Chapter 8 - The Interrogation Room
The interrogation room at the Department of Justice oversight annex smelled faintly of stale coffee and industrial carpet cleaner. A single, heavy wooden table sat in the center of the room, illuminated by a humming overhead lamp.
I sat on one side of the table, my hands folded neatly in my lap. Across from me sat a senior compliance investigator named Vance—a sharp-eyed woman with silvering hair and a tailored gray suit that screamed bureaucratic authority.
Colonel Graves sat quietly in the corner of the room, barred from speaking as an active military witness under preliminary review. My father and mother were being held in separate suites down the hall.
"Let's review the timeline one more time, Ms. Whitaker," Investigator Vance said, sliding a thick manila folder across the table. Inside were faded photographs, encrypted operational manifests from 2014, and a medical discharge form bearing my signature—a signature I had no memory of writing.
"My father told me the file was a security measure," I said evenly, my voice steady despite the exhaustion clawing at my nerves. "He told me I was being protected from external threats."
Vance gave a dry, knowing smile. She opened the folder to a handwritten log entry stamped with the emblem of Task Force 7-Delta.
"Your father’s private security firm has received over fourteen million dollars in unallocated defense contracts over the past decade," Vance said, tapping a finger against a financial summary sheet. "And every single transfer traces back to an offshore routing account tied to the exact same cipher you carry on your forearm. Ms. Whitaker, your tattoo isn't just an identifying unit mark. It's an encryption key. A living decryption seed for a multi-million-dollar slush fund your father and his former unit commanders built during the Balkan operations."
The room seemed to tilt slightly on its axis.
All this time, I had imagined a grand spy thriller—assassins, government secrets, high-stakes geopolitical conspiracies. But the ugly truth was far more mundane, and infinitely more painful.
It was about money.
Greed. Embezzlement wrapped in a flag and disguised as military honor. My parents hadn't kept me caged because I was a dangerous operative; they had kept me locked in a perpetual state of invisibility because I was their walking, breathing bank vault. Every time my mother made me feel small, every time my father treated me like a broken appliance, they were protecting their investment.
"And Ryan?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. "Did my brother know?"
Vance hesitated, closing the folder slowly. "Captain Whitaker's records show he was fast-tracked through OCS using funds from that exact offshore account. Whether he knew the source of the money... that's still under investigation."
The door behind me clicked open.
A young federal aide stepped into the room, leaning down to whisper urgently in Investigator Vance's ear. Vance's expression tightened. She looked up from her notes, fixing her gaze directly on me.
"Ms. Whitaker, your father just exercised his right to legal counsel," Vance said. "He isn't answering questions. Instead, his attorney has filed an emergency injunction claiming that you are a mentally unstable dependent suffering from prolonged dissociative episodes—and demanding your immediate return to your family's custody under medical supervision."
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My blood ran cold. Before I could answer, the door swung open wider, and two uniformed federal marshals stepped into the room.
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