The court's grand chandelier flickered ominously overhead, casting long, distorted shadows across the marble floor.
Amelia sat motionless, the phone still clutched in her trembling hand, the message from Lucien burning against her palm like a curse carved into her flesh.
Her lips were dry and cracked, her breathing shallow.
Damian hovered protectively by her side, his sharp eyes scanning the courtroom like a predator ready to strike.
But Amelia?
She was falling…
Not physically, but into a pit of despair she had fought so hard to climb out of.
The child is still mine…
Lucien's words repeated over and over in her mind like the tolling of a funeral bell.
The doors of the courtroom slammed open once again.
Gasps echoed through the hall as a new figure stepped in—
A woman.
Tall, draped in a blood-red cloak that seemed to swallow the light around her.
She walked slowly, deliberately, her heels clicking against the marble like the final countdown of a ticking bomb.
And then… she pulled back her hood.
Amelia's blood ran ice cold.
It was her mother.
The woman who had disappeared from her life.
The woman she believed was dead.
The woman who, by all rights, shouldn't be standing here.
"Mother?" Amelia's voice cracked, barely above a whisper.
The woman's eyes—sharp and unforgiving—locked onto hers.
"I have come to finish what should have ended years ago," her mother declared, her voice echoing like a death sentence through the silent hall.
She turned to the judge, her fingers producing a weathered, leather-bound journal.
"This… is the real Blake legacy."
Gasps rippled again through the courtroom as the judge examined the journal.
Inside were handwritten confessions, details of secret transactions, bribes, and a hidden bloodline revelation that stunned even Amelia.
Lucien Blake…
Was not a true Blake.
His mother had forged his lineage to secure wealth and power for a child that didn't rightfully belong to the Blake name.
The courtroom exploded in chaos.
Lucien's voice roared from the back of the hall.
"LIES! ALL OF IT!"
But the evidence was irrefutable.
Page after page, signature after signature—each one a nail in the coffin of the Blake empire.
Ethan sat back in his chair, defeated and pale.
Lucien, wild-eyed, lunged toward Amelia one last time, screaming like a madman.
"You can't destroy me! I AM THE BLAKE LEGACY!"
Before he could reach her, Damian intercepted, slamming Lucien to the floor.
Security flooded the courtroom, dragging Lucien away as he kicked and shouted curses that echoed like the wails of a fallen tyrant.
Amelia stood slowly, her knees weak, but her head held high.
"The Blake name," she said quietly but firmly, "dies today."
Just as the judge raised the gavel to make it official, Amelia's phone buzzed again.
She glanced down with trembling hands.
One final message.
One final blow.
"You think it's over? The bloodline still lives. And one day… he'll come looking for me. — L"
Amelia's vision swam, her body trembling violently, and then—
Her water broke.
Right there, in the center of the courtroom.
Damian caught her as she fell, his voice sharp with panic.
"Amelia! Stay with me! You're going to be okay. We're going to be okay!"