Then he did something I did not expect.

He walked out to meet them.

“Yes,” he said, before they could even start. The crowd quieted, surprised. “Gabrielle worked as a housekeeper. Yes, I married her. I married her to protect her and her three daughters from years of abuse in a house where no one would help them. All of that is true. Print it.”

The reporters went silent. He wasn’t giving them the denial they’d come for. He was giving them something else.

“My mother died when I was ten years old,” Bruce said, and his voice was steady but it cost him something to keep it that way.

“She died in a house full of money, at the hands of a man everyone respected, while the important people around her decided it wasn’t their business. I found her. I was a child, and I found her, and I promised myself that I would never in my life look the other way from that again.” He paused.