Chapter 8
I shot Richard a cold, withering look.
“Got something to say, Congressman?”
“Mr. President,” Richard said, stepping forward, “with all due respect, women have always belonged in the home.”
“A woman’s beauty should be her virtue, and her duty is to support her husband and raise the children.”
“That’s just the natural order.”
He didn’t get another word out before First Lady Margaret cut in, voice ice-cold.
2
“Congressman Holloway, from what I’ve heard, your so-called military triumphs were all thanks to General Emily Carter’s strategies.”
“Without her, you couldn’t even win a chess match, let alone a war.”
“So tell me what exactly makes you more qualified than a woman?”
The entire room gasped.
Whispers broke out across the chamber.
Every head turned toward Richard with ridicule.
“So all his glory was just borrowed brilliance?”
“And he’s out here talking down to the woman who carried him to victory?”
“He’s scared women might outshine him-that’s what this is really about.”
Richard’s face flushed red.
He was speechless.
He’d risked speaking out just to sabotage my career.
No job, no prospects-he thought I’d have no choice but to crawl back and play housewife in his crumbling estate.
To him, that was a win-win.
Too bad for him, the truth had already come out.
When President Harrison learned my strategies had carried Richard’s entire military career, he was furious.
“Richard Holloway, you dare oppose progress and sabotage the future of our nation?”
“You’re a fraud, a coward, and a disgrace to this administration.”
“You’ve got some nerve.”
Richard fell to his knees, panicked.
“I was drunk! I misspoke! Please, Mr. President, forgive me!”
The President narrowed his eyes.
“A man with no merit and even less character.”
“A liar and a leech.”
“You’re hereby stripped of all titles and positions.”
“Go back to your hometown and live off the land-if you even know how.”
With that, Richard’s career was over.
No one in D.C. would ever take him seriously again.
He collapsed to the floor, defeated, humiliated.
As the guards hauled him out of the Capitol, he glanced back at me-like it was all my fault.
But he was only reaping what he’d sown.
Meanwhile, my proposal to allow women into the military and public office earned the President’s full endorsement.
A new bill was passed.
Women could now officially enlist, command, and lead.
The day the Equal Service Act was signed into law, the sun was shining.
Across the country, people cheered.
I became a national icon, a symbol of change.
As for Richard’s outburst at the state banquet?
News traveled fast.
Soon, he became the laughingstock of Washington.
Everywhere he went, people whispered behind his back.
“Emily.”
A voice stopped me in my tracks.
I turned-and there he was.
Richard, in worn-out jeans and a patched-up flannel shirt.
The silk suits were gone.
He carried a dusty duffel bag over one shoulder.
“Emily, I know I’ve got nothing left. I don’t deserve you.”
“But we were married for five years. Doesn’t that mean something?”
I didn’t even let him finish.
“Headed back to the countryside?”
“Where’s Sophia Reynolds?”
“Don’t mention that bitch to me,” he spat.
“She took every cent from the estate and disappeared the minute I lost my position.”
No wonder he was alone.
No wonder he looked like a man who’d hit rock bottom.
But none of that mattered to me anymore.
“Well, well… isn’t that Richard Holloway, the disgraced Congressman?”
“Nice flannel. Begging for scraps from the woman you once tried to destroy?”
“Ugh, I don’t even want to share a sidewalk with that guy.”
The crowd’s jeers got louder.
Before I could say a word, Richard pulled his hood low and turned tail-vanishing into the side street like a fugitive.
I never saw him again.
Word was, he went back to his hometown and actually started farming.
Totally irrelevant.
Years later, I officially succeeded my father as the first female General of the United States Armed Forces.
Under my command, we formed the first all-female combat unit.
I taught those women to read, write, train, and fight.
I spent the rest of my life championing equality-fighting for a world where merit mattered more than gender.
never remarried.
Looking back in my later years, the only regret I ever had-was wasting five years married to Richard Holloway.
But I was smart enough to get out before he dragged me down for good.
hat’s how I got here.
his year, two more outstanding young women joined our command ranks.
rilliant, brave, and unstoppable.
As I watched them train, something hit me.
hey looked just like I did-the day I first took a battalion into war.
yes full of fire.
[earts full of purpose.
or my parents.
or my country.
nd for every woman who came after me-I made history.
nd I had no regrets.
