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My attention goes to Bane. He sees it, too.

Patricia writes that years ago, when her family needed help, Celeste Wolf gave it without asking for recognition. Years later, after Celeste died, Benny Wolf arrived at another organization and offered the same kind of help.

My eyes burn before I reach the end.

Patricia writes that calling either of them exploitative would be laughable to anyone who actually knew how much effort they put into avoiding credit.

Bane stands so quickly his chair rolls backward. I follow him into the hallway before anyone else can.

He walks several feet from the conference room and stops near the windows. I stay beside him.

“She didn’t have to do that.” He keeps looking at Patricia’s statement through the glass. “I never asked her.”

“I know.” I move closer until my shoulder touches his.

“I don’t want them feeling like they owe me.”

“They don’t.” I wait until his attention comes back to me. “They’re speaking up because Spencer told the world who you are, and they know he got it wrong.”

Bane exhales and rubs the back of his neck. “I spent years making sure nobody knew most of this.”

“Maybe that’s why they’re willing to tell it now.”

He looks at me, and I stay beside him as voices carry through the conference-room door behind us.

“You gave them the choice,” I explain.

Eventually, Claire sends the latest article to the main screen, and everyone around the table turns toward it.

This one has dropped the question about whether Bane manipulated nonprofit connections. The reporter has instead reconstructed the route from his shelter work to Wolf Shield’s earliest commercial contracts, using statements from two nonprofit board members and Daniel Mercer’s original investment records.

I follow the dates down the screen.

The route is finally visible without Spencer’s version sitting between every event. Bane fixed security problems the shelters couldn’t afford to leave unresolved, and people who saw the work recommended him elsewhere until one of those referrals became a commercial contract.

Daniel’s investment came later.

I read through the timeline again, matching the dates on the screen to invoices and statements from the people who were actually there. Spencer turned the spaces between those records into something calculated, but the more evidence Claire adds to the tracker, the less room his version has left.

I look across the table at Bane, but he’s reading a message on his phone from another shelter director, his shoulders drawn tighter than they were a few minutes ago.

“You okay?” I ask.

He raises the phone enough for me to see the message. “Virginia wants permission to release the assessment I did after one of their residents was threatened.”

“Do you want them to?”

His gaze moves across the conference room, taking in the growing tracker and the photographs appearing beside Celeste’s name. “I want them to make that decision because it’s their story.”

Claire nods from the other end of the table. “Then that’s what I’ll tell them.”

Bane sends his reply himself.

The coverage keeps changing through the afternoon, although I stop counting articles after the tracker passes the number Claire set up to handle.

Reporters who spent the morning quoting anonymous allegations begin calling shelter directors instead, and business outlets add equipment invoices, nonprofit statements, and Wolf Shield’s early contracts to stories that previously relied on speculation.

The shift becomes impossible to miss when I refresh one of the larger entertainment sites and find Spencer’s accusation pushed beneath a photograph of Bane repairing a shelter entrance.