The same image that showed a decorated captain consulting on a case could be made to show a criminal’s girlfriend visiting her connections.

For three months I had watched her build it, post by anonymous post, and I had done nothing, said nothing, corrected nothing — which had cost me more discipline than the party ever would.

Because the thing about a smear is that every instinct screams at you to defend yourself, to explain, to produce the truth and wave it in the air.

And every time you do, you dignify the lie, you enter its frame, you let it set the terms.

I had learned, in a different kind of war, that sometimes the strongest move available is to let your enemy keep building, to let them grow confident, to let them commit more and more of themselves to a structure you already know is going to fall.

So I let Seraphina build.