During the exfiltration a ricochet had found me. Not fatal, but deep. The field medic had packed it with gauze and wrapped it tight, and I could feel the warm seep of fresh blood sticking to my coyote-brown undershirt.

Every breath was a negotiation with pain.

I shouldn’t have come. The tactical part of my brain screamed at me to go to Walter Reed, get stitched up, sleep for a week.

But Chloe was my little sister. Despite everything — the insults, the years of cold silence, the rejection — some stubbornly sentimental part of me wanted to see her walk down the aisle.

“What in God’s name are you doing here?”

The voice was a venomous hiss. I turned to find my father, Robert Vance, impeccable in a custom tuxedo, silver hair perfectly coiffed. His face was a mask of panic.

He didn’t see the exhaustion hollowing out my eyes. He didn’t see how I favored my left side, holding the arm stiff against the tearing pain. He saw the dirt on my boots.

He lunged and gripped my good arm, fingers digging into my bicep like talons, dragging me deeper into the alcove. “Look at you,” he whispered furiously.

“You look like a vagrant. A beggar. How did you even get past security?”

“I just got back, Dad.” My voice was raspy, still raw from shouting over rotor wash. “I didn’t have time to change. I wanted to stand in the back. I wanted to wish Chloe well.”

“Wish her well from the gutter, where you belong,” he spat, his eyes darting toward the crowd. “Chloe hit the jackpot today, Elena. She’s marrying William Sterling.

The Sterlings are American royalty. General Marcus Sterling is a legend in Washington. We are finally ascending into the stratosphere, and I will not let a filthy failure like you jeopardize it.”