Chapter 8 - The Dominoes Fall
"Wait! Admiral, wait!" Claire screamed, scrambling to her feet as the NCIS agent pulled out a pair of zip-ties. "I have the ledger! Grant kept an encrypted hard drive in his cabin! He took bribes from three foreign defense subcontractors to push through unauthorized radar tech! He told me he’d frame his logistics officer if an audit ever happened! I will testify against him! I will give you everything!"
Grant’s head snapped toward Claire, his eyes bulging with murderous fury. "You traitorous snake! You came up with the idea! You told me nobody would ever question a Commander married into the Sterling legacy!"
"Shut up, Grant!" Claire shrieked, her voice turning into a shrill screech. "You’re a broke nobody! You’re going to Leavenworth and I’m not going down with you!"
"Quiet, both of you," Special Agent Vance commanded, snapping the restraints onto Claire's wrists with cold efficiency. "You can tell the federal grand jury all about each other's crimes. You’re both facing twenty years for federal procurement fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy against the United States government."
The Shore Patrol officers gripped Grant’s arms, hauling him up from the asphalt. The gold stripes on his sleeves—the stripes he had worn with so much vanity—seemed to weigh him down like lead chains.
Every single sailor on the flight deck of the warship watched in dead silence. Men Grant had commanded with an iron fist, junior enlisted sailors he had berated and looked down upon, stood at the railings watching their Commander being perp-walked down the pier in handcuffs, his face bruised, his trousers stained with dirty oil, weeping like a broken child.
As they dragged him past Natalie, Grant lunged toward her one last time, his voice cracked and hollow.
"Natalie! Please! Don't let them take me! What am I supposed to do?! What will I have left?!"
Natalie adjusted her sunglasses, looking through the dark lenses at the pathetic wreckage of the man who had traded his family’s honor for cheap vanity.
"You have your mistress, Grant," Natalie said softly. "And now, you have twenty years to think about what a real man is."
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👉 *The black patrol vehicles sped away with sirens wailing, leaving behind a clean horizon—and the beginning of an entirely new life for Natalie and Ethan.*
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