Franz had booked the flight home a full day ahead of the play, exactly the margin he’d promised Lily he’d give himself. The production had other plans. A last-minute contract session ran three hours past its scheduled end, then bled into an overtime crew meeting nobody had cleared with him in advance, and by the time he’d finally signed off on the paperwork that made the delay worth something, his original flight had already left without him.
The next one out landed with barely enough runway between wheels-down and curtain-up to get him home, showered, and into the school auditorium before the lights dimmed. He kept the cap low and the sunglasses on through the terminal out of habit more than hope, one more face in a crowd that mostly didn’t look twice, and slid into a car his team had arranged rather than risk a rideshare app logging his name anywhere searchable. He spent the entire ride doing the math out loud to a driver who hadn’t asked for any of it and had signed enough discretion agreements over the years to know better than to mention who his passenger was.
"Forty minutes to the house, ten to change, fifteen to the school. That’s an hour and five." He checked his watch again, as though checking it faster might change what it said. "The program starts at six."
"It’s five ten now," the driver offered, not unkindly.
"I’m aware." Franz dropped his head back against the seat, two weeks of travel finally catching up to him in one long exhale. "I promised my niece I’d be there."
He made it with eleven minutes to spare, arriving at the house to find Arianne already dressed and waiting by the door with the twins’ costumes draped over one arm, Lexx propped on her hip in a small collared shirt that made him look like he’d been invited to a much more serious event than a school gymnasium.
"You’re cutting it close," she said, though she was already reaching for him before she finished the sentence, and the two weeks folded down into nothing the second his arms closed around her.
"I told you I’d make it."
"You told me a lot of things over the phone. I believe the ones I can see in front of me." She pulled back enough to look at him properly, taking in the wrinkled shirt and the general disarray of a man who’d traveled halfway across the world in the same day. "Go change. You have four minutes before I start explaining to Lily why her uncle is meeting the dragon in yesterday’s clothes."
He took six minutes instead of four, and nobody complained about it once they were in the car, Lexx babbling something in the back seat that might have been a word or might have been enthusiasm without a shape yet, the twins already at the school with Vincent and Amanda per the arrangement they’d made a week ago.
The school had agreed months ago, at the Rochefort family’s request, to a strict no-recording policy for the evening, phones collected at the door for the duration of the performance. Two official photographers hired for the occasion covered the play itself, their shots distributed afterward only to the families on the class list, nobody outside that gymnasium ever seeing a frame of it. Once the lights came back up, parents were free to take their own pictures out on the school grounds the way they would after any other program, an ordinary courtesy that mattered less once Franz and the twins were already moving toward the car rather than lingering for photos with the rest of the crowd. Two of Vincent’s own security detail stood near the exits in plain clothes, unremarkable enough that most of the parents assumed they belonged to someone else’s family. The gymnasium itself had been dressed up with butcher-paper trees and a cardboard castle propped against the far wall, and Franz found seats beside Vincent with two minutes to spare before the lights actually dimmed. Lily spotted him from the wings and did a poor job of hiding her reaction, waving so hard a teacher had to gently redirect her back into the lineup.
"She’s been checking the door every thirty seconds," Vincent said. "Amanda finally told her you’d texted an ETA. Settled her right down."
"I’ll take partial credit, then."
The play itself ran twenty minutes, most of it recognizable from the rehearsals Franz had helped run over video call during his second week away, Lily delivering her line about carrying her own light with far more conviction than she’d managed against Franz playing dragon in the living room, and Leo’s two lines landing exactly on cue, delivered with the flat, serious authority of someone who considered enthusiasm a separate and unnecessary skill.
Afterward, at the car, Lily launched herself at Franz before he’d fully crouched to catch her, both arms locked around his neck like she intended to make up for two weeks in one hug, the rest of the lot already thinning out behind them toward the school’s front steps where the photos were happening instead.
"You came."
"I told you I would."
"Leo said you might get stuck at the airport."
"Leo’s wrong sometimes." Franz caught Leo’s eye over Lily’s shoulder, and the boy allowed himself the smallest concession of a smile before looking away, satisfied enough that the prediction hadn’t come true to let the failed prophecy go unmentioned.
It wasn’t until much later, the twins finally down and Lexx asleep in his crib after refusing to settle for anyone but Franz specifically, that Arianne found him in the kitchen making tea neither of them particularly wanted, just something to hold while they finally talked without an ocean and a time difference between them.
"Tell me everything I missed," he said. "Not the headline version. All of it."
She told him in order, the way she always did when something mattered enough to get right the first time — the coup, the calls from Preston and the others, Gio’s statement, Gilbert’s message about the Blackwood severance, and finally Nate’s finding from that afternoon, the registered agent tying three shells together across a decade. Franz listened without interrupting, his jaw tightening at the parts that warranted it and easing back only a little once she reached the part where they’d all agreed to wait for him.
"Julian wanted to move today," she added. "He’s not wrong that waiting has a cost. But three separate structures, one contractor, over ten years, isn’t something we chase carelessly just because the clock is loud about it."
"No," Franz agreed. "It isn’t." He rubbed a hand over his face, the exhaustion of the last two weeks catching up to him all at once now that there was finally something worth being tired for. "You didn’t have to wait for me on this one."
"I wanted to." She wrapped both hands around her mug without drinking from it. "This is the kind of decision I want made with all five of us in a room, not four of us and a phone call to you standing in some hotel lobby. You’ve missed enough of this already. I wasn’t going to let you miss the part that actually mattered."
Franz set his own mug down and pulled her against him instead, her head finding his shoulder the way it always did when the day finally caught up with both of them at once. "Tomorrow, then. All five of us."
"Tomorrow." She let herself lean into him fully for the first time all evening. "Tonight, I just want the version of you that made it home in time for the play."
"That version’s not going anywhere." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, the house settled around them the way it only did once every child in it was finally, completely asleep. "Not for a long while."