CHAPTER 2 — The Secret Buried for Twenty-Five Years
General Hayes stared at the dog tag as if he had seen a ghost.
His hands trembled.
Impossible...
That tag belonged to Captain Daniel Carter.
Officially...
Daniel Carter had died saving his entire platoon during Operation Black Ridge.
His body had never been recovered.
The government declared him a national hero.
The case was permanently sealed.
General Hayes slowly looked back at Emma.
"Where... did you get that?"
For the first time all evening...
Emma spoke.
"It belonged to my father."
The audience gasped.
Hayes shook his head immediately.
"That's impossible."
Emma's voice remained calm.
"Is it?"
She removed a second item from her pocket.
An old, faded letter.
Its edges were burned.
The military seal was still intact.
"My father wrote this the night before he disappeared."
Television cameras zoomed in.
Reporters stopped typing.
Nobody moved.
Emma opened the letter carefully.
"If you're reading this... then someone betrayed us from inside our own command."
The entire hall went silent.
General Hayes's face turned pale.
Only three people had ever known that letter existed.
Two were officially dead.
The third...
...was standing only a few feet away from Emma.
Before anyone could react...
The giant screen behind the stage suddenly turned on by itself.
A classified battlefield recording began to play.
May you like
Twenty-five years of lies...
...were about to collapse in front of the entire country.
