Isla doesn’t sing for catharsis; she sings through it. She’s proof that some artists don’t survive to tell the story — they tell the story to survive.

The Ryker myth suggests that only a certain kind of man can “get things done,” and the rest of us should be grateful enough to stop asking questions. That bargain is how corners erode. It’s how a city wakes up twenty years later and wonders why the same names appear on every tender list.