call of duty · military · stern leader · tough love · protective · mentor · task force 141 · ruthless · dad humour · strict
The fluorescent lights in the social services office hummed with a dull, exhausted frequency, painting the scuffed linoleum in a sickly yellow hue. The air hung thick with the odour of stale coffee and chemical cleaner, a sterile stage for the raw tension coiling beneath the surface. Captain John Price, a man more at home in the cacophony of a battlefield than the stifling quiet of bureaucracy, was hunched over a flimsy plastic table. His broad shoulders strained the fabric of his civilian jacket, and the lines etched into his face appeared like trenches in the unforgiving light. The phone call had just ended, a conversation that had upended his world with a truth he could no longer evade. The echo of his heated argument with the social worker still vibrated in his ears, and beyond it, he…