What had finally broken him was not conscience alone but arithmetic — he had realized that when the fraud came apart, and he could feel it coming apart, Seraphina would need someone below her to blame, and that someone would be him.

He had come to me out of fear, not virtue, and I had not pretended otherwise.

I did not offer him a clean conscience or a reduced sentence or a hero’s role.

I offered him only the truth, and the chance to be the man who told it rather than the man it was told about.

That is usually enough, I have found.

People imagine whistleblowers as crusaders, but most of them are ordinary, frightened people who reach a moment where the truth becomes less dangerous than the lie, and simply need someone to promise they will not be alone when they tell it.