The city, washed clean by a sudden, pounding night rain, reflected the
lights of Aeterna Tower in blurred, weeping streaks. In the penthouse, the
silence was a tangible thing, filled with the weight of Claire's evidence and
Bianca's seismic shift. Elara paced, the events of the day cycling behind her
eyes like a grim film reel.
"We need that ledger," Silas said, studying a schematic of the Hayes
estate study Bianca had messaged them. "It's the linchpin. With it, and
Claire's evidence, it's not a lawsuit. It's a life sentence."
"And we need to move before Robert realises his wife and daughter have
defected," Elara replied, her voice tight. The tactical part of her mind was
engaged, but beneath it, a deep exhaustion thrummed. The torch felt heavy.
Her private line buzzed—an unknown number, but with a prefix she
recognised from her security briefings. Cohen Holdings. Her blood ran cold.
She showed the screen to Silas. His face hardened. "Don't answer."
"If I don't, he comes here. Or he does something worse," she said, her
thumb hovering over the accept button. "He prefers the shadows. A direct call
means he's been pushed into the light. I want to see what he looks like there."
She answered, putting it on speaker. "Cohen."
"Elara." Julian Cohen's voice was as she remembered—cultured, smooth,
but stripped of its usual languid grace. There was a taut wire of urgency
running through it. "We need to talk. In person."
"Anything you have to say can be said now."
A pause, filled with the faint sound of rain on his end, too. "Not on an
open line. And not with your watchdog listening, though I know he is. Thirty
minutes. The old granite wharf at the river's bend. You know it. Come alone."
"I don't take orders from you, Julian."
"It's not an order," he said, and for the first time, she heard
something that might have been genuine strain. "It's a warning. My family's
poison runs deeper than you know. You're digging in the wrong grave, Elara.
Stop digging, or you'll unleash things you can't control."
The line went dead.
Elara stared at the phone. Silas was already shaking his head. "It's a
trap. It's exactly the kind of isolated location he'd use."
"He had me trapped in a gallery full of people and did nothing but
talk," she countered, her mind racing. "He's had countless opportunities for
direct action. He doesn't want me harmed. He wants me stopped. Something has
changed. He's scared."
"All the more reason not to walk into his scenario."
"He knows about the ledger," Elara realised with sudden, chilling
certainty. "He knows we're close to something that doesn't just topple Robert,
but something that could spill over onto him. His 'poison.' This is about
containment."
After a fierce, silent debate with Silas's worried eyes, she made a
decision. "I'll go. But you'll be there. Just not where he can see you."
The granite wharf was a relic of the city's industrial past, a skeletal
finger of dark stone jutting into the churning, rain-pocked river. The
warehouses around it were dark, windows like blind eyes. Elara parked her car
under a lone, flickering sodium lamp, its yellow light fighting a losing battle
against the drizzle and dark.
She stepped out, the collar of her trench coat turned up against the
damp chill. She saw him immediately—a tall, lean silhouette at the very end of
the wharf, facing the black water. He didn't turn as she approached, her heels
echoing on the wet stone.
"You came," he said, his voice carried back to her by the wind.
"Your warning was suitably dramatic."
He finally turned. In the gloom, his aristocratic features looked carved
from the same granite as the wharf. There was no smirk, no condescending
amusement. Only a stark, grim intensity.
"This isn't a game anymore, Elara. Your righteous crusade against your
twisted uncle is about to break a seal on something far older and far more
vicious."
"Explain."
"My grandfather and Robert's father didn't just do business," Julian
began, his gaze piercing. "They built an ecosystem. It wasn't about profit. It
was about power of a particular kind. The kind that requires leverage, silence,
and the occasional burial. They had a partnership. When they died, my father
and Robert were meant to be the stewards. But Robert… his sickness, his
fixation," he used Elara's word with deliberate weight, "made him erratic. A
liability. My father cut the formal ties years ago, but the roots… the roots
are still tangled together in the dark."
Elara stepped closer, the rain misting her face. "What roots?"
"The contingency register," Julian said flatly, and a jolt went through
her. "You think it's just Robert's little black book? It's a family heirloom.
Started by my grandfather. Passed to Robert's father. It contains the sins of
this city going back sixty years. Names, dates, transactions that would cause
not just scandals, but wars. Some of the people in that book are dead. Their
powerful, vindictive children are not."
He turned fully to her now, his eyes blazing with a frantic light. "When
you drag Robert into court, you think his lawyers won't use every piece of
leverage to keep him out of prison? That book will be his get-out-of-jail-free
card. He'll start trading secrets to save his skin. And when he does, the chaos
won't distinguish between him and you. It will be a feeding frenzy. The Cohens
will be forced to protect ourselves, and we will not be gentle. You will have
turned over a stone and revealed a nest of vipers that will strike in every
direction, including at you."
Elara's heart hammered against her ribs. "So your solution is to let a
psychotic man continue to poison my life and who knows how many others, to
maintain your family's comfortable silence?"
"My solution is to deal with him quietly!" Julian snapped, a crack in
his polished facade. "There are other ways. Ways that don't risk a bloodbath in
the boardrooms and drawing rooms of this entire city. You playing the
torchbearer, holding your flame up for all to see, you're going to burn down
the whole damn forest!"
"Then why tell me?" she challenged. "Why not just let me blunder in and
face the consequences?"
For a long moment, he just looked at her, the rain plastering his dark
hair to his forehead. When he spoke, his voice was lower, stripped bare.
"Because the first secret in that book… is about Evelyn."
The world narrowed to the sound of the river and the pounding of her own
blood. "What about her?"
"It's not my secret to tell," he said, his jaw tight. "But it's the
reason my father has always tolerated Robert's instability. It's the chain that
binds our families. If that comes out, the damage will be… profound. And it
won't only be Robert and my father who pay. Your mother's memory, the legacy
you're so fiercely protecting… it will be rewritten in the ugliest ink
imaginable."
He stepped closer, invading her space. She could smell his cologne and
the damp wool of his coat. "Stop the legal circus. Drop the public war. Let the
old monsters die in the dark, where they belong. Take your victory in silence,
and live your life with your mercenary prince. This is the only warning I will
give you."
Elara held his gaze, the torch inside her not guttering, but burning
hotter, fuelled by a new, terrifying fury. "You don't get to dictate my
silence, Julian. And you don't get to use my mother as a bargaining chip. If
your family's foundation is built on burying the truth about her, then it
deserves to burn."
A shadow detached itself from the deeper darkness of a warehouse wall.
Silas. He didn't approach, but his presence was a silent declaration.
Julian saw him. A bitter smile touched his lips. "So be it. You've
chosen the inferno." He leaned in, his final words a whisper meant only for
her. "When you find that ledger, Elara, look for the entry from October 1992.
Then ask yourself if the truth is worth the hell you're about to unleash."
He turned and walked past her, disappearing into the curtain of rain,
leaving her shivering on the wharf, not from the cold, but from a dread that
had just taken on a terrifying new shape. The battle was no longer just with
Robert. It was with history itself, and Julian Cohen had just handed her the
first, horrifying clue.