My sister punched me in the face and dragged me through her award party in front of 70 guests—then the hotel security director pressed PLAY on the footage she thought nobody had seen.

Two days later, my seabag was back in the passenger seat of my rental car as I drove toward Denver International Airport.

The local news outlets had spent forty-eight hours dissecting the collapse of Blake Innovations and the shocking video footage leaked by hotel security. The magazine that had named Fallon "Pioneer of the Year" had already published an online retraction, stripping her of the title and issuing an editorial apology for vetting her character so poorly. Her investors had initiated emergency votes of no confidence. Her board was demanding her resignation.

For the first time in her life, Fallon couldn't buy her way out of the narrative. The evidence was too clean, the video too damning, the public too unforgiving.

My flight back to Honolulu was smooth and uneventful.

As the Boeing 737 climbed above the snow-capped Rockies and leveled out into the endless blue expanse of the Pacific, I pressed my forehead against the cool cabin window and closed my eyes.

My lip was still slightly tender, the bruising beneath my eye fading into a faint yellowish green, but the physical pain felt distant, like an old injury that had finally knit itself back together properly.

When the plane touched down at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, the heavy, sweet scent of plumeria and salt water rushed in through the open cabin door.

I grabbed my seabag from the overhead bin, walked down the jet bridge, and stepped out into the bright Hawaiian sunshine.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, expecting another frantic text from my mother or a legal message from Fallon’s defense counsel.

Instead, it was a notification from my commanding officer at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam:

Chief Blake, your leave ends tomorrow at 0600. Hope you had a restful trip home. We have a new supply chain logistics audit waiting for your team on Monday.