My Husband Faked My Funeral. I Came Back For Everything. Chapter 05

My Husband Faked My Funeral. I Came Back For Everything. Chapter 05 – Commander Vale

“-Vale.”

Nobody clapped.

AM

Sixteen heads turned to the smallest person in the room, and I sat there with my heart going like a bird in a jar while Camilla Vane breathed through her teeth two rows

down.

“Commander Vale,” Sable repeated, louder. “Stand up. Let them see your face.”

I stood.

I watched the men’s faces do the math and come out with the same three answers.

She’s a child. I’m not taking orders from that. What did she do, sleep with Hale?

Two weeks ago that would have gutted me. Now I noted the four faces I’d have to

break first and sat back down.

They cleared the cuts out within the hour. On her way past, Camilla stopped at my

chair.

“A grieving housewife off a motorbike gets Commander,” she hissed, “and I get a bus ticket. My family knows people. You should be very careful about that.”

She said it loud enough for five people to hear. That’s the only reason I remember her

at all.

They handed me a tablet with sixteen files – psych, background, financials, family — and told me to build four teams by morning.

I didn’t sleep. I read every word twice, which for me means I’ll have it in my head at eighty.

By dawn I had my teams, and I had my own.

Nadia, who could read a room in four seconds. Priya, who could find anything in any database ever built. June, who never once flinched at a raised voice. And Marisol, who at twenty-three had already run her father’s restaurant through two bankruptcies and one flood.

Four women. It wasn’t on purpose. They were just the best.

At the commissioning we stood in the old vault room under three centuries of iron while Hale read the articles and sixteen voices answered I do.

Until the last one.

“Do you agree to abstain from romantic or sexual relationships within your unit and all other units of this House, save by written exemption from the founder?”

Three voices didn’t answer.

Hale called them out one at a time, patiently, and explained that a soured relationship inside a unit has destroyed more casework than any opposing counsel ever has.

They swore. All three.

And that’s when I saw it.

The glass doors at the back of the vault room were black with the night behind them, which makes them a mirror. I was facing the room. Behind me, in the corridor, a man in House staff coveralls stood with his phone at chest height, and I could read his screen in the reflection as clearly as if he’d handed it to me.

she is INSIDE. confirmed, hart girl. vale = hart.

send it up.

Iturned so fast I nearly went off my heels.

The corridor was full of people, Two archivists, a maintenance crew, three

instructors, a woman with a coffee cart. Nine backs, all walking away. Nine phones, all in pockets.

“Commander?” Nadia murmured. “You all right?”

“Fine,” I said.

I was not fine.

Because there were exactly three living people on this continent who knew that E. Vale had been born Evangeline Hart.

Augustus Sable. The intake officer at the gate.

And me.

That night I did something I hadn’t done since I was seventeen. I sat on the floor of my room with my back against the door and let myself shake for four minutes, and then I stopped, because four minutes is all anyone gets.

Then I opened my burner phone and looked at that message again. The one from Sunday. The one with no name.

You were never the target.

And underneath it, sent at 2:14 that morning while I stood in a vault room swearing

an oath:

Evie. It’s me. I’m not dead either.

Don’t answer this. They’re reading your mail.