One day Selene's father was still a man with a company, a name, a future, the dangerous sort of hope that made him believe truth might actually matter, and the next day the walls started closing in from every side at once.
Suddenly there were scandals: Investigations. Embezzlement charges that seemed to rise out of the floorboards like mould. Sexual harassment allegations from employees who had apparently discovered their trauma only after someone rich enough had paid for their memory to improve.
"He lost everything," Phei said, his voice flat in that way that usually meant the feeling underneath was anything but. "The company. His reputation. The money that was supposed to keep his family safe. All of it. Piece by piece, scandal by scandal, until there was nothing left but a broke man with a dead daughter and the kind of stubbornness that gets written on gravestones."
They sold the house after not so long.
Left Paradise.
