He spent three years bragging about his fake military career, until he threw a punch at his stepdaughter without realizing she was Delta Force.

Marcus had been drinking cold beers since three o'clock in the afternoon. His face was flushed, his voice grew louder with every passing hour, and his insistence on being the undisputed alpha male of the household was reaching a boiling point.

"Look at this generation," Marcus scoffed, pointing his spatula toward the younger cousins lounging on the grass with their smartphones. "Soft. Every single one of them. Back in my day, if you didn't know how to protect yourself, you didn't survive."

His eyes scanned the backyard, eventually locking onto Jessica, who was standing quietly near the garden hedge.

A cruel, arrogant grin spread across Marcus's face. For three years, ever since marrying Jessica's mother, Marcus had made a habit of making subtle digs at his stepdaughter's expense. He viewed her quiet demeanor as weakness and her refusal to talk about her life in D.C. as proof that she was an uninteresting desk-bound bureaucrat.

Marcus suddenly stepped away from the smoking grill and pointed across the patio, directly at Jessica.

"Hey! Jessica!" Marcus announced loudly, attracting the attention of the twenty-odd guests scattered around the yard. "Come over here. Let’s show everyone what a real fighter looks like."

The chatter around the picnic tables died down slightly. Several young cousins pulled out their smartphones, grinning as they began recording the interaction, expecting Marcus to put his stepdaughter in a harmless, embarrassing headlock or showcase another one of his exaggerated martial-arts demonstrations.