He moved back to his desk and pressed a button on his intercom. “Security, standby.”
Then, he looked at her with a gaze of absolute contempt. He wanted to humiliate her before he destroyed her. He wanted to strip away her dignity before he took her freedom.
“There is no way out of this room for you, Elena. Not as an officer.”
His eyes raked over her, cold and dismissing.
“Remove your uniform,” the Admiral commanded.
The silence that followed was deafening. It hung in the air, heavy and violent. It was a power play of the highest order—an attempt to reduce her to nothing, to shame her, to physically symbolize the stripping of her rank and honor.
“Excuse me, sir?” Elena asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“You heard me,” Sterling hissed, leaning in, his face inches from hers. “You are a disgrace to that uniform. You are under arrest for espionage and insubordination. I want you to strip those insignia off and place them on my desk before Security drags you out of here in cuffs. I want you to know exactly what it feels like to be nothing.”
The Turn of the Tide
For a second, Elena looked down at the floor. Sterling thought she was breaking. He thought he saw the tremble of a woman defeated.
But she wasn’t trembling from fear. She was trembling from adrenaline.
