Three months.
That's how long it took for the world to go from worshiping Margaret Beaumont and Robert Ashford… to hunting them.
Interpol. The FBI. The International Ethics Tribunal.
The Foundation's secrets had erupted into an international scandal. Whistleblower laws had been dusted off, thrown out, and rewritten—mostly because the whistle itself had come with a Molotov cocktail.
And somewhere in the wreckage of the media storm, Cassandra and Julian had vanished—on purpose.
They weren't hiding.
They were building something new.
Something real.
But now, they were back.
Not as heirs. Not as pawns.
As executioners of the old empire.
The courtroom was packed.
Cameras lined the marble balconies. Reporters whispered like crows. The world's most elite billionaires sat in silence, their polished shoes damp with fear.
Cassandra Beaumont stepped through the oak doors wearing a crimson power suit and zero forgiveness.
Julian walked beside her, black suit, black shirt, no tie. Like a storm in human form.
The gasps were immediate.
They're back.
They're testifying.
Margaret, across the room in a glass defendants' chamber, barely blinked.
She smiled.
But it was the smile of a chess player down to her final piece.
Cassandra met her mother's gaze with ice in her eyes.
Julian didn't look at his father at all.
"I am not here to beg," Cassandra said when the judge finally called her to the stand.
Her voice was low, velvet-wrapped steel.
"I am not here to plead. Or even persuade. I am here to burn what's left."
The courtroom fell into stunned silence.
She held up a single photo: a child, barely five, sitting in an observation room behind a pane of one-way glass.
"That was me. Not at a park. Not at school. At a behavioral lab where they studied my responses to emotional stimuli—so they could program the perfect match for me by age eighteen."
Julian rose from the witness box across the room. "That perfect match was me."
He handed the judge a file. "This is the record of my neurochemical manipulation between the ages of twelve and twenty-one."
The room was stunned.
Margaret shifted in her seat.
Cassandra smiled.
"This wasn't just abuse," she said. "This was systemic control of the next generation of global power."
And then she turned to the cameras.
"To anyone watching—who thinks they are safe, immune, chosen—understand this: if you were groomed for legacy instead of love, you are not alone. And your bloodline doesn't define your future."
After they testified, the media dubbed them The Fire Heirs.
But Cassandra and Julian didn't care.
They had something more powerful than the headlines.
Each other.
That night, in a glass house nestled in the mountains, far away from flashing bulbs and billion-dollar ghosts, Cassandra lit the fireplace and curled up with a glass of whiskey.
Julian stood at the balcony, staring into the stars like he was still waiting for the sky to fall.
She walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
"It's over," she whispered.
He turned. "It's beginning."
Their kiss was soft. Raw. Unrushed. As if time had finally, mercifully, slowed.
And then he reached into his pocket.
Pulled out a ring.
Simple. No diamonds. No headlines.
Just a silver band engraved with the word choice.
Cassandra froze.
"Are you—?"
Julian nodded. "No contracts. No companies. No legacy. Just you. Just me."
She stared at him, tears teasing her lashes, then whispered, "Yes."
The ring slipped onto her finger like it had always belonged.
This time, not because it was written.
But because it was real.