Chapter Text
The transition from assassin to "accountant" (or whatever lie he told the neighbours) was never going to be easy, but Avner had tried. He really had. For five years, the only blood on his hands was from scraped knees and kitchen mishaps. Yes, he was paranoid, but that wasn’t the word if you were right. He was a target the size of an elephant. His whole small family was. His mind was always racing and always focusing on shadows that might not even be there. He felt hunted. That feeling, that uncertainty, was even worse than a bullet between his eyes.
Avner was supposed to use the car that evening. Then came the rain, the screech of tyres, and the silence that followed. His wife was gone.
The police report called it a "tragic accident." A delivery truck, a slick road, a brake failure, but Avner knew how Mossad worked, how everyone worked. It could have been anyone. It could have been no one, just misfortune, but he knew that the most effective hits didn't look like hits at all; they looked like bad luck.
As he stood at the graveside, clutching his four-year-old daughter, Galit, to his chest, he didn't only feel grief. He felt watched. He saw a man two rows back. He saw a black sedan parked too far from the place. He saw everything. It was driving him crazy.
He couldn't stay. He couldn't go to any authorities, and he certainly couldn't go back to Israel. He needed people who operated in the shadows, who hated the state's light as much as he did now. He needed Le Group. He needed him.
Avner couldn’t go to Papa directly, but after all those years, he still kept Louis' card, because of course, he did.