On the broad, covered cedar back deck of my restored home overlooking the deep-water shipping channel where the naval patrol cutters and civilian passenger ferries glided clean, smooth, and free toward Green Bay…
Sitting at a long twelve-foot reclaimed chestnut trestle table with an open set of regional land surveys and a steaming ceramic mug of dark-roast chicory coffee…
Was Olivia Mercer-Cole.
I was twenty-seven now.
I had formally assumed the permanent Chancellorship of the Sovereign Admiralty Trust six months ago, while directing strategic territorial title interdiction for the Joint Chiefs of Staff without drawing a corporate consulting dollar. The paralyzing trauma of Vanessa’s betrayal, the sting of hearing my closest friends plot my destruction through a thin hotel wall, and the heavy burden of eighty years of sovereign defense vigilance had completely metabolized into an un-shakeable, eighty-year architectural peace; my strength had completely returned, rooted in the bedrock of an un-broken command.
