The leaks hit the world like a hurricane.
Headlines screamed across every major media outlet,
"Draxon Corporation Under Fire, Hidden Experiments, CEO Scandal, and the Velk Conspiracy."
"Exclusive, Former Duchess Representative Allegedly Involved in Drugging Incident."
"Heir Returns? Who Is Elias Thorne?"
By sunrise, the world knew the name.
Elias sat on a rooftop balcony in Vienna, suit unbuttoned, coffee cold in his hand. His phone buzzed with calls from journalists, investors, enemies pretending to be friends. None mattered. He watched the city breathe beneath him chaos and possibility.
Jude emerged behind him, tossing down a fresh file.
"Twenty-three more threats. Six lawsuits. And the UN just sent a veiled warning through Interpol."
Elias didn't flinch. "Let them come."
Magritte arrived next, stepping silently in heels made for war.
"They're scrambling. You've broken the illusion, Elias. That makes you dangerous."
"Or vulnerable," Jude said, eyeing her with concern.
"No," Elias said, rising. "It makes me unpredictable."
He turned to them.
"Now let's talk about Valerie Dexter."
The facility was masked as a wellness retreat. White walls. Calm music. Smiling nurses. But inside, Valerie Dexter sat alone, her mind a haze of broken images and whispers.
She stared at her reflection in a small mirror. Something in her eyes flickered recognition?
She whispered, "Elias…"
Footsteps echoed behind her.
Lysandra Velk entered, coat sharp as razors. "You remember him."
Valerie's voice shook. "You told me he was dead."
"He is," Lysandra said coldly. "To the world, at least. But we both know the truth."
Valerie stood slowly. "Why keep me here?"
Lysandra approached, whispering, "Because one day, you'll help me end him."
Elias paced a war room filled with screens and digital maps. Lewis sat on one side, scanning lines of intercepted communications. Jude patched a connection to their Dubai office. Magritte reviewed psychological profiles of the Velk agents.
"What if Valerie's alive?" Elias finally asked.
Magritte didn't look up. "Then she's being used."
"You loved her once," Jude said quietly.
"I was a fool once," Elias replied.
"Love's not always foolish," Magritte murmured.
Elias's gaze snapped to hers but he said nothing.
Instead, he pointed to a map.
"Here. This is where they'd hide her. We go tomorrow. But not with guns. With proof. We leak Valerie's location to the press the moment we extract her."
"And if she doesn't want to be found?" Lewis asked.
Elias's eyes burned.
"Then I remind her who I am."
Alone in his study, Elias received a package unmarked, sealed in wax.
Inside was a photograph.
Valerie and Elias, years ago, smiling on a boat in Monaco.
On the back, written in delicate script,
"Do you still dream of the water?" V.
He stared at it for a long time.
Then lit it on fire.
Nightfall blanketed the city in quiet hues of blue and gold as Elias stood before the landing bay. The private jet hummed gently behind him, ready to carry him across borders. Jude checked the manifest twice, while Magritte wrapped in her dark trench watched him with cautious admiration.
"You're not sleeping," she said.
"I can't afford to," Elias answered. "Not now."
"Valerie isn't the only ghost waiting in that asylum," Magritte warned. "Lysandra Velk doesn't play fair."
Elias turned, his voice low. "I don't want fair. I want answers."
Magritte hesitated. Then, almost against her better judgment, she stepped closer.
"If you walk in there without remembering who you were without reclaiming the man you used to be then even your enemies will pity you."
"I don't need memories to win."
"No," she replied. "But you need them to survive."
Lewis joined mid-flight, sliding into the seat across from Elias with a manila folder. "There's more," he said. "Lysandra's working with a shadow investor. Goes by the name 'Ashcroft.' Untraceable. Unlimited funds."
Elias frowned. "Ashcroft… that name's not new."
"It's linked to the fire that burned the Thorne family records twenty-five years ago."
Elias looked out the window, eyes shadowed. "I need to see Valerie."
"You sure she'll remember you?" Lewis asked.
"I'm not," Elias admitted. "But I hope I remember myself."
Meanwhile In the Facility Valerie awoke to soft humming. A nurse too calm, too rehearsed stood over her, adjusting an IV.
"I dreamed of saltwater," Valerie murmured.
"Oh?" the nurse replied.
"I drowned in it. But it didn't kill me."
The nurse stiffened. "That's enough rest for tonight."
Valerie grabbed her wrist, suddenly strong. "He's alive, isn't he?"
"Who?"
"Elias Thorne."
The nurse didn't answer but the flicker in her eyes was enough.
It was coordinated, surgical.
Jude hacked the internal surveillance. Magritte rerouted the emergency exit alarms. Lewis took down two guards with a silence shaped by war.
And Elias?
He walked straight through the main door, disguised as a health inspector.
Inside, sterile halls gave way to haunting echoes.
"Ward C," Magritte whispered through his earpiece.
Room 36.
He paused at the door, hand hovering over the knob. Then he pushed it open.
Valerie sat by the window, staring at the sun.
Her eyes widened. "You…"
Elias stepped in, mask removed, soul bared. "It's me."
She stood shaking.
"Elias Thorne died."
"I know," he said.
"You left me."
"I didn't know who I was."
She walked forward, eyes searching him.
"Do you now?"
"No," he said. "But I remember the boat. Monaco. The sea."
She gasped, and for a moment, her hand trembled in his.
Then the door burst open. Lysandra Velk.
"Touching," she hissed. "But this ends now."
Before anyone could react, Lysandra raised a device.
A high-pitched pulse filled the room.
Elias dropped to his knees memories crashing in like a tsunami.
A child's voice.
A man's scream.
Fire. Water. Betrayal.
Valerie screamed his name.
And then Darkness.
The pulse of the sonic device lingered in Elias Thorne's skull like a ringing bell underwater. Everything was noise, flashes of memory and pain folding into one another until the past erupted into the present. He collapsed into darkness not from defeat, but rebirth.
He stood barefoot on the cracked tiles of a once-golden ballroom, mirrors broken, chandeliers swinging as if disturbed by ghosts. A child's voice echoed behind him.
"Eli… don't forget me again."
He turned there, a boy with the same storm-gray eyes. Younger. Scared. Wet.
"The ship is sinking. You let me go."
"No no, I held your hand…"
"You let me drown."
Elias fell to his knees as the child vanished in a spray of seawater. From the shadows, another figure emerged: his father.
"You were never meant to be heir," the elder Thorne sneered. "Just a placeholder. Just a weakling."
And yet another voice rose a woman's, gentle, burning with sorrow.
"Remember who you are. Not what they made you."
Magritte slammed her heel into Lysandra's wrist, knocking the device away as Lewis charged in with a tranquilizer. Jude followed behind, eyes on Elias as he writhed on the floor, whispering names no one else knew.
"Give him space!" Magritte barked. "He's remembering!"
Valerie dropped to Elias's side, grabbing his hand tightly.
"Eli, listen to me. You're not alone anymore. Come back."
For a moment, everything stopped.
Elias's eyes opened bloodshot, haunted, but burning with clarity.
"I remember…"
Landon Crick tapped his fingers on the mahogany table while Dexter poured a glass of red.
"So, Elias Thorne's memory is returning," Landon said flatly. "That was… ahead of schedule."
Dexter grinned, wolf-like. "Let him remember. That only means we act sooner."
"And Ashcroft?"
"Waiting," Dexter replied. "Watching. That name is worth more dead than alive."
Landon's jaw flexed. "Then maybe it's time Elias Thorne becomes truly dangerous so we can finally bury him."
Elias stood with Magritte, his coat billowing in the wind.
"I saw my younger self," he murmured. "He hated me."
"He was scared," Magritte corrected.
"He was right."
She turned to face him, eyes soft. "No one survives alone, Elias. Even you."
Their eyes met and silence bloomed between them.
Tentatively, he reached for her hand. "I thought I'd forgotten how to feel."
Magritte smiled faintly. "Then let me remind you."
They kissed slow, uncertain, but real. Two damaged people, caught in a storm that had no end.
In a dim-lit data chamber, a monitor blinked alive.
A new name flashed,THALON INDUSTRIES.
Encrypted audio played.
Voice 1: "The heir has awakened."
Voice 2:"Then we strike before dawn."
The screen went black.