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CHAPTER ONE

Texas, the El Sueño ranch, July 2014

IT WAS MIDNIGHT, and General John Hamilton Wilde was drunk

Not just drunk

Drunk as a skunk, in Texas parlance, though if he could still come up with a word like parlance, h

The thought called for another drink

John Halass half filled with Jack Daniel’s finest Kentucky sour mash whiskey

Good man, Jack Daniel

But the glass wasn’t half filled It was close to empty

“Da for the bottle

It wasn’t doing lass Only a couple of inches of ol’ Jack left

In that case, he decided, raising the bottle to his lips, to hell with the glass Might as well drain it straight from the source

Yes

That was much better

The whiskey went down like silk

He just hoped to hell there was another bottle in the house

Odds were there would be

One of his sons ed to him To four star General John Hamilton Wilde He owned it, by God, lock, stock and barrel Jacob had the power to buy and sell livestock, lease out the oil rights, hire and fire ranch hands, cooks, maids, the s, but the boy would surely not be foolish enough to have es in how the house itself was stocked or furnished

The boy?

His son was far from boyhood He had a wife and a child

A wife and a child

Such a nice, simple equation One wife One child

John Hamilton took another sip of ol’ Jack

Not three wives

Well, tives Plus one if you got hung up on technicalities

No technicalities about how many children he had

He had six

He had four

He had six plus four and that equaled ten…and goddammit, if he could add up those nuh

“Shit,” John Haet his footing, staggered across the porch, yanked open the back door, went into the big den with all those dead, dulassy-eyed from the walls They were his father’s trophies, not his; his kids—his six kids—used to plead with hiet rid of those pathetic heads and he’d always said no, he wouldn’t, they were his father’s, and the house, the entire ranch, in fact, belonged not just to whatever generation presently occupied it, but to all the generations that had preceded it…

“Pure and utter bullshit,” John muttered

He reached up, wrapped his hands around the rack of a bull elk dead probably seventy, eighty years, and yanked hard The thing didn’t runted, set his feet apart, yanked harder His face reddened; sweat popped out on his forehead The da still wouldn’t move

He stood back, breathing hard

The elk was as unmovable as the man who’d killed it

“Tomorrow,” he told the dead beast

Then he turned his attention to the cabinet on the far wall and, yes, there was a full bottle of Jack’s inside

It was a beautiful sight, all that excellent whiskey just waiting for him After all, only the best would do He was an officer and a gentleman He was General John Hamilton Wilde, four-star General John Haet that West Point graduate thing despite the fact that he wasn’t the one as supposed to have gone to the Point or gone into the army as a lieutenant or climbed the ladder to the top

He wrenched open the cap of the whiskey bottle, tilted the bottle to his lips Took a long- but-not-long-enough s Wiped the back of his hand over hisleather chair

The chair was another legacy from his old man

Jesus Christ His entire life was a legacy from his old man

The general took another drink And another He thought about his sons

“Jesus,” he whispered, the word more a plea than an oath—except even bombed, he knew damn well that not all the pleas or prayers in the world could help fix this screw-up

The cat was out of the bag The beans had been spilled However you wanted to phrase it, his secret was a secret no more

He had five sons Five sons Five grownHealthy Successful Jacob Caleb Travis Luca Matteo

And he had daughters Five daughters Hey, why not keep the nuirls anyh They omen Emily Jaimie Lissa Alessandra Bianca

Two sons and two daughters in Italy Three sons and three daughters in Texas

Wrong

They were here All of thehters They were here, at El Sueño, and the decades-long nighth school football field, of all places, on a fall evening ainto reality

That rated another drink Then another And theback, because time could never erase them

CHAPTER TWO

BACK THEN, HE wasn’t John Hamilton Wilde

He was Johnny Wilde

Seventeen years old Tall Reckless Good-looking

And co in ambition

That hat his father said His teachers, too Everybody was always on hihten up and be h they were nothing like twins

Alden was into books Johnny was into cars Alden was into classical irlfriend, a shy kid as suratively into cheerleaders

The twins didn’t even look alike

Johnny had the dark hair of his Apache and Comanche and who-knehat-else ancestors, the blue eyes of his Celtic forebears, the height and leanlyDNA

Alden was slender and fair, with the classic beauty of their mother

At least, that hat their father said

There was no real way to know All they had of her were photos, because Celia Wilde had died in childbirth

To be precise, she’d died during the delivery of the second of her twin boys

Johnny

Johnny was the reason their mother was dead

“Youryou life,” Amos Wilde would say when he was drunk, and he was drunk a lot Not falling-down drunk Not mean drunk Amos was a Wilde, after all He was also a full colonel in the United States Army Retired Colonel Amos Jefferson Wilde, to be exact

He did everything with discretion

He was even discreet about wishing to God Johnny had never been born, but the e was clear anyway and, hell, who could blame him?

Alden was the son worth having

Johnny… Johnny had been aJohnny

“Don’t,” Alden would say whenever Johnny cut school or smoked w

eed or drank beer until he puked “Don’t live down to the old man’s expectations, John You’re better than that”

And Johnny would laugh and slap his brother on the back and assure him that he was perfectly happy exactly the way he was

“You’re the one who’s gonna make us all proud, man,” he’d say, because he kneas true—and because he loved Alden with all his heart, just as Alden loved him

In a s, Alden was as out of place as a bluebird in a s would be different soon

Alden, who’d taken so many honors classes that he was a year ahead of Johnny in school, would graduate this June Half a dozen prestigious universities had tried to recruit him, but Alden wanted entry to only one place

West Point

Johnny thought he was nuts

“Jesus, man, you really believe in all that crap the old man spews about the Wildes and their warrior bloodlines?” he’d said the first time Alden had told him that the Point hat he wanted “Or is it because he’s a West Point grad, because two zillion generations of Wildes have been West Point grads, and it’s what he wants for you?”

“It’s not any of that stuff,” Alden had replied “It’s just what I want to do”

Johnny had to admit that that was the truth Alden believed in God and Country and The American Way, all in caps Johnny…

Johnny believed in having fun

He was a football hero, a tight end, fearless and tough He drove a cherry-red Mustang he’d bought when it wason it until it was bright and shiny and could go from zero to sixty before you could blink And if he’d ever cracked open a book, there sure as hell was no way to prove it

He was smart, but he hid it well

It didn’t matter

The principal put the football awards he won on display in the lobby

His teachers winked at his failed tests and all the papers he never turned in

His schooluys because he was a jock, the girls because they said he was eous

And because he was all those things, kids tolerated Alden’s occasional presence If they didn’t, they had Johnny to answer to, and nobody wanted that They didn’t go so far as to include Alden in whatever partying was going on, but that was OK Alden wasn’t into partying…

Until that Friday night in September