Prologue
Ace
FOUR YEARS AGO
“I barely knew her.” I shake my head as Gerald hands me the pen. That statement isn’t entirely true, but today it feels like it is.
“Well, didn’t stop her from leaving you everything. Happy Birthday to you, I guess. Don’t forget to date next to each signature. April 28th—” He chuckles like this is all some big happy joke.
“I know the goddamn date today, Gerald.” I finish running a palm down my face to grip the length of my beard for a moment.
I shift in the seat, lining up the pen, and as I do twinges of pain shoot down both my legs, fighting for attention with the near-constant ringing in my ears and the sound of my heartbeat pounding in my chest. I don’t put the pen to the paper. I can’t. I know the moment I do, this all becomes real, and I have to face facts.
Happy Birthday to you.
Gerald says it like it’s normal, but it’s not normal to me. Not anymore. Sure, today is my thirty-second birthday, but if I didn’t have to come here, I would have been just fine seeing no one and pretending it’s just another day. I gave up my right to celebrate my life.
Semper fi.
Death before dishonor.
I take that shit seriously.
I’m still not sure I can do this. The pen hovers over the paper like the Sword of Damocles, ready to bring me wealth along with responsibilities for which I’m sure I am not ready.
My half-sister’s last will and testament, and a contract that will change everything for me. Emily passed away three weeks ago in a car accident while I was rehabbing in the VA hospital, recovering from injuries sustained when I failed to successfully disarm an IED a few months back. Well, the physical wounds may one day heal, but the mental ones are there to stay.
Three hundred and seventy-two. That’s how many bombs I’d disabled successfully up until then. Now it feels like zero.
One misstep erased all the good that came before. The irony is it was to be my last mission. I was done in another week and had already decided not to sign on for another stint. I did my service, I was proud, but I was done. I just didn’t realize how being done was going to turn out.
I shake my head, trying to force down the darkness threatening to overwhelm me and attempt to focus on the details of my new, unexpected life.
My half-sister was twenty years my senior. My father wasn’t even aware of her until a decade after he married my mom. Over the years as I grew up, I saw Emily a few dozen times, and there was always an eerie connection between us. We both had the same nearly turquoise eyes and it was unsettling looking into hers seeing myself looking back.
The idea that those rare encounters would lead to me inheriting everything she owned never crossed my mind. She was a self-made woman in every sense of the word. Her own mother wouldn’t have been nominated for mother of the year. That didn’t stop Emily from graduating from Yale on a full academic scholarship. She refused to take anything from my father even though his resources were modest.
She made her fortune in real estate. Buying and selling all over the world even as a near recluse.
Through the years she wasn’t all that interested in being a part of Dad’s life, and I knew that hurt him. Mom did her best to be supportive in a difficult situation. I always knew they loved each other, and always knew they loved me, and I still miss them both every day. Cancer lacks any sense of propriety. Taking two amazing people from this world within two years of each other. Beautiful souls ravaged and gone while humans with a capacity for evil I will never understand go on without punishment.
People say there’s a reason for everything, but they’re wrong. I’ve come to realize everything in life is random and transient. Nothing lasts. There is no plan. No destiny. No purpose.
It’s all just a shit show, and you can either play the hand you’re dealt or check out early by your own. I’ve considered both to be honest, but as of today, I’m still here. Sitting here, preparing to sign papers set in front of me and wondering what new random acts of chaos are on the horizon.
With a final effort of will, I stab the pen at the signature line and watch as the black liquid spreads where I loop the instrument, affixing my agreement to the terms within. I shake my head and address my attorney, “She left me everything material plus some. I mean, why couldn’t she just have left me the money and a damn cat.” The sarcasm in my voice is less than respectful, I realize that, but fuck if this situation doesn’t call for a bit of it.
“True.” Gerald leans back in his chair and turns to look out the window behind him as I work through the papers wherever Jennifer, Gerald’s assistant, has applied a yellow arrow sticky note. “You can’t make this shit up. When you were laying there in the VA hospital, and I walked in, in a thousand lifetimes you would have never thought you were inheriting your half-sister’s fortune and estate, as well as adopting a daughter you’ve never met. All while you were laying there contemplating where you were going to live—let alone what to do with the rest of your life.”
Adopting a daughter.
The words rattle like the tail of a snake inside my head and bring out a venom I didn’t know I had.
“I’m her guardian, I’m not fucking adopting her.”
What he doesn’t know, could never know, is that as I was laying in that hospital, I was contemplating not where to live, but if I should live.
“Po-ta-to, po-taw-to.” He clears his throat on a deep breath and a chuckle. I know he’s just trying to lighten the mood, but I’m not in the mood. “I’m the attorney, I know the difference, I was using the word to punctuate the moment.”
Wish I could say those feelings about whether living is the best option for me are completely gone, but I’m nothing if not honest. The thought is persistent, like that friend from high school who knocks at your bedroom window in the middle of the night, urging you to join in whatever trouble they are about to get into. I keep having to say no, not tonight.
>
The pen settles with a clack where I drop it after the last signature line. I gather the stack of papers, tapping them on the desk to return them to perfect alignment before handing them across to Gerald.
“Congratulations. It’s a girl. A sixteen-year-old bouncing, adolescent girl.”
An image I try to forget everyday flashes into my mind without warning. Worn blue Keds peeking out from under black fabric, sand and debris thrown about like the aftermath of a tornado, dust settling over everything on that street in Afghanistan.
As I pulled my own broken body toward the girl laying there in the destruction I prayed as though I truly believed it would help; begging, pleading with God or whoever might listen to please undo what I’d done. Or what I’d been unable to do.
Instead, I met the last flicker of life in her golden eyes as they stared back at me, both of us hoping for a miracle. The blast had blown the veil that shielded her adolescent face completely off, and blood ran out of her nose, her eyes and her ears in a tiny red death river that ended in her jet-black hair.
“Fuck,” I grunt under my breath as I run my hand over the freshly shaved top of my head and stare upward into the fluorescent lights. The girl I’ve just taken stewardship of lived with her grandmother at my sister’s property in Holly, Michigan a small touristy down north of Detroit.
The grandmother was Emily’s housekeeper, and from what I know now, they were each other’s best and only friends for more than twenty years. I remember seeing the housekeeper on a couple visits to see Emily over the years, but the encounters were uneventful, and I never remember seeing the girl there.
“I like the new look by the way.” Gerald points to my clean-shaven scalp, something I started last year on my last deployment. “Mr. Clean meets Bradley Cooper and a hint of Grizzly Adams. Sort of hot.”
I drop my chin with a furrowed brow, shaking my head. “You realize you calling me hot is fucking creepy?” I squint, and Gerald rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, I knew my man card was in jeopardy as soon as I said it.” He shoves the papers into a folder, and I stretch my left leg, trying to ease the gathering pain. “I’ll get you copies of everything and file the necessary final agreement with the court.”
We’ve known each other for about a decade and what started out as a professional relationship has developed over the years into a strong bond. When I first deployed, I had him draw up my will and estate planning stuff. Not that I had much of an estate to plan for back then, but Mom and Dad always taught me to keep my life in order best I could. They taught me so much. What love looked like. What a happy life together looked like. Ironic I don’t believe in any of that anymore. I hope they are not looking down at me, they’d be hella disappointed I’m afraid.
I shift again, and the pain shoots up and down my spine. Gerald eyes my grimace with sympathy, and it only serves to harden my already surly mood. Getting injured in my line of work was always a possibility.