Fear, dressed as ethics

The quiet fear that shaped my morality was born the night the police took my father, and I’ve been mistaking it for virtue ever since.

I was eleven when the police kicked our door open. They dragged my father out while my mother screamed and my sister and I stood barefoot in the hallway, learning what happens to people who take what they want. I didn’t know it then, but that night would become the quiet dictator of my life.

Decades later, when I was a corporal handling internal communications for the Royal Guards, a bar downtown tried to buy access to the barracks. They offered perks, favors, the kind of things a young soldier isn’t supposed to be offered.