This was not a legal strategy. It was a vendetta.
Judge Wexler tapped her gavel once. The sound was like a gunshot.
“Order.”
She looked down at me, her face impassive.
“Miss Reyes, do you wish to respond to these allegations?”
I stood slowly. My voice was calm, carrying to the back of the room without effort.
“Not yet, Your Honor. The truth doesn’t need my defense.”
Gasps followed.
I sat down.
Navaro’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second. He had expected me to break, to scream, to cry. Instead, I gave him nothing but silence—the kind of silence that makes men like him nervous.
By the end of the session, Judge Wexler’s tone had shifted. She looked from Navaro to me, her eyes narrowing.
“Miss Reyes,” she said, “please submit your full service file for verification regarding your whereabouts during the dates in question.”
A simple sentence, but it meant my entire record—classified missions, internal investigations, combat logs—would become part of the court file.
As I left the courtroom, my father stepped into my path. His eyes burned with that familiar hollow contempt.
“You think your medals make you better than your blood?” he spat.
I met his gaze, refusing to look away.
“No, Dad. They remind me I survived it.”