The Birth Of Amelia Stone

Flashback

Four Years Ago

That night, the rain fell in heavy sheets wild, loud, and thunderous

Adrianna could barely see the road through the heavy rain. She sat quietly in the back seat while the cab driver struggled to see ahead, the windshield wipers moving wildly like they were trying to fight the storm. His fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles turning white. Cold air from the storm crept through the cracks of her coat. Her suitcase sat beside her, and in her coat pocket was her passport and a one-way ticket to Florence a place that felt so far away, she thought to herself.

She wasn’t just running away.

She was escaping.

There’s a big difference.

Escaping from Damien Blackwood’s cruelty. From Katherina’s hateful whispers and betrayal. From all the lies, the mind games, and the constant feeling that her life was being controlled by people who smiled sweetly while hiding sharp, bloodstained teeth.

Her lips trembled as she whispered a prayer through clenched teeth. She just needed to make it to the airport. To start again. To be free from a painful love.

Before she could realize herself.

A black SUV appeared from the opposite lane she noticed that it wasn’t speeding, it was heading opposite the taxi she was in, as if it was directly aiming at her She quickly whispered a short prayer before she got interrupted by a loud noise.

The driver of the taxi screamed and jerked the wheel, but it was too late.

A sharp curve.

Slick pavement.

The groan of metal and the sudden, sickening lunge of gravity giving way.

Then the impact.

The world turned upside down.

The car flipped once. Twice. A third time. Then silence.

Then fire.

A very bright and violent fire consumed the car immediately.

She screamed until her throat gave out. The seatbelt crushed her ribs. She tried to break free but she couldn’t, Adrianna tried to check for the cab driver but saw that his body burnt to pieces already. In a second Glass tore through her face. Metal folded like paper around her legs. The smell of gasoline choked her lungs before the flames reached her skin.

And then blackness.

She woke up in a world of white.

Sterile lights. Soft, persistent beeping. The suffocating scent of antiseptic.

Bandages wrapped her like a mummy. Her skin felt too tight. Every small movement made her bones ache and scream in pain.

Her father’s face hovered above hers, broken and trembling.

“Adrianna…” His voice cracked. “You’re here. You’re alive.”

Alive.

But barely.

She couldn’t talk. Her jaw was held shut with wires, and her lips were too swollen to move. Her vision was blurry, but even through the hazy vision, she could see the fear and sadness in his eyes.

The grief of a man who had almost lost his daughter.

And the rage of a father who knew someone had tried to kill her.

Outside the room, Alexander Blackwood stood like a statue, rain still dripping from his coat. His eyes were locked on Adrianna through the glass.

He knew.

He had suspected it from the moment his Private investigator called.

It wasn’t an accident.

The brake line had been tampered with. The mechanic had been paid in cash traced back to a shell account linked to Katherina’s mother. It was planned carefully Cold and Silent.

The kind of thing no one would’ve questioned… if Adrianna hadn’t survived.

But she didn’t.

And Alexander couldn’t walk away.

He carried the shame of his son’s sins like a lead weight in his chest. Damien had become everything he feared he’d raise a man consumed by entitlement and ego, with no understanding of consequence.

Alexander hadn’t been there for the women his son destroyed in the past.

But he would be there for this one.

Within days, Adrianna and her father vanished from the public eye. He paid people to keep the fact she is alive and recovering in a hospital secret.

Alexander arranged everything.

A private jet.

A private medical facility tucked away in the hills of Switzerland.

He also hired nannies to care for her baby while she recovered after giving birth in the hospital.

A new name on every document.

No press.

No leaks.

Only silence and healing.

The days that came after were a blur of pain.

She had to go through reconstructive surgery because if she was meant to vanish, she had to truly disappear.

Skin grafts that burned, tore, and bled.

Her father read to her when she couldn’t sleep. Held her hand during the worst of it. Fed her when she couldn’t lift a spoon.

And every month, without fail, Alexander visited.

He didn’t come with pity.

He came with presence.

Respectful. Watchful. Carrying the weight of a man trying to right a wrong that could never truly be fixed.

“I should have stopped them,” he said once, sitting beside her as she lay with half her face wrapped in gauze. “I knew what your step sister Katherina was capable of. I knew what Damien was becoming. I turned my face away. I won’t do it again.”

Adrianna looked at him, her eyes swollen but clear.

Forgiveness wasn’t on the table.

But understanding was.

The months crawled by.

She relearned everything how to walk. How to sit. How to breathe without pain. Her voice came back hoarse, then clearer. But she hardly ever used it.

She didn’t need to.

Her silence became power.

She listened. She studied. She carefully planned her strategy.

Alexander saw it before anyone else did the sharpness in her, buried beneath the bruises.

So he gave her tools.

Not just resources but weapons.

“You’ll need your own identity,” he told her one night, a folder full of documents between them. “Not just to survive. To thrive.”

Inside: incorporation papers.

Amelia Holdings.

A brand. A legacy. A future built from the ashes of her past.

He taught her everything: how to negotiate, how to read the people in the room, how to make the wolves bow without ever baring her teeth.

“You don’t just join the game,” he said. “You change the board.”

One year later.

The air in the clinic was cold that morning. Crisp. Still.

Adrianna stood in front of a full-length mirror for the first time in months.

She no longer wore bandages.

She no longer flinched when the light hit her face.

The reflection staring back was both familiar and foreign. Sculpted cheekbones. Softer lips. A stronger jawline. The work of the best surgeons in the world Alexander had spared no expense.

But her eyes…

Her eyes were still hers.

Stormy Fierce and Unforgiving.

Her father stood beside her, shoulders shaking as he whispered, “You’re stronger than I ever dreamed, baby girl.”

Behind them, Alexander watched from the doorway.

He didn’t speak right away. Just nodded in a Proud way.

Then, with all the weight of fate in his voice, he said

“You’re not just coming back.”

“You’re taking over.”

And she would.

As Amelia Stone not Adrianna Rodriguez.