Chapter 2 - The Ghosts of Kandahar
Mr. Voss, Aurelia’s future father-in-law, shifted in his seat. He was a man who understood power, and he was realizing, with growing fascination, that the power dynamics in this room were not what he had been led to believe.
"Stellan," Mr. Voss said gently, his eyes darting between my cousin and me. "What exactly are you saying?"
Stellan didn't look at him. His eyes remained locked on his mother. "Three years ago, my unit was deployed in the Arghandab River Valley. We were on a night raid. High-value target. It was supposed to be in and out."
He paused, and I saw the phantom flicker of a memory cross his face—the ghost of a terrible night I knew all too intimately.
"We walked into an ambush," Stellan continued, his voice tight. "Comms were jammed. GPS was scrambled. We were completely blind, taking heavy fire from three elevated positions. The extraction chopper couldn't get a lock on us. I lost two men in the first ten minutes."
Aurelia gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. We didn't talk about the reality of Stellan's job at family dinners. We talked about his uniform and how handsome he looked. We never talked about the blood.
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"We were pinned down in a trench, waiting to die," Stellan said, the words echoing off the crystal wine glasses. "And then, a voice came through the encrypted radio static. It wasn't the regional command. It wasn't the local forward operating base. It was a direct satellite relay from Virginia."
He finally turned to look at me, his eyes shining with a fierce, protective pride. "It was Rowan."
