The room was thick with silence.
Richard Hale lowered the gun — slowly — his face hollowed by years of guilt, shadows under his eyes that time hadn't managed to erase.
James stood beside me, tense but still, watching every breath the man took.
"I'm not here to hurt you," I said. "But I need to know what happened."
Richard nodded, placed the gun on the desk, and sat down heavily in the leather chair behind him.
He didn't look at me at first — only at the photo of Sophia still resting on his desk.
"I met your mother when I was still married," he said quietly. "It wasn't love at first sight. It was… need. Escape. We were both caught in something we didn't know how to survive."
"Caught in what?" I asked, my throat dry.
"The Windsors' game."
He looked up now, his eyes too much like mine.
"I was Johnathan Windsor's right hand. He trusted me with his secrets. His accounts. His dirty work. And when I wanted to leave, when I found something real with Sophia — he reminded me I belonged to him."
James's hands clenched.
"He used you?" he asked.
"He controlled me," Richard corrected. "He knew everything — my debts, my affairs, my weakness for gambling. I was nothing without him. And he made sure I never forgot it."
He swallowed hard.
"When Sophia got pregnant, I thought it was over. That I could finally leave, start over, be a father. But then she told me…"
He trailed off.
"Told you what?" I pressed.
"That she didn't want you raised in a world like his," he said softly. "She said if we stayed, you'd become a pawn in his empire. Another Windsor product. And she wasn't wrong."
He reached into the drawer and pulled out a torn letter.
"I kept this. Her last message to me."
He handed it to me with trembling hands.
> If anything happens to me, don't let them find her. Don't let her carry this weight. Don't let her become like you.
I stared at the words, my heart cracking open.
"She knew," I whispered. "She knew she wouldn't make it out."
"She was supposed to testify against the Windsor Group," Richard said. "Whistleblow on the secret experiments at Redwood Heights, the coverups, the money laundering. But before she could… she vanished."
James cursed under his breath. "They silenced her."
"I tried to protect her," Richard said, voice breaking now. "I made a deal. I agreed to walk away. To sign the contract. To say she was unstable. They promised she'd be left alone."
"But they lied," I whispered.
"They always do."
Tears welled in my eyes. "And what about me? You knew I existed. You knew she was pregnant. And you still left."
"I thought she took you far away," he said. "She didn't tell me where. I only found out about the adoption years later. By then… it was too late. If I'd stepped in, they would've come after you. I thought staying away was the only way to keep you safe."
I stood frozen.
Half of me wanted to scream.
The other half… understood.
He hadn't been a good man.
But he wasn't the monster I feared either.
Just a coward.
A broken one.
"You can hate me," he said. "You have every right to."
"I don't know how I feel," I replied honestly. "But I know this—I'm not leaving until I get every document, every recording, every piece of truth you've buried."
James stepped forward. "And you're going to help us take the Windsors down."
Richard looked between us.
Then nodded.
"I've kept copies. Evidence. If you're going to end them, you'll need it all."
Suddenly, we heard a noise — tires outside. Doors slamming.
Richard's face went pale.
"They found me," he said.
"How?" James asked, already moving toward the window.
"I don't know," Richard muttered. "But if they're here… they're not coming to talk."
We grabbed what we could — the file, the letter, the hard drive Richard handed James — and bolted for the back exit.
But as we pushed open the door, floodlights blinded us.
> "Hands where we can see them!" a voice barked.
Uniformed men. Armed. Not police.
Private security.
Windsor's men.
James stepped in front of me.
"Run, Amelia."
"I'm not leaving you—"
> "RUN!"