My stepfather told me to “get a real job” moments before he snatched my phone out of my hands and accidentally answered a live national-security emergency. Within minutes, a tactical response team was crashing through our windows, alarms were blaring, and my entire family was about to discover the terrifying truth about what I actually do for the Pentagon after dark.
My name is Kira Collins. I’m thirty-eight years old, single, and currently living in the same bedroom I grew up in. To my mother, Carol, I’m the family disappointment—the daughter who never married, never settled down, and somehow ended up back home. To my stepfather, Rick, a bitter former Army cook with a habit of drinking far too much bargain-bin bourbon, I’m little more than a running joke.
What Rick doesn’t know is that I quietly pay the mortgage on the house he proudly calls his own.
What he also doesn’t know is that my so-called “remote IT position” is a carefully constructed cover story.
In reality, I am a Lieutenant General in the United States Army, currently serving as a senior strategic coordinator assigned to the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon.
