He’d laid both charge sheets side by side on the laminate table and handed me complete authority over how the offense would be recorded.

One sheet carried the dark weight of a formal court-martial, a legal process that would have ended Evan Carter’s military career before he turned twenty-three.

The other called for an immediate administrative reduction to private, lost pay and ninety days of strict remedial ethics training.

I’d held the black pen over the paper for three seconds while Mason Reid stood at attention near the door.

Mason hadn’t asked for mercy, but his eyes held a quiet hope that military justice would teach rather than destroy.