The silence stretched for a long minute. When the Colonel finally spoke, his voice was a razor blade.

“Assemble your team, First Sergeant. But we aren’t going to war. We’re going to audit.”

That night, a burner phone I’d set up pinged with an encrypted video file. It came from a terrified sixteen-year-old named Brooke — Jaxson’s daughter, and Lily’s cousin.

I hit play. Grainy night-vision footage of the gravel driveway. It showed the brothers swinging the iron. It showed my daughter crumpling.

Then I zoomed on the upper-right quadrant, and the breath left my lungs.

There, lit by the soft glow of a bedroom lamp, was Miranda. Standing in the second-story window, watching her own flesh and blood being beaten into the dirt.