My plane landed after eighteen months overseas, but instead of my wife waiting with open arms, I found her collapsed barefoot in the snow outside my own house, shielding our six-month-old son with her freezing body. “Your parents said we weren’t family anymore,” she whispered through blue lips. In that instant, I stopped feeling like a soldier returning home and became a husband ready to reclaim everything they had stolen from us…

The reply from Vance made my stomach turn. Understood, Richard. Consider him occupied. Just make sure my share of the ‘retirement fund’ is moved to the Cayman account by Friday.

They hadn’t just stolen my life while I was gone. They had actively tried to get me killed to cover their tracks. My own father had sold my life for the price of a few thousand tons of siphoned government steel.

I leaned back, the weight of the realization pressing the air from my lungs. My entire career—the medals, the scars, the nights I spent mourning friends—had been manipulated by the man who gave me my name.

I looked at the photos on the mantle. There was one of me and Richard when I graduated from Jump School. He looked so proud. Now, I saw the truth in his eyes. He wasn’t proud of my service; he was proud that his “asset” was in place.