" !" Hugo whispered to himself. "Why me?" He threw his cell phone onto the desk, stood up, and walked to the drinks cabinet, pouring a large glass of Macallan single malt whisky. He paced his study, sipping it and trying to calm himself. He was a Royal Marine, not a babysitter, he thought.

Hugo walked over to the window and looked out at his large back garden. An ancient oak tree stood tall at its center, with crows sitting in its branches, seemingly watching him. He opened the window and threw a handful of nuts he kept in a bowl on the windowsill down into the garden. He watched as the crows swooped down, gathered the nuts, and then flew off to stash them somewhere.

He then looked at the medals in a frame on his wall. It felt like a lifetime ago now, fighting for Queen and Country. He missed the simplicity of being a soldier, with every day planned out and orderly, and the unbreakable friendships forged in combat. As the face and founding member of the elite mercenary group The A Pact, he was a whole lot richer, but was he happy? He didn't want to answer that question; his life was what it was.

To his well-to-do Hampstead neighbors, he was just Hugo Armstrong, a businessman with vague government commitments. But to the fifty ex-Royal Navy soldiers he commanded, he was Captain A—a name they often joked stood for "Asshole," not Armstrong. He sipped his whisky, thinking about the phone call he had just finished. Now that the initial annoyance had passed, he took a calmer approach.

Hugo had hired an ex Royal Marine called JP as a mercenary seven years ago, and JP had died on a secret mission for the French government. Hugo had ensured JP’s family was well compensated for their loss and had kept a discreet eye on them, making sure they never wanted for anything.

But JP's offspring had taken the death badly, rebelling as a teenager. Now an adult, they were out of control, careening from one train wreck to another. The last incident had nearly killed them. After a spell in the hospital, Hugo had agreed with JP’s wife, your mother, to try and, as she put it, "slap some sense into you."