Prologue

PROLOGUE

THERE’S A REASON people don’t remember Eisenhower’s face.
And there’s a reason they’ll never forget his.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy didn’t look like a president.
He looked like a movie star who wandered into the West Wing.

Hair perfect. Smile perfect. Voice made of velvet and command.
He wasn’t just the leader of the free world.
He was a broadcast.

And America was glued to the screen.

They called it Camelot, like it was some golden era.
But that was never real. That was myth from the jump.
What was real was something stranger.
A young man, chronically ill, privately reckless, politically brilliant, and publicly untouchable.

He didn’t grind his way to the top. He glided.
He moved like he belonged there, even when he didn’t.
And people wanted to believe in that.
They needed to.

It was the Cold War. The world was one wrong move away from glowing in the dark.
And here came this man, young, Catholic, northern, elite, telling America to ask not what their country could do for them, but what they could do with their fear.

He wasn’t just running a country. He was performing it.

And for a moment, just a moment, the performance worked.

But fairy tales don’t last.
Not in America.
Not in the age of bullets, tapes, and secrets.

He smiled into the camera.
And a rifle looked back.