hadn’t been home in seventeen years. Not since the night my father told me to get out and never come back.“You’re choosing to be a soldier?” he’d said, his face purple with rage. “A Davis? Carrying a rifle like some common grunt? You’re dead to me.”I was eighteen. I left with a backpack and my enlistment papers. I didn’t look back.
Now, standing in the shadows of the Pierre Hotel’s Grand Ballroom, I wondered why I’d even bothered to come. The place smelled like money—white lilies, expensive perfume, and that underlying scent of desperation that rich people give off when they’re pretending everything’s fine.
I’d positioned myself behind a marble pillar, back to the wall. Old habit. Twenty years in the military teaches you never to let anyone sneak up behind you. My suit was good—custom-made on Savile Row—but I’d chosen charcoal gray. Nothing flashy. Nothing that would draw attention. I looked like hired security, maybe. Or some accountant they’d invited out of obligation.
