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I close my fingers around hers before looking at Claire.

“Pull every public record from that time, including contracts, purchases, corporate filings, investor correspondence, and documented security work. Make sure every organization connected to those projects knows exactly what we’re releasing before reporters start calling them.”

Claire checks another message on her tablet. “Some probably already have.”

“Then they need to hear from us before they hear a distorted version from someone else.”

She nods and gets up to start making calls.

Theo remains in his seat, watching me in the way he does whenever he’s waiting for the rest of a plan. “You’ve decided something else.”

“I have.”

He folds his arms. “I recognize the expression. It usually creates work.”

“That’s why you’re here.”

“One day I’m going to renegotiate my contract around your personal revelations.”

Emma squeezes my hand and I turn back to the screen, where Spencer’s version of my missing years still fills the display.

“Schedule the board meeting,” I tell Theo. “After that, communications prepares the full statement with the timeline and records.”

Theo reaches for his phone. “You’re finally going public.”

“I’m correcting the record.”

Claire leaves the room to start making calls. Theo begins coordinating the board meeting, and Emma keeps her hand in mine as I pull the timeline onto my laptop.

Contracts, equipment purchases, shelter projects, investor correspondence, and photographs fill the screen with a time period I’ve spent avoiding whenever anyone asked about it.

I open the first folder and send it to her.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Emma

October 1st

My phone starts vibrating before I make it through Wolf Shield’s front doors, and by the time the elevator closes behind me, Lena has sent three screenshots from reporters who have started contacting employees directly.

The first asks whether anyone at Wolf Shield ever questioned Bane’s early funding.

The second wants anonymous comments about his “secretive past.”

The third has somehow found an engineer who left the company four years ago and wants to know whether he remembers Bane discussing charities during executive meetings.

I forward all three to communications and hit the button for twenty-six and another message appears.

Claire: Client inquiries are picking up. Conference room in ten?

Emma: I’m coming up now.

The elevator begins moving, and my reflection in the mirrored wall brings back mornings I spent in another building watching headlines multiply while Spencer’s communications team worked out which version of him would cause the least damage.

I used to stand beside him during those conversations.

Whenever an interview went badly or a photograph created the wrong impression, his publicist would gather everyone into a room and build a cleaner story.