My duffel bag hit the floor with a heavy thud that echoed through the silent entryway. The air inside my Chesapeake home didn't smell like sweet laundry or fresh coffee. I

Three days later, I sat in a high-security interrogation room at the federal courthouse in Norfolk.

Behind the two-way mirror, prosecutors prepared their primary deposition. Across the steel table sat Derek, wearing an orange jumpsuit, his hands cuffed to a chain around his waist.

He looked pitiful—his eyes bloodshot, his skin pale, his posture completely shattered.

“Hannah,” he rasped, looking up at me. “Please tell me Lily is okay.”

“Don't you dare speak her name,” I said, my voice echoing off the concrete walls.

“I didn't mean for her to get hurt!” he sobbed, tears spilling down his face. “Mom said Mrs. Price would check on her every morning! I gave Mom five hundred dollars to pay a private sitter, but she kept the money for her cruise wardrobe!”

“You left a four-year-old girl in a locked house for three days, Derek,” I said coldly. “You knew no one was coming.”

“I was desperate!” he shouted, straining against his handcuffs. “The business was failing! I owed money to dangerous people! They threatened to burn down my mother’s house!”

“So you traded my military security credentials to foreign agents?”

Derek looked down at the table, unable to hold my gaze.

“They approached me six months ago,” he confessed in a low whisper. “Right after you deployed. A man named Alexi called my office. He knew everything about you—your rank, your clearance level, your schedule. He offered fifty thousand dollars up front just to install that server rack in our hallway.”

My intelligence training instantly flagged the name. Alexi.

“He told me it was just encrypted commercial data,” Derek continued. “He said as long as I kept the server running and didn't touch it, nobody would ever know. But then Mom found out. She demanded a cut. She wanted to pay off her credit cards and take the family on that cruise.”

“And you used my child as a shield,” I said, leaning across the table until I was inches from his face. “You knew if the police were called for child neglect, they would discover the closet. You risked your daughter's life to cover your treason.”

The door opened, and Federal Prosecutor Sarah Jenkins stepped inside, holding a thick leather folder.

“Mr. Montgomery,” Jenkins announced coldly, setting the folder down. “Your mother and sister have just signed full confession statements in exchange for reduced sentencing charges.”

Derek froze. “What?”

“Patricia Montgomery claims you forced her to take the money and that she had no knowledge of the server or the child neglect,” Jenkins stated, smiling thinly. “She placed the entire financial and criminal responsibility squarely on your shoulders.”

Derek let out a gut-wrenching howl of betrayal, burying his face in his cuffed hands.