Five Years Earlier.

The child was born four days before Christmas. Her mother, exhausted and wracked with pain collapsed back onto crumpled sheets of the bed.

A girl.

'Rest,' they told her, 'rest, you have a healthy daughter, a beautiful daughter.'

She was foreign, they knew that, but she understood, nodding slowly, sinking back into the pillows.

The nurses took the child, wrapping her securely against the cold winter night. Outside the rain lashed the windows of the hospital, driving gusts whipping the water across the island.

The child was cleaned up, warmed, and then, as the nurse held her close, she opened her tiny mouth and cried out.

Just once, as if in surprise at finding herself in this new strange environment.

The nurse smiled down at the child. Dark hair capped the reddened head, small fists flailed helplessly about. Taking a deep breath she turned.

He had been strangely silent throughout the birth, only murmuring in a low voice to the young woman with dark hair like her daughter's.

The deeply religious nurse held back a sudden urge to bless herself as she caught his eye.

This man was the Devil, she was sure of it. Even the shadows seemed compelled to surround him, shrouding his scarred face from her view. Sleek blond hair glinted as it captured the harsh hospital lights. He had narrowed eyes, a strong, broken nose, and a broad sensuous mouth set into a long, chisel jawed face. The air around him seemed to crackle with the build up of electricity. This was the Devil who would tempt you into sin, and then destroy you.

Sister Maria felt her cheeks colour as she held out the wrapped bundle to him.

'You have a daughter,' she murmured, refusing to meet the cold eyes that slowly focused to her.

Clumsily he took the child into his arms, and pulled back the pale pink blanket that partly obscured her face.

His child. His daughter.

Grey blue eyes, new born eyes yet to reveal themselves to be any particular colour, slowly opened and clumsily attempted to focus on the first thing they saw.

And stared. And stared.

How could he care for something so small, so fragile?

But then again, how could he not?

Give her to me.

He tears his gaze from the newborn's face and looks to where a pair of accusing brown eyes stare hollowly at him. Her skin is coated with sweat, her dark hair sticks to her forehead, her voice rasps dryly with exhaustion and thirst. She holds out tanned arms.

Give her to me, she repeats, and this time there is a streak of possessiveness in her demand, a hysterical edge.

His arms tighten on the bundle, and he is overwhelmed by a strange, new emotion.

Love.

His child.

He wants to shout it at her. She is his and his alone. His daughter.

His flesh and blood.

And the young woman knows it. She can see it in the set of his face, the way his arm muscles tensed beneath his shirt, the sheer power that radiates from him.

'Give me my daughter.'

This time her voice is stronger, and he smiles.

'Our daughter,' he whispers softly.


This was perhaps the strangest assignment the agent had ever received, but as he silently scaled the walls of the rickety building he remembered the MI6's agent's code.

Never question any order.

Just get on with it.

It usually meant less hassle later.

'Yours is not to reason why,' he muttered under his breath as he reached for the jagged edge of a brick jutting out above his head.

He wondered where that quote came from. The time doing this brought him to the window he was supposed to reach.

It simplicity itself to trace the thin red beam around the edge of the glass, and simply remove the pane. From here he slid his gloved hand into the gap and opened the window.

No alarm system graced the old building.

Inside the dusty room, he found a cabinet less covered in dust than the others. He had the information committed to memory, and he rifled through the files until he came to the one he needed.

What the hell was so special about this child, he wondered as he retrieved a crisp new birth certificate from the file. All he knew was that there could be no evidence of the birth at all.

This was why he had all the medical records secured upon his person.

Flipping it open he shone a narrow beam of light.

It took a lot to shock a MI6 agent, yet his mouth fell open.

He gaped at the record.

It couldn't be.

The man was dead.

The man was dead twice over.

He couldn't possibly have a child.

The agent took a deep breath. He didn't know why he had been trusted with such privileged information, but he finally understood the responsibility of the task assigned to him.

He shone the beam over the paper again.

Just to double check it said what he thought it said.

It did. And then there was the second shock.

The mother's name was familiar. His memory dredged through the years, until finally he placed her. And why her name was familiar.

He whistled through his teeth, the low sound echoing through the building.

'Bloody hell,' he muttered.