Chapter 15: The Life We Built
Six months later, I stood in the backyard of our home holding my son while he watched the snow fall.
He was bundled in a thick coat, his tiny gloved hands reaching for the flakes. The same snow that had once fallen on the freezing garage now only made him laugh.
Colonel Hayes stood beside me, hands in his pockets.
“Stratix is still asking when you’re coming back to the office full time,” he said with a small smile.
I adjusted Daniel Elias against my hip. “Soon. But right now, this is more important.”
He nodded, understanding.
We stood in comfortable silence for a while. Then he spoke again.
“Your family tried to reach out again last week. Through a lawyer this time.”
I didn’t even flinch.
“I know,” I said. “I told the lawyer to tell them I have nothing left to say.”
Colonel Hayes looked at me with quiet respect.
“You’re not the same woman who was sleeping in that garage.”
“No,” I agreed. “I’m not.”
I looked down at my son, then up at the sky where snow continued to fall softly.
Daniel was gone. But because of what he started — and what I finished — our son would grow up safe. He would grow up knowing his father was a hero. And he would grow up with a mother who had learned, the hard way, how to protect what mattered.
The garage was behind me.
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The future was here.
And this time, no one would ever take it away.
