But underneath the hurt was something steadier, because I had known this was coming, and I had chosen it — chosen the clean burn over the slow rot, chosen the version where the truth came out on the record instead of in a blackmailer’s ledger.

You cannot save a thing built on what Whitby Capital was built on.

You can only decide whether it falls honestly or dishonestly.

I had decided.

My father called me that afternoon, the day of the raids, and it was the first honest conversation the two of us had ever had.

He was being questioned; without the ledger in the government’s hands the case against him personally was thin, built mostly on Silvia’s furious accusations and thirty-year-old ghosts, but he was frightened and hollowed out and, for the first time in my life, without a performance to hide behind.