She looked at Walter.

He looked at the minutes in front of him.

For the first time, I realized how many people had allowed silence to become policy.

They had not all forged documents or threatened Lauren.

Some had simply decided that not knowing was professionally convenient.

Afterward, our head of internal audit, a woman named Priya Nair, approached me in the corridor.

She had joined the group only two years earlier and was visibly uncomfortable.

“There are records from the transfer,” she said.