The bottle connected with my left temple and glanced down onto my collarbone. It didn’t shatter. The impact sounded like a gunshot in the silent room.

The pain was blinding. But worse was the tearing in my shoulder as the force ripped the stitches open.

I staggered back, boots slipping on polished marble, and crashed into a high-top table, sending a vase of lilies shattering across the floor.

The trench coat tore at the seam from the violence of the fall. The buttons popped. The fabric parted and revealed what I’d been hiding.

The room gasped as one.

Beneath the coat I wasn’t wearing dirty clothes. I was wearing a U.S. Army combat uniform, the multicam soaked through with a spreading stain of fresh crimson.