Chapter 50 Chapter Fifty

• KAI
• The moment I see the post, something dark and wordless settles into my chest and refuses to move.
• I am standing in my office with my phone in my hand and the morning light coming in flat and grey through the blinds, and I am reading the comments beneath a fifteen-second clip that shows Crystal slapping a woman, nothing before it and nothing after it, just that single isolated moment stripped of every truth that gave it meaning. The comments keep loading. Thousands of them already, each one delivered with the particular cruelty of people who have decided they are righteous.