The Master Chief took one more step forward.
His voice wasn’t loud, but the ballroom was so silent that every word reached the chandeliers.
“Security,” he said.
“Detain that man for striking an admiral.”
Derek stared at him.
Then at me.
Then back at him.
“An admiral?”
My mother’s champagne flute tilted in her hand.
A thin line of champagne ran across her knuckles, but she seemed not to notice.
The Master Chief’s gaze never left Derek.
“Yes.”
Behind him, four hundred SEALs, veterans, and officers remained standing.
Nobody laughed.
Nobody looked confused.
They knew exactly who I was.
Patricia didn’t.
She looked at the two silver stars on my shoulders as though seeing them for the first time.
“No,” she said.
“That’s impossible.”
Derek gave a nervous laugh.
“This is my sister.
You don’t understand.
She does this.
She exaggerates things.”
My lawyer reached us just as the two security officers positioned themselves on either side of him.
She didn’t speak to my family first.
She looked at me.
“Are you injured?”
“I’m fine.”
“Do you want the incident documented?”
“Yes.”
That one word finally frightened my mother more than the uniforms surrounding her.
“Now, wait,” Patricia said.
“This is a family misunderstanding.”
My lawyer glanced toward the security camera above the ballroom doors.
“No,” she said calmly.
“It was an assault in a room full of witnesses.”
Derek’s face reddened.
“You can’t detain me because I slapped my own sister.”
One of the security officers answered before I could.
“Keep your hands where I can see them, sir.”
He reached for Derek’s arm.
Derek jerked away instinctively.
Four hundred people watched him make the worst possible decision.
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