The predatory smile on Silas's face was not a gesture of humour, but a
promise of ruin. It was the calm before a storm that would erase their enemies
from the board. Elara felt that certainty in her bones, a counterpoint to the
chilling betrayal that had settled there moments before.
"Then let's show them what happens when you threaten this family," she
had said, her voice steady, her hand a protective shield over their children.
The resolve in the room was a tangible force, but it was interrupted by
the soft, insistent chime of the penthouse doorbell. Martha, the housekeeper,
appeared moments later, her expression slightly bewildered.
"Pardon the interruption, Mr. Thorne, Ms. Elara. There is a… visitor. A
Mrs. Claire Hayes. She says it is urgent."
Elara and Silas exchanged a look of pure, unadulterated shock. Claire?
Here?
Robert's wife had never been a background figure; she'd been a volatile
force. Hot-tempered and fiercely protective of her daughter, Bianca, Claire's
resentment toward Elara had always been active and vocal—a sharp comment at
dinner, a dismissive sneer in the hallway, a ready defence for Bianca's every
cruelty. She had looked at Elara not with detached compliance, but with the
unmistakable fire of a rival. That this woman, who would have sooner set the
room on fire than share a civil word with her, was now standing at her
doorstep, unannounced and desperate, was beyond comprehension.
"Show her in, Martha," Silas said, his voice betraying no surprise, only
sharpened interest. He stood, a king ready to receive an unexpected emissary
from a hostile kingdom.
Claire Hayes looked like a ghost of the polished society wife Elara
remembered. Her usually immaculate blonde hair was slightly disheveled, her
expensive coat thrown over what looked like loungewear. There were no tears
now, only a stark, harried desperation in her eyes that eclipsed the disgust
Elara had seen in her memory from earlier.
She didn't wait for pleasantries. Her gaze darted between them, landing
finally on Elara.
"He's gone completely mad," she stated, her voice raspy. "After you hung
up on him, he was like a caged animal. Smashing things. Ranting." She wrapped
her arms around herself, a self-soothing gesture that did little to calm her
tremors. "He said… he said if he can't have the funding, then he'll make sure
you have nothing left. He was on the phone with that Cohen viper, talking about
dragging your mother's name through the mud."
Elara went still. "My mother? What does my mother have to do with any of
this?"
Claire let out a sharp, bitter laugh that held no mirth. "Oh, it has
everything to do with her, my dear. It always has. That's why I'm here. I won't
let him use her memory as a weapon in his pathetic, crumbling war."
Silas guided a shell-shocked Elara back to the sofa, his presence a
solid wall behind her. He gestured for Claire to sit in the armchair opposite.
She did, perching on the edge as if ready to flee.
"Start from the beginning, Claire," Silas commanded, his tone leaving no
room for evasion.
Claire took a shaky breath, her eyes fixed on a point in the distance,
lost in the painful past. "Robert never loved me. Our marriage was a
transaction, arranged to merge business interests. I knew that. I accepted it.
What I didn't know… what no one knew… was that his heart wasn't just
unavailable. It was already occupied. Permanently."
She finally looked at Elara, her gaze piercing. "He was, and has always
been, pathologically in love with your mother, Evelyn."
The words landed in the quiet room with the force of a physical blow.
Elara felt the air leave her lungs. "What? That's… that's impossible. She was
married to his brother."
"Precisely," Claire spat, the venom in her voice decades old. "His own
elder brother, Conrad. The golden son, the heir. Robert lived his entire life
in Conrad's shadow. And the one thing, the one perfect, beautiful thing that
was solely Conrad's, was Evelyn. He coveted her like a priceless artefact he
could never possess."
Fragments of Elara's childhood, moments that had seemed odd but
insignificant, now clicked into a horrifying new mosaic. The way Robert would
always linger a little too long when he greeted her mother. The excessive,
almost cloying kindness he'd shown Elara after her parents' death, always with
a distant, evaluating look in his eyes. He wasn't just seeing his niece; he was
seeing a reflection of the woman he could never have.
"It was an obsession," Claire continued, her voice dropping to a haunted
whisper. "He had a whole room in the Hayes estate, a private study no one was
allowed to enter. Not even me. After your parents died… he started spending
hours in there. I… I picked the lock once."
She shuddered, the memory clearly unnerving her. "It was a shrine,
Elara. Walls covered in photographs of her. Candid shots, formal portraits…
some were even from before she married Conrad. He had keepsakes. A scarf she'd
left behind at a family dinner. A napkin with her lipstick on it. It wasn't
admiration. It was sickness."
Elara felt sick herself. Her mother's memory, a sacred, beautiful thing
in her heart, was being violated by this revelation. Silas's hand found hers,
his grip tight, anchoring her to the present.
"This explains his 'kindness'," Elara murmured, the pieces falling into
a grotesque picture. "He took me in not out of familial duty, but because I was
a piece of her. A living, breathing reminder."
"And when you began to resemble her more and more…" Claire said, nodding
grimly. "It both tormented and thrilled him. But you also became a symbol of
everything he'd lost. You were Conrad's daughter, inheriting his charm and
Evelyn's beauty. You were a constant reminder of his failure. His bitterness
festered. He could never hurt Conrad or Evelyn directly, but he could control
you. He could make you dependent, keep you small. The necklace incident… it
wasn't just Bianca being a brat. He encouraged that kind of behaviour. He
wanted you isolated. He wanted you to need him as your only protector."
The final piece of the puzzle slammed into place with devastating
clarity. The "rescue" after the necklace incident, the soothing words
that were immediately betrayed—it was all part of a twisted cycle to keep her
under his thumb, to play the hero in the narrative he had constructed around
Evelyn's memory.
"And now?" Silas's voice was like ice, cutting through the heavy
atmosphere. "How does he plan to use Evelyn's name now?"
Claire's face paled further. "He's desperate. The Cohens are tightening
the screws. He told Julian he would leak a story to the press. That your
mother… that Evelyn was unstable. That her death wasn't a simple accident, but
that she was emotionally volatile, and that the flaw is in your bloodline.
He'll say it's the reason you made such a 'reckless' investment with Aeterna.
He'll use her to destroy your credibility and your sanity in one blow."
A white-hot rage, purer and more fierce than any she had ever felt,
erupted in Elara's chest. It burned away the shock, the hurt, the betrayal. He
had stolen from her, lied to her, and manipulated her. But to desecrate her
mother's memory? To use a dead woman as a weapon against her own daughter?
"No," Elara said, her voice low and vibrating with intensity. She stood
up, pulling her shoulders back. The grieving girl was gone, replaced by a queen
ready to defend her lineage. "He will not touch her name."
Silas was already on his feet, his phone in his hand. "Ben. New
priority. Robert Hayes is preparing to slander the late Evelyn Hayes. I want
you to acquire the Hayes estate security system logs. Specifically, access
records for Robert's private study. I want every photograph, every item in that
room documented before he has a chance to destroy it. He built his own prison.
We're just going to lock the door."
He listened for a moment, then his lips curved into that same cold,
predatory smile. "And contact Nathaniel Sterling. Tell him I need a forensic
audit of Conrad and Evelyn Hayes's estate. I want to see if any assets, any
heirlooms, went 'missing' after their deaths and found their way into Robert's
possession."
He ended the call and looked at Elara, his eyes blazing with a ferocious
pride. "We don't just counter the story, my love. We tell a better one. We
reveal the thief who's been stealing from a ghost."
Claire watched them, a complex mix of fear and relief on her face.
"What… what will you do?"
Elara turned to her, her expression unforgiving. "You came here to save
my mother's memory, and for that, I thank you. But it doesn't erase your years
of silence while he tortured me."
"I know," Claire whispered, looking down at her hands. "I was a coward.
I was protecting my own position, my own daughter. But seeing him ready to
cross this final, unforgivable line… I couldn't live with it."
"Then you will help us," Silas stated, it wasn't a question. "You will
testify to everything you've seen and heard in that house. You will give a
sworn statement about that room."
Claire hesitated for only a second before squaring her shoulders. The
society wife was gone, replaced by a woman fighting for her own survival and a
shred of redemption. "Yes. I will."
Elara walked to the window, looking out at the city lights that
glittered like a field of diamonds. Her reflection in the glass showed a woman
who had just uncovered the root of a lifelong poison.
"All my life, I wondered why he looked at me with that strange mix of
longing and hatred," she said softly. "I thought it was because I was an
inconvenience. A burden. But I was never just a burden to him, was I?"
She turned back to the room, her eyes clear and hard as gemstones.
"I was his holy relic and his greatest failure. I was the living proof
that he could never measure up to my father, and that he could never possess my
mother." A cold, sharp smile touched her lips, mirroring her husband's. "Now,
he's going to learn that the ghost he's been worshipping has a daughter. And
she is done being quiet."