I gave you everything!
You can’t let them take your husband to a military prison in chains!”
I walked over to where my husband lay pinned.
I stood looking down at the man who had placed those divorce papers beside my breakfast plate three weeks ago and told me I was nothing.
I reached down to my left wrist, checking the Admiralty Gold Chronometer:
*tack… tack… tack…*
Then I reached into my briefcase, pulled out the gold wedding band Preston had given me seven years ago—the ring I had taken off my finger the moment the divorce papers touched my table:
*SLIP.*
I dropped the gold band straight into the center of the wet ink smeared across Preston Hale’s cheek:
*TINK.*
“You told me three weeks ago, Preston,” Captain Amelia Mercer whispered softly:
“That I contributed nothing.”
“You told me I managed the home, but owned no equity.”
I leaned down until my clear slate-gray eyes filled his entire field of vision:
“You were right about one thing, Preston.”
“I managed the home.”
“And now…
I am auditing the deed.”
“Your sixty billion dollars in carried interest is forfeited under Article Three, Section Three of the United States Constitution.”
“And tonight…”
I pointed toward Uncle David:
“…the transport flies straight to Fort Leavenworth.”
CLICK-CLACK.
The two federal marshals hauled Arthur Hale, Preston Hale, Vivian Hale, and Martin Voss to their feet by their armpits, marching them down the center aisle of Courtroom 4-B in waist-chains and leg-irons toward the armored tactical transport BearCats waiting on the judicial plaza:
*SCREEECH.*
Behind them were marched their forged prenuptial agreements, their encrypted offshore banking tokens, and their twelve-million-dollar factoring ledgers, sealed inside heavy forensic evidence drums:
*CRASH-ROAR-PANT.*
The double doors of Courtroom 4-B were secured behind them with an authoritative, airtight, pneumatic *THUD*.
The courtroom returned to silence.
The only sound left was the sixty-cycle hum of the ventilation scrubbers, the steady breathing of Admiral Mercer beside me, and the rhythmic *tack… tack… tack* of Arthur Mercer’s chronometer watch on my wrist.
Judge Rebecca Morrison looked down from the bench, her face pale, her hands resting flat on the mahogany blotter:
“Case dismissed with prejudice,” Judge Morrison struck her gavel with an authoritative, concussive *BANG*:
*BANG.*
“Captain Mercer… take the command.”
I brought my right hand up to my temple, executing a razor-sharp, textbook military salute:
“Yes, Your Honor.”
I turned toward Uncle David:
“Is the White Hawk turning at Andrews?”
Admiral David Mercer bared his teeth in a cold, terrifying line of white bone:
“The transport touches down on the East Front Plaza of the Supreme Court in forty minutes, Amelia.”
“The Chief Justice is waiting in his robes.”
“Let’s go audit his bench.”
***
02:18:44 EST.
Beneath the neoclassical marble foundations of One First Street Northeast, eighty feet below the Great Hall of the Supreme Court of the United States, lies Sub-Level Three // The High Judicial Continuity Crypt.
The walls are not marble; they are four-foot-thick blocks of native Virginia greenstone and reinforced blast-concrete, lined with high-voltage copper busbars and industrial air conduits humming in a continuous, sixty-cycle subterranean thrum:
*whirrr-clank… whirrr-clank.*
The tactical stack moved with fluid, synchronized velocity down the concrete corridor:
Twelve SOG operators in sterile dark-charcoal Nomex drysuits, Level IV boron-carbide plate carriers, and Ops-Core ballistic helmets fitted with panoramic night-vision brackets folded onto their foreheads.
Across their chests hung suppressed SIG Sauer MCX Rattlers, their weapon-mounted PEQ-15 infrared lasers cutting through the humid bunker air in twelve razor-sharp spears of invisible light.
