He sagged. “Yeah.”
Silence stretched for a beat. I sat on the edge of the bed, close enough that he had to look at me, far enough that his reach—bound as it was—wouldn’t land.
“They’re not going to kill you,” I said.
His eyes flicked to the doorway, where two large silhouettes loomed just out of full view. “You sound very sure of that for someone sitting in a billionaire’s basement guest room.”
“These men have a code,” I said. “A messed-up, paramilitary, morally complicated code, but a code. They don’t kill good people for being stupid. They kill people who hurt their own, or who won’t stop hurting other people. You don’t have to like the distinction, but it’s there.”
His throat worked. “And which one am I?”
“That’s partly up to you,” I said. “But I know you, Derek. I’ve watched you bleed for stories. I’ve watched you go to bat for reporters when it would’ve been easier to fire them and appease the donors. You’re not one of them. You just let them scare you into thinking you had no other choice.”
His gaze dropped to his bound hands.
“What choice do I have now?” he asked quietly. “I’m done. Even if they let me walk out of this house, I can’t go back. The board will crucify me, the staff will revolt, the donors will scatter. Everything we built—gone. Because I was stupid enough to believe that woman.”
“You can’t go back as you are,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean everything has to die with you.”
He frowned, wary. “What are you proposing?”
I held his gaze. “You step down. Publicly. You announce you’re handing the reins to a successor. Someone who shares your commitment to investigative work.”
His eyebrows—well, the un-swollen one—lifted. “And let me guess. You have a name in mind.”
“I do,” I said. “Mine.”
His laugh came out as a pained wheeze. “Of course. Amelia Emerson, editor-in-chief.”
“Not just editor-in-chief,” I said. “Owner. Or co-owner. With new backing that isn’t beholden to donors like the one you got in bed with. Money that doesn’t need you to sell your soul to justify its existence.”
He squinted at me. “And where does this magical ethical funding come from?”
I thought of the war room upstairs. Of maps and screens and a man with old grief in his eyes saying this was personal.
“From people who have a vested interest in not letting The Vanguard control the narrative,” I said carefully. “People who understand that information is a battlefield, and who would rather have someone like me—and the reporters I trust—holding the line.”
He let that sink in.
“You want to turn my scrappy, self-righteous little outlet into an arm of a private intelligence empire,” he said slowly. “That’s … not better, Amelia.”
“It’s not an arm,” I said. “It’s a shield. Or a scalpel, when it needs to be. I’m not talking about printing their press releases. I’m talking about building a place where we can tell the truth without getting manipulated into doing our enemies’ work for them. Where we can decide, case by case, what goes public and what gets handled another way because publishing it would get vulnerable people killed.”
He flinched like I’d slapped him.
I pressed on, because this was the heart of it and I needed him to see.
“You and I were raised in a church of capital-T Truth,” I said. “We were taught it was always the right answer. Shine light on it, publish it, consequences be damned. Lately, I’ve been watching the consequences. I’ve stood in rooms with fixers who got burned because someone needed a Pulitzer more than they needed a pulse. I’ve watched families get targeted because their names made good copy. The truth still matters. It always will. But how we wield it—that has to change.”
His eyes were wet now, whether from swelling or emotion, I couldn’t tell. “So, you’re saying we become gatekeepers.”
“I’m saying we become surgeons,” I said. “We don’t throw grenades and hope the right people get hit. We cut precisely. We decide when exposing something helps and when it just gives people like The Vanguard an excuse to tighten their grip. With the right backing, I can build a newsroom that understands that. That doesn’t have to chase clicks or donors to survive. That can actually choose its battles.”
He stared at me for a long moment.
Then he said, very softly, “You always did think bigger than I did.”
I swallowed against the sudden tightness in my throat.
