#Chapter 66: The Image and the Weight

Richard We made the decision together. It wasn’t a planned conversation, or one of our increasingly rare closed-door strategy sessions. It happened late the night before, in the hallway outside the records annex. I was on my way to flag a discrepancy in a supply ledger, she was returning from an impromptu meeting with the outreach team. We almost passed each other without speaking, but something in her posture made me stop. "Are you avoiding me now, or just this hallway?" she asked, not looking up. I let the silence linger. She leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. "They think I should disappear for a while, don’t they? Go quiet. Let the gossip settle." I nodded slowly. "That’s what they want." She turned her head, finally meeting my eyes. "But what do you want?" "I want you visible," I said. "Untouchable. Unapologetic." She didn’t speak right away. Her fingers lingered on the file, knuckles white with tension. "So we don’t hide." "No," I said. "We don’t. We go