Cruz was quiet for a long moment, the letter still resting on the table between them, and Wren waited, giving him the space to find the words the way he'd given her that same patience so many times over the past months.
"There was an incident," he said finally. "My last deployment, before I came home for good. A supply convoy operation that went wrong — not combat, exactly, though it turned into that eventually. We were escorting contractors moving equipment through a corridor that should have been secure. It wasn't." His jaw tightened, old grief resurfacing in the lines of his face. "Two of my men died. I was in command of the convoy's security detail. The official investigation cleared me of wrongdoing — the intelligence we'd been given was bad, not our execution of the mission. But I'v
