Chapter 25 - The Sins of the Mother
"The truth?" Ethan let out a harsh, broken bark of laughter that was swallowed by the Appalachian wind. "The truth died when she sent my company into the Shok Valley with ceramic armor plates she knew were rated twenty percent below standard specs! She saved twelve hundred dollars per vest, Claire! Twelve hundred dollars!"
Ethan’s eyes turned bloodshot, the veins in his neck bulging as the four years of suppressed rage detonated.
"Mason took three rounds to the chest—the plate shattered like cheap porcelain! Davis bled out through his lung! I dragged them three miles through the snow, screaming into the radio for extraction, while the radio frequencies were jamming because Montgomery Defense sold the encryption keys to the warlords to manufacture a perpetual conflict!"
Ethan reached down with his left hand, grabbing Margaret by her soaked hair and yanking her head back, exposing her throat to the storm.
"Look at her!" Ethan roared. "Look at the great Margaret Montgomery! The philanthropist! The patriot! She built our family name on the rotting flesh of eighteen-year-old kids who thought they were serving their country!"
Margaret was weeping hysterically, her body trembling with violent convulsions. "I had no choice! The board was going to oust me! The company was going bankrupt! If Montgomery Defense fell, we would have lost everything! The estate, the trust funds, the legacy—I did it for you! Both of you!"
"You did it for yourself," Claire’s voice cut through Margaret's frantic lies like a scalpel.
Claire did not raise her weapon. She kept her hands open, walking until she was standing barely five feet from her brother.
"She hated me because I wouldn't wear her designer dresses and marry a senator’s son," Claire said, looking directly into Margaret’s terrified eyes. "And she hated you because you put on the uniform of the United States Army instead of taking a seat in her boardroom. She didn't view us as children, Ethan. She viewed us as inventory. And when the inventory became inconvenient, she liquidated it."
Margaret gasped, choking on rainwater and bile. "Claire... I’m your mother... you can’t let him..."
"Shut up," Claire snapped, not even glancing at her.
Claire looked back at Ethan. The crosshairs of the dark-web camera were still locked onto them. Millions of screens across the globe were displaying this confrontation: the two Montgomery siblings, decorated war heroes, standing over the fallen matriarch of America’s largest defense contractor.
"You execute her now, Ethan, and the Pentagon labels this a rogue black-ops mutiny," Claire explained with deadly calm. "They erase your name from the service records. They seal the files on the Shok Valley ambush forever. They bury the truth under a national security directive, and the men who signed those checks with Margaret will sit in their penthouses and drink champagne while you are hunted down like a mad dog."
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"I don't care about surviving, Claire," Ethan whispered, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. "I’ve been dead for four years."
"I care," Claire said, her voice cracking for the first time, exposing the immense, bleeding heart beneath her titanium exterior. "I fought my way through the Korengal to find your body. I took three bullets and earned the One-Eighty-Seven patch because I swore I would never leave a fallen soldier behind. You are my brother, Ethan. And I am not leaving you behind tonight."
