Chapter 860
Seeing him approach, Melanie’s survival instincts kicked in. She burst into tears, her voice a pathetic, theatrical wail.
“Colonel!” she sobbed, pointing a trembling, muddy finger at Caroline. “It was her! She attacked me for no reason! She’s crazy! She tried to kill me!”
She spun her web of lies, a desperate attempt to paint herself as the victim in front of the highest authority on the field.
Sloane walked over, her face unreadable. She said nothing, simply watching Caroline with a cold, appraising stare, as if judging a piece of damaged equipment.
Caroline stood alone in the center of the chaos, covered in mud and blood, her heart a frozen stone in her chest, and waited for the judgment she knew was coming.
Melanie’s desperate, lying sobs echoed in the sudden silence of the firing range. She was crafting a narrative of victimhood, a last-ditch effort to salvage something from her utter defeat.
Before Jarrod could speak, another voice, raw with pain and fury, cut through her performance.
“You’re a liar!”
Brenna O’Malley, supported by two medics who had just arrived, was on her feet. She held up her right hand, now grotesquely swollen and turning a deep, ugly purple.
“She started it!” Brenna shouted, pointing her good hand at Melanie. “She stomped on my hand! She broke it! Caroline was protecting me!”
The evidence was undeniable. The accusation was direct.
Melanie’s face went pale. “She’s your friend! Of course you’d lie for her!”
As the two women shouted, another voice tried to intervene. It was Hailey Shaw, the quiet one, the traitor. “Please, everyone,” she pleaded weakly. “We’re all on the same team…” Her words were a whisper in a hurricane, completely ignored.
Jarrod’s expression remained like carved stone. He seemed indifferent to the accusations and denials.
He turned to Instructor Sharpe, who had finally regained some semblance of control. His voice was cold, impartial, and absolute.
“Instructor. There was a fight on your training ground. All participants, Thompson, Thorne, and O’Malley, who initiated the verbal confrontation, are at fault.”
The verdict stunned Caroline and Brenna into silence. He was blaming all of them.
“Their punishment will be a three-hour weighted stand at attention,” Jarrod commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument. “Execute immediately.”
As if on cue, a cold, miserable drizzle began to fall from the dark sky.
The judgment was a work of brutal genius. On the surface, it was perfectly fair, punishing everyone involved. But in reality, it was deeply biased. For Caroline, whose endurance was legendary, it was a manageable ordeal. For Melanie, exhausted, beaten, and emotionally shattered, it was a sentence to a special kind of hell.
Sloane understood the calculus instantly, but she couldn’t object. The ruling was, by the book, unimpeachable.
Jarrod gave his order, then turned and walked away without a single glance at Caroline. K.C. Bell fell into step behind him.
Instructor Sharpe, grim-faced, carried out the command. She strapped weighted vests onto the three women and positioned them in the center of the muddy field as the drizzle turned into a steady, chilling rain.