HE SH.OT ME AT MY OWN MEDAL CEREMONY—THEN STILL CLAIMED I WAS ‘UNSTABLE.’”

Forty-eight hours later, the war moved underground.

I was settled in a secure, windowless bunker beneath the 628th Security Forces Squadron headquarters. The room was Spartan—a cot, a desk, military monitors, and an encrypted comms station. My hip was heavily bandaged, but with the help of a heavy aluminum cane, I could stand.

Mark sat across the room, drinking black coffee, surrounded by thick binders of banking records, deeds, and phone logs.

Special Agent Ross slapped a thick dossier onto the center table.

"We cracked the contractor's encrypted burner," Ross announced. "His name is Carl Miller. Former private military contractor dishonorably discharged for black-market arms dealing in Kuwait. Richard’s personal lawyer, a man named Arthur Vance—Richard’s second cousin—wired fifty thousand dollars from an offshore account in the Caymans to Miller's account six hours after the shooting."

"Conspiracy to commit murder," Sterling said, walking in with a federal prosecutor in tow. "The United States Attorney has signed off on the expanded indictment. But Richard is playing his final card."

The prosecutor, a sharp-featured woman named Elena Ramos, stepped forward. "Richard's legal team has requested an emergency preliminary injunction. They claim Richard was acting under 'defense of third parties' at the ceremony. They’ve produced three paid expert witnesses who are prepared to swear that Maya displayed acute signs of PTSD psychosis and that Richard saw her reaching for an unauthorized concealed weapon."

"I was in my Class A dress uniform!" I scoffed, my voice incredulous. "You can't conceal a weapon in tailored trousers!"

"They don't have to prove it definitively right now, Captain," Ramos countered. "They just have to introduce reasonable doubt to delay the trial, get Richard released on medical bond—he’s claiming a heart condition—and buy time to liquidate the trust assets before we can seize them."

"If he gets out on bond," Mark said, his voice tight, "he leaves the country. He has a private strip in Georgia and a Cessna registered under a shell corporation. I found the fuel receipts."

I looked down at the brass key Mark had given me. The safety deposit box at the downtown Charleston bank held the original will.

"Then we don't let him buy time," I said, a dangerous plan forming in my mind. "What does Richard want more than anything else right now?"

"To silence you," Ross said.

"No," I replied, looking up at them. "He wants to control the narrative. He wants to prove he was right all along. He wants me to look crazy, violent, and unhinged. So let’s give him what he thinks he wants."

Sterling narrowed his eyes. "What are you proposing, Vance?"

"The preliminary hearing is tomorrow morning in federal district court downtown," I said, leaning hard against my cane as I pushed myself to my feet. "Richard’s lawyers are going to try to keep him in a hospital bed so he doesn't have to face the press. Let’s make him come to court. Let’s leak that I’m filing an emergency sworn affidavit accusing him not just of shooting me, but of murdering my mother."

Ross smiled thinly. "His ego won't let him sit that out. He’ll insist on appearing in person to play the grieving, victimized patriarch."

"And while he's sitting in that courtroom," I continued, "thinking he’s about to dismantle my sanity on public record, we open that safety deposit box. We bring the original will, Mom's toxicology notes, and the wire receipts for the hitman straight into the courtroom."

"It's risky," Ramos said. "If the judge rules the new evidence inadmissible due to chain of custody, Richard walks on bail tomorrow afternoon."