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

"Get out."

The voice didn't come from me. It didn't come from Luke.

It came from the threshold of the hospital room door.

Lieutenant General Marcus Holloway stood there, filling the entire frame. He wasn't wearing his service dress anymore. He was in operational camouflage utilities, his sleeves rolled tight, his three silver stars gleaming against his collar. Behind him stood two Security Forces airmen in full tactical gear, carrying M4 carbines slung across their chests, their faces like stone beneath their berets.

Gidley, the social worker, turned pale. "General, this is a lawful order issued by the state probate court. You have no jurisdiction to interfere with—"

"I have jurisdiction over every square inch of this installation, Mr. Gidley," Holloway said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, quiet register commanders use right before an artillery barrage. "And more importantly, I have jurisdiction over the physical safety of my personnel."

He took three slow, deliberate steps into the room. The floor seemed to vibrate beneath his combat boots. He looked at Lieutenant Colonel Miller, the JAG officer.

"Colonel Miller," Holloway rumbled.

"Sir!" Miller snapped to attention, his heels clicking together.

"Did you advise this civilian that Joint Base Charleston is an area of exclusive federal jurisdiction?"

"Sir, the incident occurred on base, but the petitioner filed in state court under the domestic relations exemption, claiming—"

"I don't give a damn what the petitioner claimed," Holloway interrupted, leaning down until his nose was two inches from the lawyer’s face. "The petitioner brought an unregistered firearm onto a military reservation, discharged it into an active-duty officer during a DoD ceremony, and attempted an assassination. That makes him an enemy combatant on federal property until the Department of Justice says otherwise."

Holloway turned his gaze to Gidley. His eyes were like two drills boring into the man’s skull.

"Take that paper off my captain’s bed."

Gidley swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently. "General, if I don't serve this—"

"Take. It. Off."

Gidley snatched the document back as if it were coated in white phosphorus.

"Now," Holloway said, pointing a thick index finger toward the hallway. "You and this paper-pushing excuse for a JAG will exit this facility. If I see either of you within fifty yards of this ward again, I will have my security forces detain you under Title 10 of the United States Code for obstruction of an active military criminal investigation. Do you copy me?"

"Yes, sir," Miller squeaked.

They didn't walk out; they scrambled, their shoe leather squealing against the linoleum as the two armed airmen escorted them down the corridor.

Holloway let out a long, ragged exhale. He reached up, took off his patrol cap, and ran a hand over his close-cropped gray hair. For the first time, I saw the deep exhaustion etched into the lines around his mouth.

"How are you holding up, Maya?" he asked, his voice softening as he pulled the second chair up to the bedside.

"I’m in a cage, sir," I whispered, the anger burning through the morphine haze. "He’s got the judges. He’s got the media. He’s going to use the law to finish what he started with that pistol."

"Not on my watch," Holloway said grimly. He looked at Luke. "Evans, what’s the situation with the FBI field office?"

Luke shook his head. "Arthur’s connections run deep, General. The Special Agent in Charge of the Columbia field office went to The Citadel with Arthur’s lawyer. They’re treating this as a 'tragic family crisis' rather than an attempted hit on a military officer. They’re letting the county take the lead on the shooting investigation, and the county is sitting on the ball until the probate court can rule on her competency."

"Why?" I asked, my voice trembling with frustration. "Why go through all this? Why shoot me in public just to try and lock me up? If he wanted me dead, he could have hired someone in an alley! Why the spectacle?"

Luke and the General exchanged a dark look.

"Because of the money, Maya," Luke said, leaning forward. "And because of your sister."

My heart felt like it stopped completely. "Nora?"

Nora was my half-sister—Arthur’s biological daughter with my mother, born five years after they married. She was nineteen now. The last time I had seen her was three years ago, when she was sixteen, waving to me through the iron gates of Whispering Pines as I drove away on my pre-deployment leave. Arthur had kept her isolated, home-schooled by private tutors, cut off from the internet, completely dependent on him.

"What about Nora?" I demanded, the panic rising hot and sharp.

"Arthur’s companies are underwater," Luke explained, pulling up a series of financial records on his tablet. "His real estate developments in Beaufort went belly-up during the pandemic. He owes twenty-two million dollars to private equity lenders in Atlanta. He’s been floating the debt using the principal from your mother’s trust fund."

"The trust fund my grandfather set up," I said, the pieces beginning to slam together in my head. "The one that was split equally between me and Nora."

"Exactly," Luke nodded. "The terms of your mother’s will state that the trust could only be dissolved and accessed by Arthur under two conditions: either both of her daughters reach the age of twenty-five without contesting his management, or both daughters are legally declared mentally incapacitated, transferring total conservatorship of the estate to him."

"Nora turned nineteen last month," Holloway added grimly. "She’s been trying to get out, Maya. She hired an independent auditor from Charlotte two weeks ago to look into the trust’s accounts. Arthur found out."

"And if Maya was alive, decorated, and sane," Luke continued, "she could back Nora up in court. She could use the military legal system to appoint an independent federal trustee. Arthur’s whole empire would collapse. He’d face twenty years in federal prison for bank fraud and grand larceny."

"So he tried to kill me," I breathed.

"And when he failed to kill you on the field," Holloway said, his jaw tightening like a vise, "he pivoted to Plan B. If he can't put you in the ground, he puts you in an asylum under his thumb. Once he has conservatorship over you, Nora has no allies left. He can force her into a private clinic, sign off on the trust dissolution, and pocket forty million dollars."

The door to the hospital room clicked open again.

A young airman entered, carrying an official blue-striped military communications folder. "General Holloway, priority dispatch from the base gate. There’s a civilian vehicle at the visitor center demanding access."

"Who is it?" Holloway barked.