My parents threw me out on Christmas morning before they had even started preparing dinner. My sister lifted her champagne glass and laughed, “Go back to your barracks, loser.”

Chapter 2

“Control?” The word came out too small for the room, thin and colorless, like a single drop of ink falling into a frozen lake. “My grandfather left me control of what?”

Colonel Hayes didn’t answer right away. He studied me the way a surgeon studies an X-ray, looking for something beneath the surface. Through the closed blinds, snow still fell in slow, silent sheets, blanketing a world that had, only hours ago, felt small enough to fit inside my father’s porch.

Then he pulled out the chair across from his desk.

“Sit down, Captain.”

This time, I sat.

The leather creaked beneath me. My hands found my lap on their own, folded tight, the way Grandpa had taught me to stand at attention even when no one was watching. Hayes remained standing, one palm resting on the box like a man swearing an oath on a bible he didn’t quite believe in.

“You’ve never seen that symbol before?” he asked.