The press were like vultures.
Cameras flashed in bursts of chaos, questions flying like bullets as Ella stepped out of her apartment building.
"Ella! Did he force you into isolation?""Was the necklace a symbol of control?""Do you forgive Leon Hart?"
Her jaw clenched. Her eyes were red, but her spine was steel.
She didn't answer.
Not yet.
Because behind the wall of reporters, she saw him.
Leon.
Standing at the edge of the chaos, alone.
No bodyguards. No limousine. Just a man stripped bare, waiting to face what was left.
She should've been triumphant.
The world finally knew.
She was no longer the villain in someone else's narrative.
But victory felt hollow.
Because now the man who once crushed her stood like a monument in ruins.
And part of her—God help her—still felt every fracture of his pain.
It wasn't pity.
It was the curse of shared history.
Of knowing that once, she had loved him so deeply… she forgot how to breathe without him.
They faced each other like twin stars—one burned out, the other reignited by fury.
He looked like a city after a hurricane—shattered, waterlogged, but still standing.
And she—
She was the storm walking upright, eyes brimming with thunder.
The silence between them was louder than the crowd.
Until she spoke.
"I didn't ask you to confess."
Leon's voice was a whisper against the noise.
"I know."
"Then why do it?"
He stepped closer. Cameras snapped. Reporters froze.
"Because I knew you'd never forgive me," he said. "But the world needed to."
A single tear slipped down her cheek.
And this time, she didn't wipe it away.
"I don't need the world to know who you were, Leon."
"I need you to prove who you'll be now."
He took another step forward, eyes blazing—not with arrogance, but with purpose.
"I will."
"For you. For every breath I took from you… I'll give it back a thousand times."
And behind the flashing lights, one camera kept rolling.
Broadcasting the final fall of the overseer—
And the beginning of something neither of them dared to name.