She had started because she had learned, the hard way, that in this building her word was worth nothing against a manager’s, that a document she had filed could simply be declared never to have existed, that the truth as she experienced it would be erased the moment it became inconvenient to someone above her.

A person does not build that habit unless the system has taught her, over and over, that she will not be believed.

Every photograph in that folder was a small monument to a moment when Bea had been called a liar about her own life and had quietly resolved never to be defenseless in that particular way again.

And the cruelest part — the part that made Wescott’s face burn — was that she had been right. Not five minutes ago, someone in his company had wiped the official server clean, had reached into the machine and deleted the record precisely because the record was damning.

The formal system, the one that was supposed to protect employees, had done exactly what Bea’s whole life had trained her to expect: it had made the evidence disappear.

And the only thing standing between the truth and total erasure was a housekeeper’s cracked phone and a cloud folder she had built, alone, out of years of not being believed.