Chapter 2 - The Assessment of Casualties
The small apartment Marcus shared with his sister was warm, smelling of pine and hot soup. Maya was wrapped in three layers of blankets, finally falling asleep with Lily cradled safely in her arms. The baby’s fever had broken, thanks to some emergency medicine Marcus had rushed to get.
I sat at the kitchen table, staring at a stack of documents Marcus had managed to print out through a contact at the local bank. My uniform jacket was off, revealing the scars on my forearms, but the emotional scars were what throbbed tonight.
"It’s worse than you think, brother," Marcus said, sliding a mug of black coffee toward me. "Your dad didn't just take the house. He filed a fraudulent report with the military finance department claiming you were legally separated from Maya before your deployment. That’s how he intercepted your combat pay. He redirected the funds into a dummy corporation called 'Vance Holdings LLC'."
"And my mother?" I asked, my fists clenching so hard my knuckles turned white.
"She’s been busy on social media and local charity boards. She’s been spreading a narrative that Maya abandoned the property, neglected Lily, and that they had to step in to 'save' the family reputation. They’ve already filed for temporary custody of Lily, claiming Maya is an unfit mother living in poverty."
A cold sweat broke out on my neck. Custody. They weren't just trying to bankrupt me; they wanted to take my daughter to use as a prop for their high-society image.
The bedroom door creaked open. Maya stepped out, her eyes red and swollen. She looked so small, so fragile, yet the fierce love in her eyes told me she hadn't given up.
"Julian," she whispered, walking over and placing her hand over mine. "I tried to fight them. I went to the police, but your father... he controls the local precinct. The chief of police is his golfing partner. They told me it was a civil matter and threatened to call Child Protective Services on me if I kept making noise."
I pulled her onto my lap, burying my face in her hair. "I’m sorry, Maya. I should have been here. I was protecting a border thousands of miles away while the real monsters were in our backyard."
"You’re here now," she said fiercely, pulling back to look into my eyes. "That’s all that matters. But Julian, they have millions. They have judges in their pockets. How do we fight them?"
I looked at Marcus, and a slow, grim smile crept onto my face. It was the same smile I wore before leading a night raid in the mountains of Kandahar.
"They think they’re playing a game of chess, Maya. They think because they have money, they have power. But they forgot one thing."
"What’s that?"
"They trained me to destroy systems," I said. "They play by the rules of high society. I play by the rules of survival. Marcus, call Logan. Tell him the sniper needs to unpack his rifle. Not the real one—the digital one. We’re going after Vance Holdings."
Logan was our platoon’s tech specialist, currently working for a high-end cybersecurity firm in Washington. He owed me his life three times over.
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By 0300 hours, a secure laptop on Marcus’s table lit up. Logan’s face appeared on the screen. "Captain. Heard the old man went rogue. What’s the mission?"
"I need every bank account, every offshore shell, every tax loophole, and every dirty secret Arthur Vance has kept for the last twenty years," I commanded. "And Logan? Find out who his biggest investor is. We aren't just going to sue him. We’re going to bankrupt him by Friday."
