it did in moments that required everything he had.
He knew this face.
He had last seen it looking down at him on a cell floor.
Silas.
"What the fuck were you doing?" Skyler's voice ran from behind, which appeared far more distant than it should have been.
Milo looked at the tall man. Then at Salvar. Then back at Skyler.
"Uncle Sal," Milo whispered very seriously. "I think we got caught."