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Theo returns to his chair and opens his laptop. “The board meeting is scheduled for eleven thirty.”

“What are they asking for?”

“Reassurance that this won’t become a financial problem.”

“They’ll get facts.”

“I was hoping you’d give them considerably more.”

Emma glances toward him. “You seem disappointed nobody’s letting you declare war.”

Theo gives her an offended look. “I have offered several productive solutions.”

“You suggested threatening half the media.”

“Productive can be interpreted broadly.”

The exchange dies when Claire returns and sends a new article to the wall screen. “This one changes the situation.”

I read the opening paragraph.

An anonymous source claiming familiarity with my activities during the missing years says I deliberately approached shelters whose boards included wealthy executives, then converted those relationships into commercial opportunities when I launched Wolf Shield.

The article quotes nobody from the shelters. It doesn’t include a director, a volunteer, or any woman I helped, it simply uses a source who claims to know what I was doing.

Theo leans closer to the screen. “Spencer.”

“He’s the most likely source,” Emma says, keeping her attention on the article.

I continue reading and memories from that time pull against the version on the wall.

Spencer knew almost nothing about where I went after I resigned. I stopped answering calls from most people connected to his world, changed my number after several months, and never gave anyone an explanation for leaving.

Questions about Celeste would’ve been worse, so I kept traveling and found shelters that needed security work because repairing a door or replacing a camera gave me a job I could finish before moving on to the next one.

Those projects brought referrals, the referrals became commercial contracts, and somewhere along the way the work developed into Wolf Shield without giving me any reason to explain the private history behind it.

The article on the wall takes advantage of everything I chose to leave out.

Emma turns away from the screen and studies me. “What are you thinking?”

“That keeping it private made his job easier.”

Theo frowns. “Privacy doesn’t make you responsible for what he invented.”

“I know.”

“Then don’t start blaming yourself for Spencer being Spencer.”

I look at him before turning back toward the article. “I’m not blaming myself. I’m recognizing that I left him an empty space he could use.”

Emma understands what I mean almost immediately. “You’ve spent years keeping that time to yourself, so he gets to suggest whatever he wants happened there.”

“Exactly.”

I kept those months private because they belonged to a part of my life I didn’t want strangers discussing. Leaving Spencer, grieving Celeste, and trying to keep the promise I made before she died were personal long before Wolf Shield existed.

Even after the company grew, I kept its earliest history stripped down to contracts, investors, and public filings because explaining the full story meant explaining why I spent that time moving through shelters.