The night was quieter than usual in Zurich, but Elias Thorne had never trusted quiet. He stood beside a large projection table in an underground suite glass walls, encrypted panels, and a dozen real-time surveillance feeds blinking like the eyes of gods.
He wasn't alone anymore. And that made him more dangerous than ever.
"Run it again," Elias said.
Jude tapped the command, and the table glowed. A hologram of Thalon Industries emerged, spinning, layered with data links and invisible tendrils of influence.
"They're a phantom," Jude muttered. "No registration, no founder records. But every time we follow the money… it leads there."
"Then we burn the money trail," Elias said. "And make the ghost bleed."
Lewis leaned over the display, arms folded. "There's chatter that Dexter's planning a proxy acquisition war. He wants to gut Draxon from the inside use shell firms to dismantle you."
"Let him try," Elias replied coldly. "He forgets who wrote Draxon's charter."
Magritte, seated by the window with a tablet, looked up. "We'll need allies. Quiet ones. Thalon is building an AI-based defense program… encrypted with quantum nodes. Someone's trying to militarize it."
Jude stiffened. "You think this is… international?"
"No," Elias said. "I think this is war."
Later that evening, Elias entered the private art gallery he once frequented in Geneva. Only one other person was there Valerie Dexter.
"I didn't expect you to come," she said, turning.
"I didn't expect you to still wear my ring," Elias replied.
Valerie's hand twitched by her side.
"Take it off if you hate me that much."
"I don't hate you, Elias," she said after a pause. "I'm terrified of what you're becoming."
"And what is that?"
"Something not even you can control."
Their conversation cut with tension deep, personal history that neither time nor scandal had burned out.
"You were betrothed to the ghost of a boy," Elias whispered. "Now I'm back from the dead and that terrifies you."
"No," she replied. "It terrifies me that you're no longer the boy… and I'm still the girl who loved him."
In a vault beneath the old Zurich Stock Exchange, a man known only as The Latchkey signed an encrypted deal.
"Elias Thorne," he mused aloud. "Didn't expect you to come crawling back."
"I'm not crawling," Elias replied. "I'm buying your silence and your codes."
The Latchkey smiled. "For a man who once vanished beneath the sea, you've learned how to swim with sharks."
"No," Elias said. "I taught the sharks to fear the current."
A briefcase clicked open inside was a black access cube, gleaming like obsidian.
"Consider this your first dagger," The Latchkey said. "Use it wisely."
Magritte stood before a mirror in Elias's suite, brushing the fabric of a red evening gown against her skin.
"You always watch when I dress," she teased.
Elias leaned against the doorframe. "I always look when I see art."
They'd grown close closer than either had expected. But intimacy, for Elias, had never come without consequence.
"You think they'll hurt me to get to you?" she asked.
"They'll try," he said. "But they'll bleed before they touch you."
Their lips met. Not a kiss of desperation but one of claim, of promise. The world outside could crumble. But for now, here, there was still something worth protecting.
Across the sea, in a sterile conference room cloaked in shadows, Landon Crick watched the first newsfeed hit,
"UNLICENSED INVESTMENT RINGS CONNECTED TO DEXTER FINANCE?"
He crushed the glass in his hand.
Dexter stared at the screen. "He's playing us."
"No," Landon growled. "He's baiting us."
Behind them, a man stepped from the shadows. The same voice from the encrypted chamber.
"We hit the vaults next. Then his reputation. And then… the girl."
Dexter turned. "Who are you?"
The man smiled. "I'm the heir to a throne that never existed."
The cold had returned to Zurich not just in the air, but in the pulse of the city. Rumors now moved faster than trains. Whispers of Draxon's sudden rise. Elias Thorne's name danced across encrypted channels, finance reports, and blackmail tapes. Some praised him. Some feared him. Others... began to conspire.
But Thorne wasn't chasing legacy anymore.
He was setting the world on fire.
"Launch it," Elias said without flinching.
The boardroom in Zurich's eastern complex was filled with his closest team Jude, Magritte, Lewis, and three silent foreign executives. At Elias's command, Jude entered a secure code. A set of legal filings went live simultaneously in over eight countries.
"Operation Anvil is now active," Jude confirmed.
"What is it?" one executive asked.
Elias folded his arms. "A hostile restructuring of every shell company Thalon Industries tried to hide behind."
"You'll trigger an international arbitration case."
"No," Elias said, eyes hard. "I'll trigger a truth they can't afford to explain."
Magritte leaned close. "This will get ugly."
"It's already ugly," Elias whispered. "Now we just get loud."
Hours later, Elias stood alone on the rooftop. The lights of Zurich blinked below, pulsing like a breathing city. Magritte joined him quietly, her coat brushing his arm.
"You keep staring off rooftops like you're ready to jump," she said.
"I'm waiting for the stars to answer back."
"Still searching for the boy who drowned?"
Elias smiled faintly.
"You remembered more last night, didn't you?"
"Yes," he admitted. "I remembered the storm. The cold. The silence under the water. And a hand… pulling me out."
"Whose?"
He looked at her, eyes dark as shadow.
"I don't know. But I've started dreaming of my mother. She was never in my memories before."
Magritte reached for his hand. He didn't pull away this time.
"Whatever storm's coming," she said, "I'm in it with you."
In a surveillance van miles away, three men in tactical gear watched Elias and Magritte through thermal scans.
"Confirmed contact. Emotional vulnerability. Possibly romantic attachment."
The lead agent, known only as Verin, smirked.
"He's human after all."
"Do we move?"
"No," Verin said. "We wait. The moment he cares, we take the thing he cares about."
The screen flickered. Magritte's face zoomed in.
"Tag her. She's the weakness."
Back in Zurich, news broke like a crack of thunder,
"Thalon Industries Declares Bankruptcy Following Draxon Lawsuit Avalanche."
Elias's team watched the report in stunned silence. Even Jude, usually composed, raised an eyebrow.
"You timed the filings with their audit window," Lewis said. "Brutal."
"They were laundering money through global art auctions," Elias replied. "I just turned their gallery into a courtroom."
Magritte, still watching, said, "You just made a lot of enemies."
"Good," Elias said, voice steel. "Let them come."
Late that night, Elias received a sealed envelope. No name. No signature. Just a red wax stamp with a wolf's head.
Inside was a photo.
A young woman. Curled in a bed. Drugged. Unconscious.
Magritte.
The note read:
"You forget. Dying once doesn't make you immortal. Step away from the duchess... or drown again."
Elias's hands trembled for the first time in years.
"Get Jude," he growled. "Now."
Jude entered five minutes later, expression grave. Elias handed him the photo and the letter. Jude stared at them, jaw tightening.
"This wasn't Dexter."
"No," Elias said. "It's someone worse."
Jude opened a laptop. "Then we dig. I'll need access to the black channel from Thorne's old naval line."
"Use it," Elias said. "And wake Lewis. We prepare for relocation. If they want her, they'll have to crawl through fire."
"What do we tell Magritte?"
Elias stared at the photo one more time.
"Nothing. Not yet. She stays safe if she stays unaware."
But even as he said it, he knew the wolves were already circling.
The wind outside Zurich's hills was louder than usual, almost as if nature itself was trying to warn them. But Elias Thorne, alias Mr. Dime, no longer feared warnings. He calculated them.
He was already setting the fire.
In a hidden Draxon facility beneath a luxury hotel Elias had acquired in secret, Lewis and Jude watched as black-box servers flickered to life.
"Are you sure you want to run this kind of data breach?" Lewis asked, arms crossed, scars on his knuckles catching the dim light.
"Positive," Elias replied, removing his coat. "I want every trace of the photo. I want to know who took it, when, where and if they so much as blinked near Magritte."
"You're risking exposure to international intelligence groups," Jude added.
"Then we expose them first."
He pulled up the map. Red dots appeared across Europe. One pulsed heavily near Prague.
"There," Elias pointed. "That's where the photo was last modified."
Lewis leaned closer. "Then Prague is where we begin."
Elsewhere, in a high-rise penthouse above Zurich, Magritte sipped wine and stared at the skyline. But her mind wasn't on the lights.
It was on Elias. On the strange shift in his demeanor. The way his hand had trembled when he thought she wasn't looking.
He was afraid.
And Elias Thorne didn't get afraid.
She opened a private laptop and clicked through a series of encrypted files. Hidden folders Elias once showed her when he let his guard down.
Among them was a strange digital signature one she hadn't seen before.
"PROJECT WOLFE."
She clicked.
The screen went black.
Then a single line appeared,
"Magritte Astair. You were never just a duchess liaison. You were a contingency."
She dropped her glass.
Two nights later, Elias and Lewis arrived in Prague under heavy disguise. The city was freezing, stone-colored, ancient and secretive. Perfect for enemies.
"Target?" Lewis asked.
"Codename: Verin," Elias said. "Ex-Draxon intelligence. Last seen near a decommissioned theater turned data hub."
They infiltrated at midnight. Lewis handled the ground crew. Elias hacked the surveillance systems. Then he found it Verin's private suite under the alias "Dr. Roche."
Inside the suite were photographs.
Dozens.
All of Magritte.
From childhood to now.
And beside them a wall covered in research about Elias Thorne.
"They're not watching you," Lewis said, brows furrowed. "They were raising her."
Elias stepped back.
"No. Grooming her."
Back in Zurich, Magritte confronted Jude at the Draxon tower.
"Where is he?" she demanded.
Jude didn't answer.
"You think I haven't noticed the lies? The encrypted movements? I was trained in diplomacy, not blindness."
Jude sighed, placing his tablet down. "You were never supposed to see it this soon."
"See what?"
"That your life is a weapon."
Magritte's face paled. "What does that mean?"
But Jude wouldn't say more. Instead, he opened a small file and handed her a name.
"Verin."
"He's the one who put the camera in your room. The one who framed Elias. He raised you in a way none of us understood... until now."
She took the name, swallowed hard.
Then whispered, "I want to be the one to burn him."
At the theater base in Prague, Elias and Lewis set fire to the data stacks. As flames licked the ceiling, Elias opened a line to Zurich.
Jude answered. "Magritte knows."
Elias inhaled. "And?"
"She wants revenge."
Elias closed his eyes. "So do I."
"Orders?"
"Prepare her. We go full black-out. From now on no more waiting. They want a war... we'll give them hell."