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Lena reads over my shoulder until she reaches the section claiming Bane “waited in the wings” while Spencer and I were still together.

“Oh, that’s disgusting.”

I keep scrolling.

The article mentions the dressing room at the charity gala.

My thumb stops over the paragraph about the dressing room because very few people knew Bane found me there that night.

Spencer knew, though, because he’d questioned Bane afterward about disappearing from his post, and seeing that detail in print strips away whatever doubt I might’ve had about where the story came from.

Lena watches me carefully. “You know who did this.”

“Yes.”

She waits for me to explain.

I lock my phone and place it on the table before I do anything stupid with it. “Spencer.”

Her expression hardens. “You have proof?”

“Nothing I can use.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

I look at her.

Lena folds her arms. “Do you know?”

“Yes.”

Saying his name makes the anger easier to use, especially when I scroll back through an article built from the same tricks Spencer relied on for years.

He chose which photographs reached the public and let his team turn missed anniversaries or canceled vacations into scheduling conflicts, while my anger became exhaustion and our arguments became proof that we were passionate.

I helped him maintain that version of us because telling the truth meant admitting how much I’d accepted behind closed doors, and even after I left, he tried to package our breakup as another misunderstanding he could fix in front of cameras.

Reading this now doesn’t make me want to hide from what people might think of me. It makes me want to stop helping him decide what they’re allowed to know.

My phone vibrates again. This time it’s Bane.

Bane: I’m coming downstairs.

Lena sees the message and sighs. “I assume the building’s about to enter lockdown.”

“Probably.”

“Should I warn everyone?”

Despite everything, a laugh catches me off guard. “I don’t know.”

Lena reaches for my hand before I can get up. “What do you want to do?”

The question keeps me in my chair.

I used to make decisions like this with Spencer already in my head, predicting how angry he’d get and whether defending myself would make things worse. I catch myself starting the same calculation now and shut it down before he gets another say in a decision that belongs to me.

I turn the article toward Lena. “This time, I think I tell the truth.”