Chapter 19
AMELIA
My phone felt heavier than it should in my hand.
Levi hadn’t said a word about what I should or shouldn’t do next. He’d just walked back into Dominion Hall—to face a father who wasn’t dead and a world he didn’t recognize anymore—trusting me to handle my side of the fallout.
Which meant this part was on me.
Calling my editor had always been the easy thing. My reflex. My North Star. When something broke open—politically, personally, geopolitically—Derek Price was the one person I reported to without thinking twice.
But this was the first time the truth wasn’t simple.
The first time I wasn’t simple.
The first time I wasn’t sure telling him everything was the right move.
I stared at the screen, thumb hovering over his contact.
For the first time in my career, the fear wasn’t that I didn’t have enough to tell him.
It was that I might say too much.
And for the first time, the thing I was trying to protect … wasn’t the story.
It was Levi.
I drew in a breath that didn’t quite make it all the way down, unlocked the screen, and hit the call button.
It rang twice.
“Emerson.” His voice snapped down the line like a rubber band—sharp, wired, already three coffees ahead of me. “You’re alive. That’s a good start.”
“Wow, thanks,” I said, aiming for dry and landing somewhere in the vicinity of shaky.
“I’ve been watching my inbox for updates that never came,” he said. “Tell me you’ve been too busy breaking the story of the year to send email, and not that you went to Charleston, fell in love with the moss, and forgot you work for a living.”
I swallowed a hysterical laugh. If only it were the moss.
“I’ve been working,” I said. “Just … not at a laptop.”
There was a beat of silence as he recalibrated, mentally picturing me somewhere dangerous. I’d built a career on sending dispatches from chaotic places—war zones, failed states, cities on fire. Charleston did not fit the brand.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Talk to me. Dominion Hall. The mysterious men. Do we have something?”
My gaze drifted up the lawn to the house—white columns, wide veranda, the whole Southern gothic fantasy washed clean with money. From this distance, it looked harmless. Pretty, even.
Inside, there were men with the same last name who’d lied to each other. A resurrected father. A note from someone who knew too much. A network I didn’t have a name for yet.
And Levi.
“We have … threads,” I said carefully. “There’s definitely a story. I just don’t know what shape it is yet.”
Threads. Safe, nonspecific, technically true.
“You flew across a continent on anonymous tips and corporate shells,” he said. “The shape is ‘conspiracy with money.’ That’s the shape. I need to know if it’s solid or if we’re chasing ghosts again.”
Again.
The word lodged under my ribs.
Two years ago, he’d called me from a different time zone with the same tone, asking if the story I’d pitched—the one about contractors off the books, the one I’d gone embedded for—had enough weight to survive the legal department.
It should have. It would have.
Then my embed had been yanked, my access revoked, and all I’d been able to bring home was half a narrative and a vague sense of dread.
The piece that finally ran had been thin, cautious, all hedges and passive voice. Readers could smell that kind of thing. So could board members. So could people who donated to non-profit newsrooms and liked their outrage tidy.
“You’re still rebuilding from what happened,” Derek said now, like he’d reached into my head and plucked the thought out.
“We both are. Funders still ask me at events if we’re ‘doing another Afghanistan debacle’ anytime soon.
I tell them we learned our lesson. That we don’t go all-in on smoke without fire.
So, if I’m going to back you here, Amelia, I need more than threads. ”
I’d been prepared for this. Expected it, even.
It still hurt.
“Two years ago, there was fire,” I said quietly. “You know that.”
“What I know,” he said, “is that you came back with half a story and a huge target on your back from people with more lawyers than we have subscriptions. You were one more anonymous source away from us getting sued into oblivion.”
“And whose fault was that?” I snapped, before I could stop myself. “The people who pulled my clearance, or the ones who decided we should ‘wait for a better time’ and then let the whole thing die?”
Silence hummed on the line—a warning tone.
“Careful,” he said.
Guilt pricked, immediate and automatic. My parents had drilled “respect your teachers” into me. Somewhere along the line, I’d swapped teachers for editors and never rewired the reflex.
“Sorry,” I said, exhaling. “I’m … tired.”
“I know you’re still angry,” he said, gentler.
“I don’t blame you. But I went to war for you in that newsroom, remember?
You were radioactive, and I fought to put you back on air.
Back in print. Whatever metaphor you prefer.
You’ve spent two years clawing your way back to being the woman people trust to tell them what’s real. I don’t want to see you lose that.”
The words landed with the weight of history.
I thought of late nights at my parents’ kitchen table, my father reading the newspaper aloud, my mother fact-checking him with a raised brow and a laptop. Of my mother pushing the local paper into my hands at eight, telling me, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you not to ask questions.”
They were boring, by most metrics. Nice, normal. No secrets, no dramatic affairs, no mysterious absentee relatives.
“Secrets rot,” my mother used to say, wiping counters. “Sunlight disinfects.”
It was practically a family motto.
Truth wasn’t just important. It was oxygen. It was how we loved each other—by saying the thing, even when it was hard.
It was how I’d built my career—by going where other people didn’t, asking what other people wouldn’t, refusing to look away.
And now, for the first time in my life, I was considering opening a window and only letting part of the air out.
“I’m not going to tank my credibility,” I said. “I promise you that. I just … need more time. This isn’t a simple hit piece. It’s complicated.”
“Complicated how?” he asked immediately. “Legally? Ethically? Logistically? Is someone threatening you?”
Yes. No. Sort of. Not yet.
“Complicated like …” I searched for words that weren’t names. “… I’m embedded in the story. More than usual. It’s not just spreadsheets and shell companies. It’s people. Families. There’s a lot at stake.”
“That’s always true,” he said.
“Not like this.”
I could still feel Levi’s heartbeat under my ear from the night before. Hear the raw crack in his voice when he’d said I love you. See the way he’d looked at his father like he wanted to both punch him and hug him and didn’t know which urge hurt more.
“Is this about the soldier?” he asked, too casually.
My body went rigid. “What soldier?”
“Amelia,” he said, and there it was—the tone that said he’d put up with a lot from me, but not self-delusion.
“You think I didn’t notice how personal that last debacle was for you?
The way you took it, the way you shut down afterward?
I may not know his name, but I know there was a man in that sandpit you didn’t just want for his quotes. Is he in Charleston?”
The yacht shifted under my feet, the water slapping the hull in a rhythm that sounded suspiciously like my pulse.
“Yes,” I said. Lying would have been pointless. He’d smell it through the phone. “He’s here.”
A soft, humorless huff crackled in my ear. “Of course, he is.”
“This isn’t some ill-advised romantic vacation,” I said. “He’s part of the story. Whether I like it or not.”
“And do you like it?” he asked, too sharp for the question to be neutral.
I thought of Levi on the veranda, breaking apart in my arms. Levi in the tent, years ago, telling me about his father making fires from wet wood. Levi over me in the dark stateroom, saying I love you.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I do.”
He exhaled. “You realize how this looks from my end.”
“I do,” I said. “And I wouldn’t ask you to trust me if I didn’t trust myself.”
A pause. Then, carefully: “Do you?”
The honest answer rose up with humiliating clarity.
I wasn’t sure.
I trusted my instincts in combat zones. Trusted my ability to read a room, a source, a threat. Trusted the part of me that knew when a story needed shouting from rooftops and when it needed one more corroborating call.
I had never before been in a situation where that instinct ran headlong into the part of me that wanted to protect one particular person from harm.
“I’m working on it,” I said.
“That’s not reassuring,” he said. “Look, Amelia. I’m not your father.
I’m not here to tell you not to sleep with sources or to keep your heart out of your work.
God knows I’ve done both badly at some point.
But I am here to remind you that you don’t get to turn your reporter brain off because you like the way a man looks at you. ”
“I know that,” I said, a flash of irritation cutting through the anxiety.
“Do you?” he pressed. “Because from where I’m sitting, it sounds like you’re telling me the story is ‘complicated’ while your reputation hangs in the balance.”
Guilt flared, bright and immediate.
“This is about something bigger,” I said. “If I run in half-cocked, I could make things worse. I need to understand the landscape before I drop a match on it.”
Silence.
For a second, I thought the call had dropped. Then his voice came back, quieter.
“You’ve never talked like this before,” he said. “Every time I’ve thrown you into a mess, you’ve wanted to publish yesterday. Even when it cost us. Especially when it cost you.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s the problem.”
“I hired you,” he said, “because you were the kid who wrote angry letters to the editor about civics textbooks glossing over war crimes. Because when the dean told you to stop causing trouble, you printed his email on flyers and papered the student union. You’ve always believed that sunlight was worth the burn. Are you telling me you suddenly don’t?”
I stared at the house, sunlight glinting off the windows. Inside, there were rooms full of secrets. Some of them corrosive. Some of them the kind that, if exposed, would burn people I loved to ash.
“I’m saying,” I answered slowly, “that sometimes you have to choose where to point the light. That maybe not every truth belongs in a lede. Not right away. Not if it gets people killed.”
The line went very quiet.
“When did you start sounding like my sources in State?” he asked, not unkindly. “Quoting ‘people might die’ at me to shut down coverage?”
Rage flickered—automatic and familiar.
“I’m not trying to shut anything down,” I said. “I’m telling you that I owe it to the people on the ground to understand who all the players are before I swing. And that includes you. And it includes him.”
“Him,” he repeated softly. “Is he worth it?”
The question landed like a punch.
Worth what? My career? My reputation? The self I’d spent a lifetime building on a foundation of unflinching honesty?
All my childhood lessons rose up—my parents arguing while insisting I listen, my mother admitting when she was wrong and apologizing to me like we were equals, my father correcting himself at the dinner table when he’d misremembered some historical fact and turning his mistake into a teachable moment.
We tell the truth, even when it hurts.
It was the closest thing to religion I’d ever had.
Was I really about to betray that for a man?
No.
I wasn’t betraying it.
I was … redefining it.
Truth wasn’t a monolith. It had context. Timing. Consequences. The truth in my notebook and the truth in Levi’s eyes weren’t mutually exclusive, but they weren’t identical, either.
“Ask me that again when I know what we’re up against,” I said. “For now, I can promise you this: I’m not your enemy. Neither is he. But there are people out there who are, and they’re bigger than one story. Let me do this right.”
He sighed—a sound that carried too many late nights and budget meetings and crises I wasn’t privy to.
“You’re asking for trust I shouldn’t give you,” he said. “Not after the last time. Not with the board breathing down my neck.”
“I know.”
“And yet,” he added, “you’re still my best shot at something that actually matters.”
Warmth flickered, unexpected.
“I’ll send you something,” I said. “Not a full piece yet. A memo. Notes. Enough context that you can tell the board I’m not on a pleasure cruise.”
“Do it by tonight,” he said. Then, softer: “Watch your back, Amelia.”
“Always,” I said.
“And don’t fall in love with your story so hard you can’t see straight.”
Too late.
I ended the call before I could say something that would make his job harder.
The phone felt different in my hand now. Heavier. Or maybe that was just me—suddenly aware of the weight of what I was choosing.
This was the first secret I’d ever kept on purpose.
Not a white lie. Not a tactful omission. A conscious decision to hold something back from a woman who’d staked her reputation on the ability to pry things open.
For Levi.
For his brothers.
For the part of me that had watched him break and realized I would burn my career to the ground before I let someone use my words as a weapon against him.