27. The Public Truth
Chapter twenty-seven
The Public Truth
Atticus POV
The podium is a stupid place to stand.
I've stood at enough of them to know. Post-game pressers, sponsor announcements, league events where they hand you a smile and a script and expect you to deliver both on cue. I've never been good at it. Too much stillness required. Too much eye contact with people who want something from you.
This one is different.
This one, I asked for.
The room is full. More press than I expected, which means Delia earned her fee. Cameras lined up like a firing squad along the back wall. Reporters with tablets and recorders and the particular hungry energy of people who showed up expecting blood.
They're going to be disappointed.
I set both hands on the podium. I don't grip it. I let my weight settle and I look out at the room and I take one breath, the same breath I take on the ice before a face-off, and I start talking.
"I'm not here to manage a narrative."
The room goes quiet. Someone expected different first words.
"I'm here because I owe this to the people I didn't protect fast enough, and because the version of me that would've waited for lawyers and PR to sanitize this isn't the version I want to be anymore."
I watch a few pens start moving.
"I did not organize, encourage, or participate in the hazing of Jonah Pike or any other Tridents rookie.
I reported the incident to the league on the night it occurred.
There is a timestamp. There is a paper trail.
My legal team will provide it." I pause.
Let it land. "What I also did was spend two years watching old-guard culture eat its way through this locker room and decide it wasn't my fight to pick until it landed in front of me.
That decision was wrong. Stopping something is not the same as preventing it. I know the difference now."
The room is still. Not the settled kind of still. The held-breath kind.
"I accept the conduct warning. I don't accept the characterization. There's a difference and I'm done pretending there isn't."
A hand goes up. I nod at it.
"Captain Knox, can you address the allegations from Brett Maddox specifically—"
"Brett 'Razor' Maddox's statement is false." I say it flat. No heat. "He filed it after I reported the hazing and after his own behavior became part of the investigation. The timeline is documented. I'll let the facts answer him."
Another hand.
"What about your relationship with Sienna Hart? Has the league's involvement—"
I cut that one off too. Not rudely. Just clearly.
"I'm going to talk about Sienna." I look down for half a second. Not uncertainty. Just choosing words I mean instead of words that perform. "Not because PR needs a human interest angle. Because she's been targeted, and I'm the reason, and that's going to stop."
The room's energy shifts. I feel it like a pressure change.
"Since this story broke, Sienna Hart has received online harassment, personal threats, and sustained pressure from a member of her own family who has used the media coverage as leverage to attempt financial extortion.
" I watch a few reporters sit up straighter.
"She has handled all of it with more composure than anyone in this room has any right to expect.
I'm naming it publicly because silence is how these things keep happening.
Her father is not a source. He is not a credible party.
If any outlet is considering running material he provides, they should know that the team's legal counsel has recordings of his conduct and they will be used. "
Nobody moves.
"She made my life look better by standing next to it. That's not why I'm with her, and it's not what she is. I want that on record."
A beat of quiet. Then the hands go up again, faster this time.
"Is the relationship real?"
"Yes."
"Was it ever not?"
I look at the camera directly. "That's not what today is about."
"Sources close to the team say Sienna provided testimony that—"
"She provided evidence," I say. "Screenshots. Timestamps. The kind of proof that only exists if the thing you're proving actually happened. I'd encourage the room to sit with that distinction."
More hands.
I take them one at a time. Keep my answers short.
Keep my voice level. Every time someone tries to swing the angle back toward Sienna, her history, her background, her connection to the team before any of this, I redirect it.
Not aggressively. Just with the steady, repetitive patience of someone who is not going to let the room get there.
Until one reporter, third row, leans into the mic with the specific confidence of a person who thinks they have something.
"Mr. Knox, there are documents suggesting Sienna Hart has a history of providing false statements to protect—"
"Ask me." My voice drops a register. Not louder. Lower. "Not her."
The reporter pauses.
"Anything you want to know about what she's been through, what she's survived, what she had to do to protect herself from someone who was supposed to protect her first, you bring it here.
To me. You don't run that story without talking to me first, and when you do talk to me, you're going to want to have your own documentation in order.
" I hold the reporter's eyes until they sit back. "We clear?"
The room goes very, very quiet.
Then it erupts.
I answer three more questions. Clean, factual, brief. Delia is somewhere in the back with her tablet and an expression I can't read from here. Mason is standing by the side door. We made eye contact once, at the start, and he gave me a small nod that probably cost him something.
I don't look for Sienna.
She's not here. We agreed it was better. Cleaner. She doesn't need to be seen behind glass while I try to put the story back in order. She's not a backdrop and she's not a prop and she is never going to be either of those things again if I have anything to say about it.
I think about her face last night. The way she'd sat across from me in the hotel suite going over talking points we both knew I wasn't going to use. How she'd pushed her coffee aside and looked at me with those steady eyes and said: just tell the truth and let it land where it lands.
Simple. She made it simple.
I close with: "I'm not asking for a different headline. I'm asking for an accurate one. The facts are there. I'd encourage the room to find them."
I step back from the podium.
The cameras keep going. Someone is shouting a question I'm not answering. Delia materializes at my shoulder with her hand already on my arm, steering.
The crowd noise follows us into the corridor and then the door swings shut and it's just the two of us and the sound of the ventilation system and my own heartbeat, which has been surprisingly steady this whole time.
Delia doesn't say anything for a long moment.
"That was either very good," she says, "or very catastrophic."
"I know."
"The part about her father—"
"Was necessary."
She looks at me. Something moves behind her eyes, a calculation running and failing. I watch her run through six different arguments and decide against all of them.
"You care about her," she says. Not a question. Not a PR calculation. Just the flat, slightly startled observation of a woman who thought she knew what she was managing.
I don't answer that.
My phone is on the table where I left it before walking up.
I pick it up.
The screen reads: League Office — Incoming Communication.
I open it.
Three lines. No preamble.
Second inquiry opened: Atticus Knox. Conduct and disclosure violations. Report to league offices by end of business today.
I read it twice.
The ventilation hums.
Delia is still watching me.
I set the phone down and straighten my jacket and think about Sienna Hart in her bar right now, probably pouring drinks she doesn't need to pour because her hands work better when they're busy.
I think about what she said.
Tell the truth and let it land where it lands.
"Call the lawyers," I tell Delia.
And I walk back toward the door.