“No.

What we are going to review is a documented attempt by members of this family to provoke Colonel Salazar into a public altercation, to film her losing her composure, and to use that footage to strip her of custody of her daughter.”

The word Colonel went through the room like a dropped glass.

But it was the rest of the sentence that brought the silence down — thick, total, the silence of sixty people’s worth of assumptions collapsing at once.

Marisela felt the cold travel down her own spine, because this was worse than she had let herself believe, and she had let herself believe quite a lot.

“Custody,” she said quietly.