She saw it in my arms and smiled like I’d just brought her a long-lost friend.

“I thought it was gone,” she whispered. “I thought it died with Vivian.”

I sat down, placed the box in her lap. “Aunt Mae… what is this?”

She ran a finger along the edges of the photo. “It was never just me and one sister, dear. ‘Sister’ meant something else.”

She looked at me, eyes clear.

“We were the Veritas Unit. Five women, one goal. Expose lies. Not with guns, but with proof.”

It sounded wild. Unreal. But the box was real, and so was the weight in her voice.

“We were never official,” she said. “Never in the books. But during the war, there were things that couldn’t go through channels. Truths that needed leaking. Secrets that saved lives.”

I blinked. “You were spies?”