“Unlike her predecessor,” Malcolm said, dryly, and we left it there, because we rarely said Damian’s name anymore and neither of us missed it.

We had, without ever deciding to, stopped saying his name.

It happened gradually, the way you stop favoring a healed injury, until one day you notice you have gone months without the limp.

He had wanted so badly to be unforgettable, to be the name that meant Cardinal Systems, and the quiet revenge the world took on that ambition, without any help from me, was to simply let him fade into a cautionary clause in a compliance slide, spoken by trainers who had never met him to new hires who never would.

Chapter 19 — A Footnote in the Company’s History