“Let Jason go,” I demanded, my voice remarkably steady despite the hurricane of emotion tearing through my chest.
Evelyn smiled. It was a terrifying expression. “Jason is collateral damage. Your father got sloppy. Linda got sentimental. They were supposed to keep the Fort Bragg files buried, but they let Jason find the insurance policy.”
“You faked your death,” I whispered, the reality finally anchoring itself in my mind. “You abandoned me. You let me cry at a closed casket.”
“I freed you,” she countered, taking a step toward me. The mercenaries raised their rifles, but she waved them down with a flick of her wrist. “If I had stayed, you would have been the daughter of an arms broker. You would have been a target. Instead, I gave you a pristine narrative. The tragic, heroic daughter who channeled her grief into serving her country. I built your career, Becca. I paved every road you walked.”
“You murdered my lieutenant in Kandahar to get me a desk job,” I spat, the tears finally burning my eyes. “You paid the Taliban to ambush my convoy!”
For the first time, a flicker of something—regret? annoyance?—crossed her face. “That was a miscalculation. The contractors hit the wrong vehicle. But it achieved the desired result. You were moved to logistics. You were safe. You were positioned exactly where I needed you.”
“I am not your asset!” I screamed, the sound echoing off the high steel ceiling.
“You are my legacy!” she fired back, her voice suddenly booming with authority. “Do you think the world works through honor and medals? It works through leverage. Through power. I control supply lines that topple governments, Becca. I wanted to hand this empire to you. I put you in uniform so you could learn how the machine works from the inside.”
I looked at her. Really looked at her. I searched for the mother who used to read me stories, the woman who smelled of vanilla and old paper. She was not there. The creature standing before me was a parasite that had fed on my life to sustain its own shadow empire.
“You’re insane,” I said softly.
“I am a realist,” Evelyn replied. She glanced at her watch. “The window is closing. The authorities will trace the highway explosion back to this airspace soon. You have a choice, Rebecca. You lower that weapon, you get on this plane with me, and you take your rightful place. Or you stay here, you pull that trigger, my men cut you to pieces, and Jason dies.”
Erica pressed the barrel of her suppressed pistol hard against Jason’s temple. Jason squeezed his eyes shut, trembling violently.
“Choose, Becca,” Evelyn said, extending a gloved hand toward me.
I looked at Jason. The agreeable, easy son. The man who had a wife, a mortgage, and a life entirely untouched by the darkness our family was rooted in. I looked at the red dot of my laser sight resting on the heart of the woman who gave birth to me.
Everything I believed about myself was a lie. My rank, my medals, my trauma. It was all a script written by a monster.
But the woman holding the gun? The woman who had dragged herself through freezing mud, who had pulled a dying man from a burning truck, who had stood her ground against a traitor in a dark motor pool? That woman was real. I built her. Not Evelyn.
I did not lower my weapon.
“You think you wrote my story, Mom,” I said, my finger tightening on the trigger. “But you forgot one thing about the military.”
Evelyn narrowed her eyes. “And what is that?”
“We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
