One night, she pressed a blade so hard against my neck it split the skin. She leaned close and said,I could slit you open and no one would care.My blood soaked through the shirt I wore. That shirt is now in evidence, tested and proven. Her DNA is on the blade. That is Mira Golding—someone the world painted as fragile and innocent, but who was neither. She is a predator who hides behind crocodile tears, leaving scars that reach far deeper than any cut she ever made."
Gasps cut through the press corps. Reporters lurched to their feet, shouting questions into the noise.
I raised a hand, my voice hardening. "You don't need to take my word for it. Every document, every photograph, every recording has been authenticated, hash-matched, logged under chain of custody. Nothing fabricated. Nothing doctored. It is all real."
I let my eyes burn into the cameras, into the millions of strangers who had condemned me without hesitation. "I am not her abuser. I am her survivor. She is dangerous, not just to me, but to anyone who believes her mask."
The room detonated—chaotic, frenzied, a hundred voices demanding more. January stepped up, fielding questions with a precision that cut like steel, handing out QR codes that led to the evidence dossier, embargo lifted in real time. By thetime I left the stage, hashtags were flipping, headlines rewriting themselves mid-broadcast.
At first, the internet laughed.
Screenshots of me at the podium went viral within minutes, plastered with captions:
"Imagine getting beat up by 120 pounds of privilege??"
"Bro couldn't handle a manicure, and now he's crying abuse?"
"Not man enough to take it, but man enough to cry on stage."
Memes spread like wildfire — pictures of band-aids with my name, GIFs of sitcom characters getting smacked by girlfriends, TikToks of boys faking cries under the caption#RyderChallenge. It stung in ways I hadn't anticipated. Mockery was easier than empathy; jokes were safer than listening. For hours it felt like the world had decided I wasn't a victim but a punchline.
But then, the tide shifted. One journalist posted the court-verified medical scans: ribs cracked clean through, bruises mapped like continents. Survivors—men and women both—began flooding timelines with their own stories, raw and unfiltered. Each confession was a spark, and together they lit a fire that burned through the noise.
#StandWithMira drowned beneath a rising tide:
#MaleSurvivorsMatter. #BelieveRyder. #AbuseHasNoGender.
What began as ridicule began to turn. Influencers who mocked me deleted their posts. Comedians issued half-hearted apologies. Eventually, the news broke like thunder.
Senator Golding and his daughter Mira arrested on charges of conspiracy, perjury, evidence tampering, and defamation.
I sat frozen on January's office couch, adrenaline still crackling in my veins from the press conference and the arrest. My palms were damp, my chest tight, but my eyes refused to leave the screen. There she was—Mira—being marched in handcuffs, a cardigan hanging half-off her shoulder. Not the fragile victim she'd painted herself as, but a viper, eyes burning with venom, snapping at the officers who held her.
Then her father. The great Senator Golding. His jaw locked so hard I thought it might shatter, his suit wrinkled for the first time in his life, the cameras capturing every ounce of his fury and humiliation. Power bleeding out of him with every flashbulb.
The anchor's voice rolled over the footage: "In a stunning reversal, new forensic evidence directly contradicts Mira Golding's claims, raising serious questions about her father's role in the alleged cover-up. The State has confirmed criminal proceedings will begin immediately."
January clicked the remote, cutting the screen to black.
"Don't get comfortable," she said.
I turned toward her, heat crawling under my skin. "They're arrested. That should mean something."
"It means headlines. It means momentum. It doesnotmean they're buried." She leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers like she was at war council. "They'll make bail. Golding still has money, contacts, political capital. The wheels of justicedon't spin fast, Ryder—they grind. You're looking at a year, minimum, before trial. More if his lawyers drag it out."
I rubbed my face hard enough to hurt. "So what? They walk around free while I wait for a courtroom?"
"Yes." No hesitation. "They'll posture, spin, leak stories, smear you in subtler ways. But every step they take is one more nail in their coffin. You've already pulled the trigger; now it's attrition."
My chest felt tight again, like the walls were pressing in. "And me? What am I supposed to do for a year? Sit here and—"
"Live," she cut in. Her tone was flint. "Eat, sleep, breathe, heal. Keep yourself intact so when the trial comes, you don't stumble into it half-dead. You've done the public part. Let the prosecutors do their job."
I let out a bitter laugh. "You make it sound so easy."
"Nothing about this is easy." January's voice didn't lose its edge, but it dipped, just slightly, into something that wasn't pure steel. She opened a drawer, pulled out a small card, and slid it across the desk.
"I... I should probably apologize," she said, eyes fixed on the papers instead of me. "I know I've been harsh. I'm a lawyer—I zero in on strategy, on winning, on damage control. Sometimes I forget that cases are people, and you're not a case, Ryder. You're a person who's been through hell. So now that this storm is over, for a while at least, I want you to have this."
