All Chapters of Falling for the Disgraced Heir: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The papers lay sprawled across the table like an autopsy. Julia’s eyes moved line by line, every word slicing deeper. The ink was smudged where her fingers had lingered too long, tracing the signatures she wished she could unsee. There it was—Mr. Hughes’s sharp, practiced stroke beside her father’s death report. The date. The approval stamp. The authorization that turned neglect into murder. Her breath hitched. Logic screamed that Brandon had nothing to do with it, that he’d been a boy when it happened. But blood had a way of staining generations. The Hughes name bled through every page. She pressed a trembling hand to her chest, but it did nothing to stop the ache. Her tears fell quietly, darkening the margins. She wanted to scream, to rip every sheet apart, to burn the evidence and the name both—

The apartment was too quiet. Julia woke to it—the kind of silence that didn’t rest, didn’t heal. It lingered like punishment. The other side of the bed was cold, untouched since he’d left. His jacket still hung on the back of the chair, a ghost of his warmth. His coffee mug sat on the counter, a ring of dried bitterness circling the bottom. She hated that she could still smell him—soap, sawdust, and rain. She moved through the small space mechanically, every object betraying her. His shoes by the door. The dent on the couch where he’d fallen asleep one night watching her work. The cracked window he kept promising to fix. She told herself she was glad he was gone. That distance meant peace. But when her fingers brushed the mug and it wobble

The storm had quieted, but the air still hummed with tension. Brandon stood in the doorway, dripping rain onto the cracked floorboards, his breath uneven. His eyes were shadowed—haunted—but steady as he looked at her. “I didn’t kill your father,” he said, voice low, stripped of every defense. “But my family did. So it’s still on me.” The words hung heavy, raw, undeniable. Julia’s throat closed around a thousand things she wanted to say and none that would come out right. The photo of the burning factory still lay on the table between them, its edges curling from where she’d gripped it too hard. He stepped forward once, then stopped, as if the distance betwe

The world suddenly remembered his name.News anchors called him the fallen heir who rose in flames, and children pointed when he passed on the street. Cameras flashed when he helped an old woman carry her groceries. People wanted his story—the redemption, the romance, the tragedy neatly rewritten for their morning feeds.Julia should have felt proud. But pride came tangled with a colder thread—a quiet, gnawing fear that history was repeating itself. Fame had stolen good men before. It polished them, praised them, and then pulled them away from everything real.And she could feel it, like static in the air—this shift in the world’s gaze. The man who had once hidden from his past was becoming a symbol of surv

The knock came with the precision of a man who never had to wait. Julia froze mid-step. Brandon looked up from the sink, drying his hands on a towel. A strange tension rippled through the air—something heavy, instinctive. When he opened the door, she understood why.Mr. Hughes filled the doorway like an apparition from a world they’d both tried to forget. His suit was immaculate, shoes polished enough to catch the light. But it was his eyes—sharp, assessing, devoid of warmth—that made Julia’s pulse stutter.“You came yourself,” Brandon said, voice steady but edged.His father’s lips curved, not quite a smile. “You left me little choice.” His gaze drifted to Julia, deliberate