Chapter 9 - Why Her
The next stage began with a narrower problem. The consultant admits Voss sent the draft seeking influence on a future contract and later panicked. What mattered now was not how dramatic the discovery sounded, but whether it could survive someone else checking it.
By the time Camila Price understood what Commander Neil Voss wanted from the moment, the answer was obvious: anger, panic, a mistake. She gave him none of those things.
The important thing was not winning the argument in front of witnesses. The important thing was leaving the room with the facts intact.
"I don't need you to trust me," Camila Price said. "I need you to stop interfering with what can be checked."
"That sounds like an accusation."
"It sounds like a boundary."
Chief Ana Ruiz looked frightened, but fear did not make the statement weaker. If anything, it made the decision to speak more expensive.
She thought about Camila must clear her name without relying on the fact that her father is an admiral.. That desire could easily become a weakness if she tried to force the evidence to match it, so she kept writing down what she knew and what she only suspected.
One document did not prove the whole story. But it did something just as valuable: it disproved one part of the story that had been used against her.
Rumors moved faster than the investigation. By lunch, people who had never seen the evidence had strong opinions about it.
Instead, she slowed the scene down. She looked at what was physically present, what had been said out loud, and what could still be proved tomorrow.
"You want a simple story," Commander Neil Voss said.
Camila Price shook her head. "I want the true one. Those are not the same thing."
By the end of the review, nobody was relying on memory alone. The paper trail, access history, and witness accounts began to overlap.
There was a difference between being certain and being able to prove why. She kept returning to that difference whenever the story became personal.
The final finding did not repair everything. It did something smaller and more durable: it made the official record match what the evidence could actually support.
One witness remembered something differently than Camila Price did. Instead of fighting the discrepancy, she wrote it down. Later, a timestamp explained why both memories could be honest and still incomplete.
The practical consequence came quickly. The consultant admits Voss sent the draft seeking influence on a future contract and later panicked. Camila Price wrote down what had changed and what still had not been answered.
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The next conversation happened without an audience. Commander Neil Voss lowered his voice and tried to make the dispute sound personal, as if the real problem were Camila Price's tone. She kept bringing him back to the same concrete point: the envelope has a resealed slit and the leak printout points to Voss's login. Every time she did, his answer changed slightly.
Before the chapter of the day could close, one fact shifted the pressure again: Voss chose Camila because her family name would make the scandal look like favoritism.
