After that, Sam stopped shaping events and started following them. Court hearings. Auctions. Regulatory meetings. Places where power hid behind procedure and harm was disguised as protocol. Watching became safer than speaking, even if it never felt right.
He learned to listen again. Not to official statements, but to pauses. Not to explanations, but to reactions. Truth still surfaced, he found, it just did so indirectly, carried in behavior rather than words.