I looked up at my father. His face had gone from pale to gray. “Dad,” I breathed, “why is Mom’s maiden name on a kill list?” He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Because right then, the auditorium doors burst open again, and two MPs walked in escorting a woman in handcuffs. A woman I’d buried three years ago. A woman who looked right at me and said…

“Hi, baby girl.”

My breath catches. My knees nearly give out, and I feel Hail’s arm steady me just slightly, a twitch of movement no one else notices.

She looks older—tired, sun-weathered, with a scar under her left eye I’ve never seen before—but there’s no doubt. The voice, the shape of her face, even the tilt of her head when she says my name. That’s my mother.

Dead and buried. Cremated. I scattered her ashes off the coast of Pensacola myself.

“What… what the hell is this?” I whisper.

My father doesn’t speak. Doesn’t blink. He just stares at her like she’s a ghost. Maybe she is. I sure feel like I’m in a dream. The room stays silent except for the low whine of the projector still humming, still glowing with the map of a war zone thousands of miles away.

Colonel Hail doesn’t flinch. “Asset Ghost 13,” he says, voice flat and mechanical now. “You are being tasked with extraction and escort of the subject codenamed Motherload. Subject is considered a Tier Zero intelligence asset. Target is under threat of international termination orders. She has requested you.”

“I watched her die,” I snap. “I burned the body.”

“She switched places,” Hail answers, as if that makes this any less insane. “Double played the part. The real Lucinda Neves was already out of the country when the funeral happened. We needed the world to believe she was gone.”

“We?” My voice rises now. “What we? Who the hell knew about this? Who signed off on this insane op?”

Hail doesn’t blink. “Your mother. And your father.”

I turn slowly, locking eyes with the general who raised me like a disappointment. “You knew,” I say, ice building in my chest. “All those years—birthdays, promotions, me crying at her grave—you knew?”

He opens his mouth, then closes it. Then finally: “It wasn’t my choice.”

“No,” my mother says, stepping forward despite her cuffs. “It was mine.”

The MPs raise their weapons instinctively. Hail waves them down.

I step forward, heat flooding my face. “You faked your death?”

“To protect you.”

“Bullsh—”

“I was deep cover inside a Russian proxy cell when I found out they’d marked you. Your name was on a kill list. I had to vanish, Lucia. If they thought I was alive, they would have used me to get to you. But if I was dead, they had no leverage.”

My heart pounds so hard I can barely hear her. “So you let me grieve. You let Dad lie to my face every year.”

“She didn’t let me lie,” my father says suddenly. “I had no idea she was alive until twenty minutes ago.”

We all freeze.

“What?” I say, my voice cracking.

“She told them,” he growls, jerking his chin toward Hail. “Not me. Not her husband. I was just as shocked when she walked into that detention room. I thought it was a ghost.”

My mother looks down. “It was the only way.”

“I don’t believe this,” I say. “Any of it.”

But I do. I believe it too much. The ache in my chest isn’t anger—it’s recognition. Because I’ve done the same thing. Vanished, lied, buried myself behind layers of fake missions and redacted reports, all to keep the people I love safe. I’ve lived in shadows. And apparently… I inherited it.

I look at Hail. “So what’s the mission, really? Extraction to where? And why now?”

“Because the Russians know she’s alive,” he says. “Or at least they think she is. That’s enough. We have intercepts from yesterday—signal traffic in Crimea referencing a ‘mother ghost’ asset. A hit squad’s already been mobilized. If we don’t extract and bury her again, she’s dead. For real this time.”

“And why me?”

“She asked for you,” Hail replies. “Said you’re the only one she trusts.”

I close my eyes.

This can’t be real. But it is. And worse—it makes sense. The pieces fit, like puzzle edges I never knew were there. Her sudden “cancer diagnosis.” The sealed casket. The government chaplain who never said her full name at the funeral.

My training kicks in. I push the emotion down. Lock it behind the steel doors in my mind that say mission first, feelings later.

“Where is she being held now?” I ask.

“On base. Temp holding, secured wing. We’re scrubbing transport plans now. JSOC airlift to Diego Garcia, then black flight into Turkish airspace. From there, ground transfer to neutral zone in Georgia.”

“Extraction point?”

“Here,” Hail says, tapping the map. “Forty miles from Tbilisi. Remote village. One road in, one out. You’ll be dropped HALO, make contact at 0400 local, exfil by 0700.”

“And if I say no?”

He meets my gaze, hard. “Then we send someone else. But she won’t talk to them. And they’ll get her killed.”

I glance at my mother. Her wrists are raw from the cuffs, but her eyes are steady. That same quiet fire I remember from childhood. The woman who taught me to shoot. The woman who read me Tolstoy and built blanket forts with laser tripwires for “practice.”

I look back at my father. He looks… small. A man who’s just realized he was never really in control.

And maybe he never was.

I nod once. “When do we leave?”

“Now.”

Thirty-six hours later, I’m lying belly-down in the snow, watching the road to the extraction point through a thermal scope. My mother breathes steady beside me, dressed in matte black and silent as a ghost herself. She hasn’t asked a single question. Not about me, not about what I’ve done, not about the years she missed. It’s like she understands there’s no room for words yet.

The world is a frozen whisper, wind biting through our gear. No heat signatures on the road. Not yet.

Hail’s voice crackles in my ear. “Ghost 13, SITREP.”

“Eyes on,” I reply. “Zero tangos. Awaiting convoy.”

“ETA two minutes. Be advised, secondary drone detected five klicks east. Unknown affiliation.”

“Copy.”

Beside me, my mother whispers, “Do you ever get scared?”

It hits me like a knife between the ribs. Not because she asked—but because I remember asking her that same question when I was six, hiding under the table during a thunderstorm.

“Yes,” I whisper. “But I do it anyway.”

She nods.

And then, headlights.

A single SUV, painted matte green, hums down the icy road. Our ride out.

Until a rocket slams into it from the tree line.

“Ambush!” I scream, dragging my mother backward behind the ridge. The vehicle explodes into fire and metal shrapnel. Bullets pepper the snow where we were just lying.

“Sniper!” she yells.

I pivot, scan, and find him—half a mile out, high ridge, tucked into a nest of rock. He’s good. Almost ghost-level. Almost.

I drop him with a single shot.

But more are coming. Four men, tactical gear, AKs, closing fast.

“Move!” I shout.

We run. Low and fast, cutting through trees, dodging fire. My comms are jammed now—no help inbound.

“You said they wouldn’t find us this fast!” I bark.

“They shouldn’t have!” my mother gasps.

But deep down, I know what’s happened.

Someone fed them our location.

This op is burned.

We crash into a barn at the edge of the village. I slam the wooden door shut and bar it. “We’ve got ten minutes max,” I say.

“Then we make them count,” she says.

We build traps. Homemade C4 from my belt kit. Wire lines. Choke points. My mother moves like she’s done this a thousand times. She probably has.

“Why now?” I ask suddenly, crouched behind a hay bale. “Why not stay dead?”

She looks at me. “Because someone started digging. Not the Russians. Our people. Someone inside wanted me found.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “But I think it has to do with your file.”

“My file?”

“Your kill record. Your clearances. You’re the kind of threat people don’t want alive when they lose control.”

The pieces click.

Someone at high level is tying off loose ends.

I’m the loose end.

A grenade thuds outside.

We brace.

Explosion. Dust. Screaming. Then gunfire.

I don’t miss. Neither does she.

Four hostiles. Four shots.

Then silence.

I reload. Heart hammering.

The comm crackles. “Ghost 13, this is Hail. SITREP.”

“Clear for now,” I breathe.

“EVAC inbound. Two minutes.”

“Too hot,” I say. “We need smoke.”

“Already dropping. Stand by.”

A thundering roar above—chopper blades.

We make a break for the hilltop. My mother stumbles, wounded in the leg. I drag her over my shoulder, bullets whizzing past.

A ladder drops.

I haul her up, cover fire spraying from the door gunner.

And then—we’re airborne.

Rising into the sky. Bloody. Bruised. But alive.

Back at base, everything is quiet.

We’re debriefed in separate rooms. I sign papers I don’t read. Then I’m handed a folder.

Classified.

Inside: surveillance photos. Audio transcripts. Names.

At the top: General Arthur Neves.

My father.

The one who put out the alert that led to our ambush.

I sit frozen.

And then I understand.

He didn’t know she was alive.

But once he found out… he made sure she wouldn’t stay that way.

Because she was the only one who could expose him.

I close the folder. And I make a choice.

One I’ve never made before.

I walk into Colonel Hail’s office.

He doesn’t ask what’s in the folder. He already knows.

“Do it,” I say. “Make it public. All of it.”

“You’ll lose your name. Your rank.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’ll lose your father.”

I look him dead in the eye. “He was never mine to begin with.”

Hail nods once.

And with that—

Lucia Neves disappears.

Ghost 13 vanishes from every system, every file, every mention.

And somewhere, deep in a country that doesn’t exist on any map, a woman walks away from her old life…

…and toward the one she finally chooses.