Part 1
I stood at the altar of St. Jude’s Cathedral in Manhattan, surrounded by eight hundred sneering billionaires, wearing a repulsive, yellowed polyester gown from the 1980s.
My name is Clara Kensington. To the vulture-like high society of New York, I was nothing more than an impoverished archivist working at a dusty Brooklyn library—a nobody who had somehow ensnared Nathaniel...
Part 1
My name is Clara, and for three years, everyone in Manhattan’s ruthless high society believed I was just a penniless, quiet archivist from a fourth-floor walk-up in Brooklyn. Right now, I am standing at the altar of St. Jude’s Cathedral, wearing a hideous, itchy 1980s polyester dress with gaudy plastic sequins—a public humiliation arranged by my future mother-in-law,...
The name's Lieutenant Jesse Vance, and my heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird as tracer rounds lit up the pitch-black Afghan night. "Falcon Ridge, this is Eagle One, I'm touching down in the kill zone—whether you like it or not!" I barked into the radio, my hands locked white-knuckled around the cyclic control of the...
Part 2
As my F-35 plummeted, dropping off Connor's radar like a ghost dissipating into thin air, his jet roared helplessly past me. He had been so hyper-focused on his digital reticle that he couldn't react to a physical, real-world anomaly.
I immediately slammed the throttle back into full afterburner. The GE F135 engine howled, kicking me violently in the back...
"Mayday, Mayday, Dustoff 73 is hit! We are going down hard in the valley of hell, surrounded on all sides!" the frantic radio transmission bled static into the dark, pre-dawn air of Falcon Ridge Air Force Base.
I froze, my hands still caked in hydraulic fluid inside the belly of a battered Blackhawk. Twelve lives. Twelve American soldiers pinned down...
Part 2
“Connor, release the controls and level your wings.”
“I have it.”
His jet pitched upward, then snapped left more sharply than his input required. The movement carried him across my nose and below the engagement floor.
“Apex One, terminate,” Colonel Pierce ordered.
Connor did not answer.
I abandoned the simulated shot and dropped beside him. His aircraft rolled again, nose falling toward the...
My hands were cuffed so tightly behind the cold metal chair that my wrists had gone numb, but the burning pain was nothing compared to the ticking clock in my head. Seven hours. Seven hours of listening to Agent Daryl Ford’s monotonous voice telling me that the last three years of my life, the blood I spilled, the brothers...
My name is Llaya Mercer, and on my forty-second birthday, my father slapped me across the face so hard the crack echoed off the restaurant's crystal chandeliers like a gunshot. The sting burned into my skin, but it was nothing compared to the fury tightening my chest. I was a brigadier general in the United States Army, commanding troops...
Part 2
The colossal oak doors of the ballroom exploded open with a deafening crash, the heavy wood rebounding violently against the walls. The live orchestra abruptly stopped playing mid-note. The low, arrogant murmur of the elite crowd vanished instantly, replaced by a suffocating, terrified silence.
Marching through the grand entryway in perfect, intimidating unison were four Brigadier Generals in full...
I am Collins Flynn, and right now, inside a windowless, freezing basement bunker deep beneath the Pentagon, the world is hanging by a single, fragile thread. With my earpiece buzzing with urgent static from a special operations team cornered in a hostile alleyway in North Africa, I am the one holding the scissors. For the past thirty-six hours, my...
