He needed it.
If I struck him in that hallway, I would become the unstable soldier he had already described to Miller.
The evidence would disappear beneath the spectacle.
The story would stop being about what they had done to Tessa and become a story about what I had done in public.
A man like Victor survives by deciding what everyone else will do next.
So I did something else.
Victor stepped closer.
“You’re letting your emotions control you,” he said. “You’re just a soldier. Leave this to people who understand investigations. Go back to your base. My family will handle Tessa.”
The word family sounded obscene in his mouth.
Dominic moved in front of me.
He was taller than I was and confident in the way men become confident when consequences have always stopped at someone else’s door.
“You heard my father,” he said. “Get lost, government dog.”
