Chapter 7 - The Confession of a Pawn
The heavy metal door of Interrogation Room 3 groaned on its hinges as I stepped inside.
The sound made Gwen flinch violently. She whipped her head up, her eyes bloodshot and wide with a mixture of shock, humiliation, and desperate hope.
“Corinne!” she gasped, scrambling up from the metal chair so fast the legs screeched against the concrete floor. She rushed toward me, hands cuffed in front of her, expecting—or perhaps praying—that I had come to wave a magic wand and set her free. “Thank God. Tell them to let me out. Tell them it was just a stupid joke! I didn't mean to—I swear I didn't know—”
I didn't step back, but I didn't open my arms to catch her either. I stood like a marble pillar, my face an unreadable mask of military coldness.
“Sit down, Gwen,” I commanded, my voice flat, carrying the exact cadence I used on junior officers during disciplinary hearings.
Gwen froze, her hands hovering in the air. The harshness in my tone hit her harder than any physical blow. Slowly, her arms dropped to her sides, and she sank back down into the metal chair, her lower lip trembling.
“You... you’re not here to drop the charges,” she whispered, tears finally spilling over her lashes. “You’re actually going to let them put me in prison.”
I pulled out the chair opposite her, sat down, and slid the NCIS intelligence file across the steel table.
“Look at the documents, Gwen,” I instructed.
She stared down at the papers, her handcuffed fingers shaking as she pushed the top page aside. It was a wire transfer receipt from a numbered shell account, accompanied by text message transcripts between her regional manager and an unknown third party.
“Just get her bag off the pier before the 10:00 AM sweep. Make it look like a personal feud. The kid sister act always works on camera.”
Gwen stopped breathing. The color drained entirely from her face, leaving her chalk-white under the fluorescent lights.
“What... what is this?” she choked out, looking up at me with absolute horror. “I—I don't understand. Miller told me you were just trying to sabotage my catering gig! He said you pulled strings to get assigned to my zone just to humiliate me in front of the crew!”
“David Miller lied to you,” I said, every word like ice. “He used your vanity, your insecurity, and your childish resentment against me to create a security breach. You weren't standing up to your sister, Gwen. You were acting as an unwitting mule for industrial espionage.”
Gwen covered her mouth with her cuffed hands, a ragged sob tearing its way out of her chest. “I didn't know... I swear to God, Corinne, I didn't know! I just hated how you always looked down on everyone! I just wanted you to look at me for once!”
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“I’ve spent nineteen years looking at you, Gwen,” I said quietly, leaning forward across the table. “Every time I wore this uniform, every time I deployed overseas, every time I missed a holiday in Ohio, I did it carrying the weight of our family’s expectations, even when you tore me down. But today? Today you didn't just attack me. You compromised a United States naval installation.”
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