The first violation didn’t come with alarms or warnings.
It arrived as a revision.
At 12:26 a.m., a soft chime slipped through the silence of the study. I glanced at the screen, expecting a note from Professor Valdez or another calculated message from Charles.
Instead, my document changed.
Not the cursor. Not formatting.
The argument itself.
I froze.
The paragraph I had rewritten three times—on coercive environments invalidating meaningful consent—had been replaced with something cleaner. Sharper. More insidious.
Consent remains valid when constrained, provided the constrained party retains rational capacity and access to at least one viable alternative, regardless of asymmetry in power.
My pulse dropped like a stone.
I hadn’t written that.
I scrolled frantically. Version histor
