CHAPTER 125 — THE COST OF STANDING
The first mistake happened before sunrise.
It was small. Contained. The kind of error that once would have been corrected quietly, absorbed into a system that prized smooth continuity over visible accountability. A misaligned approval. A supply request cleared without cross-verification. A decision made too quickly, by someone still learning the difference between decisiveness and haste.
This time, it did not disappear.
By mid-morning, the consequences surfaced—not as crisis, but as friction. Deliveries arrived incomplete. Timelines slipped. Questions began circulating, not upward, but outward.
Who signed this?
Why was it cleared?
What assumption was made?
Elena received the report without commentary attached.
No one asked her to intervene.
No one asked her to correct it.
