“Do you have any idea who I am?” he sneered as he yanked her hair, certain he held all the power. What he never imagined was that she was the commanding officer of Navy SEALs—and his arrogance had just sealed his fate.
“Do you have any idea who I am?” he sneered as he yanked her hair, certain he held all the power. What he never imagined was that she was the commanding officer of Navy SEALs—and his arrogance had just sealed his fate. The insult did not arrive loudly at first, nor did it come with the kind of theatrical aggression that would have justified an immediate reaction, because the most dangerous forms of disrespect rarely announce themselves as threats; they slip in quietly, coated in confidence, delivered by people who believe the world has already agreed with them, and that was exactly how Staff Corporal Mason Rourke spoke when he glanced at the woman standing near the access control building at Camp Pendleton and decided, without evidence or curiosity, that she did not belong. “They only let you in because of your daddy’s name,” he said, his voice casual, dismissive, the tone of someone who had never been meaningfully challenged, never forced to measure his assumptions against rea...