Three hours later, Reginald "Mad Dog" Johnson arrived at their apartment—a barrel-chested man with watchful eyes who immediately swept the place for listening devices using military-grade equipment.
"You shouldn't have called me, girl," he said, but his bear-like hug betrayed his concern.
When Monica arrived home to find him there, her face showed fear rather than surprise. "Reggie," she whispered. "What are you doing here?"
"Aaliyah called me," he said simply. "You should have done it weeks ago."
In the tense conversation that followed, Aaliyah learned fragments of truth that shook her understanding of her own history: her father wasn't dead or missing; he'd been in self-imposed exile after a classified operation went catastrophically wrong.
"Caleb made enemies in high places," Reggie explained carefully. "He disappeared to protect you both."
"All this time, he's been alive?" Aaliyah asked, voice thick with confusion and anger. "He just left us?"
"He never stopped watching over you," Reggie said. "Just from a distance where his enemies couldn't find you."
When Aaliyah demanded to contact him, Reggie and Monica exchanged loaded glances before he reluctantly placed a heavily encrypted satellite phone on the table.
"If you call him, everything changes," Reggie warned. "There's no going back."
In her room that night, Aaliyah held the satellite phone, weighing impossible choices. On her wall, college acceptance letters that once seemed within reach now felt distant, threatened by the hate surrounding her. On her phone, another threatening message appeared with a manipulated image of her house on fire. She thought about her mother's sudden unemployment, Detective Ross's stalled investigation, the institutional protection surrounding Logan.