Chapter 1 - THE TAGS UNDER THE TORN COLLAR
Marcus Vale threw the wine before Zariah understood he had picked up the glass.
Red spread across the front of her pale silk dress.
Around them, conversation died beneath the white reception tent on the Great Falls estate lawn.
Marcus looked pleased.
“Women belong in the kitchen.”
Zariah stared at him.
Her younger sister Chloe stood beside him in a blush engagement gown, one hand covering a laugh she made no real effort to hide.
The party had been expensive enough to look effortless—white roses, champagne towers, rented linen, a string quartet near the terrace. Their mother had spent the afternoon telling Zariah not to “make anything complicated.”
Zariah had obeyed.
She had smiled when Chloe introduced Marcus as the man who had finally taught her what ambition looked like.
She had ignored Marcus describing Zariah’s Army service as “a phase.”
She had ignored the guests who laughed.
Then Marcus pressed one finger against her forehead.
“Back up.”
Zariah did not move quickly enough for him.
He shoved.
Her heel sank into the wet grass, and she went down on one knee.
A few people gasped.
Someone near the bar laughed nervously.
Zariah removed both heels.
Slowly.
Marcus looked down at her bare feet.
“That uniform never made you matter.”
Chloe leaned closer.
“Don’t let Marcus break those fragile bones.”
That sentence hurt more than Zariah expected.
Chloe knew why one of Zariah’s ribs had healed crooked.
She knew exactly which hospital had reset her left wrist.
She knew because she had been seventeen when Zariah came home from Afghanistan and spent nine months learning how to sleep through a closed door.
Marcus stepped forward again.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Beg.”
Zariah rose.
Wind came across the lawn.
Her torn collar lifted.
Two damaged identification tags slipped into view.
One bore her name.
The other was blackened along one edge.
Near the catering tent, a silver-haired man in Army dress uniform stopped with a wineglass halfway to his mouth.
Colonel Richard Hale had been speaking to one of Marcus’s donors.
Now he was staring only at Zariah.
More precisely, at the second tag.
He crossed the lawn without looking at Marcus.
“Where did you get that?”
Zariah instinctively covered it.
Colonel Hale’s face had gone pale.
“The burned one,” he said. “Where did you get my son’s tag?”
For the first time all evening, Zariah forgot Marcus was standing there.
“You’re Owen Hale’s father?”
The colonel’s glass slipped from his hand into the grass.
May you like
Marcus turned sharply toward Chloe.
And Chloe stopped smiling.
