The silence that followed Elara's declaration was not empty; it was
charged, a live wire humming with intent. The plans were set, the lines drawn.
Claire, looking both diminished and resolute, had been escorted out by a
discreet security detail to a safe house Silas controlled. Her cooperation was
now an asset to be protected.
As the penthouse door clicked shut, the energy shifted from strategic
planning to operational execution. Silas moved to his study, the command centre
of his empire. Elara followed, her mind no longer reeling but focused into a
sharp, clear point.
"He'll go to the estate," Silas said, powering up a bank of screens.
"He'll either try to destroy the evidence or retreat into it. We need to be
there first."
On a dedicated, encrypted line, Ben's voice was crisp. "Team is
assembled. We have the access codes from Mrs. Hayes. The security system shows
Robert Hayes left the property forty minutes ago, heading toward his club.
Window is open. We move in ten."
"Sweep the entire study," Silas instructed, his eyes on a live feed of
the Hayes estate perimeter. "Photograph everything in situ. Then extract all
physical material. I want his digital footprint too—any hidden drives, cloud
accounts linked to devices in that room."
"Understood. We'll be ghosts," Ben confirmed before the line went quiet.
Elara stood beside Silas, watching the blip that represented Ben's
unmarked van approach the estate gates on the map overlay. "He always loved
that house," she murmured, a bitter twist to her words. "It was his symbol of
legitimacy. His throne. To think he defiled it with that… shrine."
Silas's hand rested on her shoulder. "Today, we reclaim it."
Hayes Estate, 11:47 PM.
The operation was a study in silent efficiency. Ben, clad in nondescript
black, led a three-person team—a digital forensic specialist and a logistics
expert. Claire's codes disabled the alarms and cameras on a loop, granting them
unseen passage through the grand, now-foreboding halls.
The door to Robert's private west-wing study was heavy oak, locked with
a modern keypad. The digital specialist bypassed it in under thirty seconds.
Ben pushed the door open, his high-powered flashlight cutting through the
darkness.
A collective, subtle inhale was the only sign of their disgust.
The room was colder than the hallway. It was not a study; it was a
museum of pathological longing. As Claire had described, one entire wall was a
mosaic of framed photographs. Evelyn Hayes, captured in sunlit gardens, at
formal galas, laughing beside Conrad. But as Ben's light tracked across, the
nature of the collection shifted. There were enlarged, grainy shots clearly
taken from a distance: Evelyn reading on a patio, Evelyn getting into a car.
The candid intimacy was gone, replaced by the sterile gaze of a stalker.
"Start documenting," Ben ordered, his voice low.
The digital specialist began with a 360-degree camera, capturing the
room's horrifying totality. The logistics expert, gloved hands careful, began
placing items into evidence cases. A silk scarf, monogrammed E.H., in a glass
display case. A single pearl earring on a velvet cushion. A half-empty bottle
of perfume, the scent still faintly clinging to the air, cloying and stale.
Ben's gaze was drawn to the large, antique desk. Not to the ornate
inkwell or the ledger, but to the object placed precisely in the centre,
illuminated by a small, focused lamp.
It was a locket.
He leaned closer. It was gold, intricate, and open. Inside, on one side,
was a tiny, beautiful portrait of a young Evelyn Hayes. On the other side,
nestled not against a picture of Conrad, but against a tiny, perfect coil of
auburn hair, was a photograph of Elara, aged about sixteen. The likeness to her
mother was breathtaking. The message was unequivocal: the obsession had
seamlessly transferred, a prize he could not have and a substitute he sought to
control.
"Primary target acquired," Ben muttered into his mic, carefully securing
the locket. "This isn't just obsession. It's a blueprint."
Thorne Penthouse, 12:15 AM.
While Ben navigated the haunting silence of the estate, Silas waged a
different kind of war—one fought in the billions, waged with keystrokes.
Nathaniel Sterling, his most ruthless financial tactician, was on the
main screen. "The Cohen Group's leverage is their new maritime logistics fund.
It's heavily reliant on short-term capital from three European banks. They're
already skittish because of the Kore Tech scandal splash-back."
Silas studied the data streams. "Make them panic. Dump a significant but
untraceable portion of our holdings in their subsidiary partners. Trigger a
cascade of margin calls. Then, through our channels in Hong Kong, offer to buy
the debt at a sixty percent discount."
Nathaniel's eyebrows rose. "Bleed them and then offer a tourniquet they
have to pay for. They'll be haemorrhaging liquidity by morning. Julian Cohen
will have his father screaming down his neck."
"Good," Silas said, his expression cold. "I want Julian to understand
the cost of his family's games. The pressure must be unrelenting and personal."
He switched feeds. Elara was now at his side, her eyes on the live data
from the stock exchanges, watching the first tremors of their counter-attack
ripple through the Cohen empire. "Will it be enough to make them drop Robert?"
she asked.
"It will make Robert a liability they cannot afford," Silas corrected.
"Julian will be forced to cut him loose to save the core business. And a
desperate, abandoned Robert…"
"...is a Robert more likely to make a fatal mistake," Elara finished, a
grim understanding in her eyes.
Hayes Estate, 12:45 AM.
The team was finishing up. The walls were now bare, the eerie curation
boxed into sterile containers. The digital specialist was imaging the hard
drive of a computer hidden in a false drawer.
"Got something," the specialist said. "Encrypted diary files. Recent
entries." He cracked the basic encryption—Robert's vanity meant he used his
birthday as a password.
Ben read over his shoulder, his stomach turning. The entries were a
window into a crumbling mind.
'Elara's defiance is Evelyn's spirit, refusing me even in her daughter.
She must be made to see. To submit.'
'The Cohens promise ruin. Good. Let the Thornes burn. Then she will have
nowhere to go. She will come home. To me. To his place.'
'If I cannot have her legacy pure, I will see it tarnished. Better
broken in my hands than shining in another's.'
"This is more than enough," Ben said into his mic, transmitting the text
to Silas. "We're compromised."
The head of security at the club had just tipped them off: Robert, in a
drunken fury, had thrown a glass at the bartender and was screaming about going
home to 'clean house.'
"Extract now," Silas's voice came through, calm and final. "Leave no
trace you were there. Just… leave it empty."
The Silver Crest Club, 1:00 AM.
Robert Hayes's driver helped him from the back seat of the
town car into his wheelchair on the curb, the chilly night air doing nothing to
sober the tempest of whiskey and rage in his mind. The call from his panicked
contact at the Cohen Group still rang in his ears—a shrill, angry demand to
'contain the fallout.' They were pulling back. Abandoning him.
"The estate. Now," Robert barked at his driver, his voice
slurred but vicious. They thought he was finished? He had one move left. A move
that would break Elara utterly. He needed the shrine. He needed the locket.
Holding it would give him the strength, the righteous fury, to call every
tabloid editor he knew and scorch the earth.
The car sped through the empty streets, a man in a
leather-upholstered cage racing toward his own doom.
Hayes Estate, 1:20 AM.
The grand foyer echoed with the sharp, mechanical whir of
Robert's wheelchair motor and his ragged breath. The quiet of the sleeping
house felt like a taunt. He bypassed the sweeping staircase—a relic of a time
when his legs obeyed him—and guided his chair to the discreet private elevator
that serviced the west wing.
The ride was interminable. When the doors slid open on the
second floor, he propelled himself forward with furious jerks of the controls,
the wheels whispering over the plush runner. He slammed his fist against the
keypad outside his study. The light blinked green. He shoved the door open.
And froze.
The room was empty.
Not just tidy. Sterile. The walls were naked, marked only by
pale rectangles and faint dust outlines where his sacred photographs had hung.
The glass display cases stood void and gaping. The great desk was barren, the
focused lamp illuminating nothing but a vast expanse of polished wood where his
treasures had once been curated.
His eyes darted wildly, disbelieving. The locket. Where was
the locket?
A low, animal sound of utter despair and rage choked in his
throat. He wheeled himself violently to the desk, yanking drawers open with
clumsy, frantic pulls. Empty. All empty. With a roar, he swung his arm across
the desk's surface, sending the brass lamp crashing to the floor. The bulb died
with a pop, plunging the violated sanctuary into near darkness, save for the
faint moonlight from the window.
They had been here. They had taken it. They had taken her.
In the suffocating silence of the hollowed-out shrine,
Robert Hayes's fury crystallised into something colder, sharper, and far more
dangerous. They hadn't just stolen his leverage. They had stolen his sacred
relics, the physical proof of his devotion. This was no longer just about money
or power.
This was war.
And as he sat in the darkness, surrounded by the ghostly
impressions of his stolen obsession, a single, clarifying thought cut through
the haze of his ruin: If he had nothing left to lose, then he had every reason
to make them lose everything. His hands clenched on the armrests of his chair,
his knuckles white. The throne from which he would wage his final battle was
not one of power, but of spite.