She did not obey it.

She had spent weeks, quietly, preparing for exactly this room, and not only the evidence in the box; she had prepared herself, practicing in mirrors the simple, radical act of standing at her full height while people stared.

Because she understood something her father did not.

He believed this was a fight about documents — his forged file against her real one, and may the better paperwork win.

It was that.

But it was also, and more deeply, a fight about whether she was allowed to be a person in a room, and she had decided, walking through those doors, that she would win that fight first, in front of everyone, before a single page was read.