The letter sat between us on the table, its weight out of proportion to the paper it was written on. Every time I glanced at it, my parents' words seemed to whisper through the room: join us or burn.
"We can't keep this to ourselves," I said at last, my voice steadier than I felt. "If the investigators see it first, it can't be used as a weapon. They'll know my parents are still pulling strings."
Brandon nodded, though his jaw was taut. "I'll call Daniel. He'll know how to pass it to the right people."
Before he could move, his phone buzzed. He glanced at it, then swore under his breath. "The papers have my name."
My stomach lurched. "What?"
He turned the screen so I could see. A news alert — Mystery Man Identified: Brandon Hale Linked to Stern Heiress. Beneath it, a blurred photograph of us entering his building together.
"They've already staked out the street," he said grimly. "It's only a matter of time before they're on the doorstep."
I went cold. "You'll lose your job. Your reputation. Because of me."
Brandon set the phone down hard and fixed me with that steady, unwavering gaze of his.
"No. Because of them. This is exactly what they want — us isolated, cornered. We don't let them win."
I swallowed, forcing myself to draw on the confidence I'd found before. "Then we give the investigators the letter. If it proves I'm being blackmailed, that my parents are coercing me, it turns the tables. And if the press comes knocking… then I'll face them, not you."
His expression softened, but his grip on my hand tightened. "We face them together, Amelia. I'm not stepping back now."
The noise outside grew — a murmur of voices, the click of a camera shutter drifting up from the street. The world was closing in, faster than I'd imagined. But with the letter in my hands and Brandon beside me, for the first time, I felt we had something to fight back with.
This wasn't just survival anymore. It was war.
*****
Brandon's POV
It was strange, the quiet.
For months the flat had felt like a fortress under siege — papers piled on the table, phones buzzing with updates from solicitors, the low hum of worry clinging to every corner. Now, for the first time in what felt like forever, the silence wasn't heavy. It was light.
Amelia sat by the window, the late afternoon sun painting her face gold. She wasn't smiling exactly, but there was a looseness in her shoulders I hadn't seen in months. Watching her breathe easier was celebration enough.
The investigation had dragged on far longer than either of us expected. Endless interviews, cross-examinations, documents combed and re-combed. At first, the press ran with every scrap they could twist — the fallen heiress, the runaway daughter, the easy target. But piece by piece, the picture shifted.
The forensic accountants traced the missing money back to her parents, not her. The letter we handed over became the lynchpin — proof she wasn't complicit, but cornered.
It hadn't been quick. It hadn't been painless. Her reputation was torn apart in the tabloids before the truth stitched it back together in the official reports.
But the important part — the only part — was that she walked out of it cleared.
She turned to me then, catching me watching her. "You look like you don't quite believe it's over," she said softly.
I gave a half-smile. "I'm not sure I do. We've been living under it for so long… feels strange not to."
She crossed the room and sank onto the sofa beside me, her hand slipping into mine. "It's over, Brandon. We survived it."
And she was right. The Sterns were still abroad, fighting extradition through every loophole their lawyers could find, but their grip on her had broken. The investigators had cleared her, the banks were clawing back what they could, and the press had moved on to fresher scandals. For the first time since the whole nightmare began, Amelia's name wasn't a headline — it was hers again.
We didn't open champagne or book some trip to mark the moment. We just sat there, in the quiet of my small flat, her head resting against my shoulder. The weight that had pressed on us for so long was gone, and in its place was something simple, something steady.
Breathing space.
I closed my eyes, held her hand tighter, and let myself believe it at last: we were free.
*****
After so many months of living in crisis mode, I found myself wondering what came next.
No investigators at the door, no phone calls that sent my stomach plummeting, no reporters crouched on the pavement outside. Just… ordinary life.
And that's what scared me most.
Would Amelia still want to be here when the noise was gone? Or had we only clung so tightly because the world was crumbling around her and I happened to be the one steady place she could rely on? I wanted to believe what we had was real — more than survival, more than circumstance. But I'd seen enough of life to know that people change when the pressure lifts.
Still, when I looked at her now, her hair catching the fading light, I wanted the future with her. Not the scandal, not the fights, just the everyday things: making coffee in the morning, discussing what to have for dinner, the simple rhythm of two lives joined together.
For the first time, that felt possible.
*****
Amelia's POV
The quiet unsettled me. For so long, drama had defined me — my parents, their schemes, the shadow of their choices. Brandon had been my lifeline, my shield. But what did we look like without the storm around us?
Could I be just Amelia? Not the Stern heiress, not the scapegoat, not the woman hiding in someone else's flat. Just me. And him.
The thought was terrifying and liberating all at once.
I pictured mornings where the only questions I had to answer were about work, or whether I wanted tea or coffee. Evenings spent with Brandon where the weight of the world wasn't pressing down on us. It sounded so normal it almost felt foreign.
But I wanted it. God, I wanted it. And if our bond could survive the fire we'd walked through, maybe it could survive peace too.
*****
They didn't say any of this out loud. Not yet. But as they sat side by side, shoulders touching, each of them was asking the same question:
Is this the start of something ordinary? Or will ordinary be the hardest test of all?