Chapter 5 - Shattered Illusions
In the front left pew, the Hayes family looked as though a lightning bolt had struck the center of their mahogany bench.
Eleanor was clutching her chest so hard that the Mikimoto pearls were digging into her skin, leaving red impressions. Her mouth was open in an involuntary, silent scream of complete cognitive dissonance.
To my mother, power was measured in country club seniority, invitations to private galas in the Hamptons, and the size of an engagement diamond. She had spent thirty years belittling my life’s work as a vulgar, unladylike rejection of domestic elegance. She had thought I was a middle-management bureaucrat who lived in barracks and ate out of tin cans.
Now, she was watching the Secretary of Defense bow his head in deference to her daughter.
My father sat entirely frozen. His hands rested on his knees, trembling with an uncontrollable palsy. For decades, he had dismissed me at Thanksgiving dinners, cutting off my descriptions of base operations to ask Bradley about his commercial real estate portfolios. He had treated me like an errant, defective child who had failed to bring glory to his name.
And now, the men whose portraits hung in the boardrooms my father could only dream of entering were standing, cheering, and saluting his daughter.
Then there was Vanessa.
Vanessa’s face had drained of every drop of color, leaving her heavy foundation looking like a cracked mask of chalk. Her eyes darted from the Secretary of Defense, to the glistening four silver stars on my shoulders, to the standing ovation of international dignitaries.
Her entire reality had just collapsed inward on itself.
She had built her whole identity on the premise that she was the successful daughter—the beautiful one, the feminine one, the one who married well, the one who adhered to the rules of social hierarchy. She had pitied me. She had mocked me. She had used me as the ugly backdrop against which her own shallow life could shine.
Now, she realized that in the grand theater of human consequence, she was an invisible speck of dust standing in the shadow of a colossus.
Bradley leaned toward her, his face damp with sweat, his voice a frantic, desperate whisper that carried across the pew. “Do you have any idea what this means? She’s going to be the Chairman. The Chairman! Vanessa, you told me she was just an administrative officer who filed paperwork at the headquarters!”
“I... I didn’t know,” Vanessa stammered, her voice shaking violently, tears of sheer mortification welling in her eyes. “She never told us! She just said she worked in operations!”
“You never asked, you idiot!” Bradley hissed back, burying his face in his hands. “My CEO is sitting four rows behind us. If he finds out you just called the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs an embarrassing mascot, my career is finished! Finished!”
Secretary Sterling held up a hand, silencing the thunderous applause with a warm, respectful smile.
He walked down the chancel steps, stood directly in front of me, and offered his right hand.
I took off my right glove and grasped his hand firmly.
“Congratulations, Rebecca,” Sterling said, his voice dropping to a private, sincere murmur. “The nation needs you. But for the next twenty-four hours, the President has ordered me to ensure you belong entirely to Daniel. Get married, General. That’s an order.”
“Understood, Mr. Secretary,” I said softly.
He turned, handed the crimson leather portfolio to Captain Alvarez, and walked back to his place beside the altar.
The Chaplain smiled, his eyes twinkling beneath his bushy white eyebrows. He cleared his throat once more and raised his hands.
May you like
“Now,” the Chaplain said, his voice brimming with gentle humor, “as I was saying before the history of the world interrupted us... Daniel, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
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