Silas Voss was the man East Halworth came to when it needed something nobody else would sell. No colours, no allegiance, no side. He dealt weapons to anyone who could pay, the Syndicate included, and stayed alive by being too useful to make an enemy of. Loyalty wasn't a currency he dealt in. Distance was. He negotiated more than he ever fought, calm in rooms where calm wasn't a skill anyone else still had.

He never planned to stay in the trade forever, and he never planned to keep his daughter in it either. He talked about getting out the way other men talk about retirement: a number to hit, a day that kept moving further off, a version of life waiting for them somewhere quieter. Until that day came, he gave Harper what he could afford to give: a steady hand, a good eye, and everything he knew about staying alive in a city built to swallow people whole.

Her mother left before Harper was old enough to remember the leaving, and Silas never spoke of her, never filled the silence with a story Harper could hold onto. He raised her instead like he ran his business: alone, careful, and always half-watching the door.

He wasn't a soft man. He wasn't a warm one either. But everything he taught Harper, he taught with one promise underneath it: that someday, none of it would matter anymore, because they'd both be somewhere it couldn't reach them.

He just ran out of next years.