Chapter 9
Nora found another counterfeit pin in my desk.
I had forgotten it there.
She held it up.
“Bad pin?”
I looked at her.
“Not exactly.”
She frowned.
Adults hate questions children ask because simple answers expose lazy thinking.
“What does it do?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why Caleb had lots?”
Good.
I sat beside her.
“He gave them to people so they would feel like they belonged to his group.”
She thought.
“Like stickers?”
I almost smiled.
“Kind of.”
“Then bad sticker?”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“What people did because of it could be bad.”
She looked at the silver crest.
Then:
“Can I have?”
That surprised me.
“Why?”
“It shiny.”
Of course.
I removed the sharp backing.
Handed it to her.
Michael, standing nearby, almost laughed.
Good.
The symbol became a toy in thirty seconds.
Exactly what it deserved.
Nora clipped it onto her stuffed rabbit.
“Rabbit capo.”
I stared.
The entire shadow organization had just lost its mythology.
Perfect.
Later Caleb heard.
He became furious.
“You gave her one?”
“Yes.”
“Those pins meant something.”
“Apparently not enough.”
His jaw tightened.
“You’re mocking the men who wore them.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“I’m removing magic from metal.”
That line silenced him.
Because he understood.
His power depended on secrecy around the symbol.
Private ceremonies.
Special recognition.
A badge nobody outside the Line understood.
Now my four-year-old’s rabbit wore one.
The men could still believe in Caleb.
They could still prefer him.
But the pin itself no longer carried sacred weight.
I remembered my father doing something similar once.
An old captain obsessed over his chair at council.
Father let the kitchen staff use it during renovations.
The man nearly had a stroke.
I thought Dad was being cruel.
Maybe he understood symbols better than I did.
May you like
Anything people treat as holy can become a leash.
Sometimes the easiest way to break it is to let a child play with it.
