I type until my coffee goes cold. Delete entire paragraphs. Rewrite them. Strip away the corporate language until what’s left is just the truth.
Raw and ugly and mine.
When Amara wakes up around noon, she finds me still at the desk.
“You look like hell,” she observes.
“Accurate.” I rotate my neck, feeling it crack. “I’m writing an internal memo.”
“Can I?” she nods at the screen.
I gesture toward the laptop.
She crosses to the desk, and I catch myself tracking the way her tank top rides up as she leans over my shoulder to read the screen. The soft curve of her lower back. The faint bruise on her hip from where I gripped her too hard last night.
Concentrate!
“This is... unexpected,” she says quietly.
“It’snecessary,” I counter.
After a moment, she adds: “You’re naming Leena.”
“I have to,” I tell her.
“No. You don’t.” She straightens. “There’s no legal requirement. No procedural obligation. You could generalize. Say ‘affected parties.’ Or ‘collateral damage.’”
“That’s not accountability,” I reply. “That’s PR. I want to take full responsibility for what happened. This... this is the only way.”
“You’re exposing yourself,” she warns.
“That’s the point.”
“The board could use this against you.”
“They could.” I save the latest draft. “But I’m done building credibility on a foundation of silence.” I swallow hard. “Is it enough?”
She doesn’t answer right away. I watch her process, see the legal mind sorting through implications and consequences and precedents. The Amara who spent years protecting herself from people like me, weighing whether this gesture is real or just another performance.
“It’s enough,” she agrees finally.
She holds my gaze for a moment, then she nods once and heads for the kitchen to make coffee.
In the kitchen, Amara and I suddenly fuck like we’re trying to burn something out of ourselves. It’s rough and desperate and afterward she curls against my chest and I think about howstrange it is that this woman, thisparticularwoman, is the one who makes me want to be better.
Not because she demands it. Not because she threatens to leave if I don’t.
Just because she’s here. And shesees me.
And she hasn’t run away again.
Yet.
Before leaving for the clinic, I print out a copy for her, then I hit send.
The responses start coming within the hour. Shock from some. Cautious respect from others. A few resignation threats that I expected and don’t particularly care about.
Then, at 2:47 PM, an email from Priya Anand. The data analyst who joined the transparency program two years ago. The one who asked, during her interview, why I cared so much about accountability systems.
