The empty silver frame on the side table was the only evidence of
Julian's visit. Arthur had not moved it. It sat, a perfect, gleaming
accusation, reflecting the grey light of a London afternoon that had turned as
cold as the truth.
Julian stood in his own penthouse, but it felt like a set. Every curated
artwork, every first-edition book, the Eames chair, the bespoke suit draped
over a chaise—all felt like props assigned to a character he'd been playing.
The character of Julian Cohen, heir.
The confrontation with Arthur had provided the brutal architecture of
the lie. Steven is your blood. I am your architect. But it was the photograph
now burning a hole against his chest that filled in the hellish details. He had
spent hours staring at it—the two young brothers, Steven's arm thrown around
Arthur's shoulders, Steven's face alight with a rakish, effortless joy Arthur's
more reserved smile could never match. His father's face. His real father's
face.
He saw it now. The slight cleft in the chin he shared. The specific arch
of the eyebrow. The energy that thrummed in his own veins, which Arthur had
always sought to discipline, to dampen—it wasn't a flaw. It was an inheritance.
A torrent of memories, re-contextualised with vicious clarity, flooded
him.
Memory: Age seven. He'd drawn a fantastical, chaotic battle scene in the
margins of his tutor's pristine notes. Arthur had been displeased. "Control
your imagination, Julian. Discipline creates empires. Chaos destroys them."
Eleanor had simply looked at the drawing with a distant, uncomprehending smile,
then patted his head. "Very… energetic, darling."
Memory: Age sixteen. His uncle Steven had visited, a rare, thrilling
occurrence. Steven had taken him driving in a ridiculously fast car, laughing
as they broke every speed limit. "You've got a feel for it, kid!" Steven had
said, clapping him on the shoulder, his eyes—Julian's eyes—alight with
approval. Later, Arthur had been icy. "Do not mistake recklessness for
strength. He is not a model for you."
Memory: Age twenty-four. After closing his first major deal, a ruthless,
aggressive manoeuvre that had startled the board, Arthur had summoned him.
"Effective," he'd said, steepling his fingers. "But remember, the goal is not
to win a battle. It is to secure the territory, permanently, and have the
ledger show a clean profit. Your… fervour… must be channeled." Steven, hearing
of it through the grapevine, had sent a bottle of outrageously expensive
champagne with a one-word note: "Finally."
The coldness of his "parents." Arthur's relentless sculpting, the
chipping away of any impulse that seemed too visceral, too passionate.
Eleanor's benign, detached affection—the affection of a woman playing a
demanding, prestigious role, not a mother's love. They had been curators.
Wardens.
And Steven's intense, sporadic scrutiny. The way his uncle's gaze would
linger on him, not with avuncular fondness, but with a mix of curiosity, pride,
and a searing, unspoken hunger. He wasn't looking at his nephew. He was looking
at his son. A son he could not claim, but whose every achievement was a tacit
rebellion against the brother who had stolen him.
His world didn't just shatter; it vaporised. The foundation wasn't
merely weak—it was a fiction poured over a chasm of betrayal and theft.
He poured a drink, his hands steady not from calm, but from a shock so
profound it locked his muscles. He was the living, breathing by-product of his
uncle's sin and his father's vengeance. A trophy of Arthur's ultimate victory
over Steven. He had been raised not out of love, but as the ultimate asset in a
silent, lifelong war between brothers. His success was Arthur's vindication.
His very existence was Steven's defeat and his motivation for every shadowy
deal, every alliance with men like Robert Hayes—a desperate, clawing attempt to
amass enough power to one day reclaim what was his.
And his mother… the woman in Switzerland. Greta's whispered story, which
his own network had now hesitantly, fearfully corroborated, painted a picture
so tragic it felt like a Greek play. Elora. The first wife. The great,
forbidden love. Not some discarded mistress, but the heart of the rupture.
He was not an accident they had generously cleaned up. He was the
catalyst for a ruin. His birth had broken a woman and ignited a cold war. He
was a crime scene given a trust fund and a tailored education.
A sound escaped him—a raw, choked thing that was neither laugh nor sob.
All his life, he had fought a vague, pervasive sense of unreality, a feeling
that he was performing a pre-scripted life. He'd attributed it to the pressure
of legacy. Now he knew it was because he was a performance. A lead actor in a
play written by Arthur, with Steven a ghostly, disruptive audience member.
The polished surface of the mahogany desk showed a distorted reflection.
He saw Arthur's cultivated poise in his posture, Steven's defiant fire in his
eyes. He was a chimera. A construct.
The rage, when it came, was silent and absolute. It was not the hot,
impulsive anger of Steven. It was the deep, glacial fury of Arthur—the fury of
the manipulated, of the creation turning on its creator. They had made him a
weapon without a true owner. Now, the weapon was live, and its targeting system
was recalculating.
His phone buzzed. A notification from a discreet tracking algorithm he'd
set up after the wharf, monitoring Elara's known corporate jets. One had filed
a flight plan. Zurich to London, return leg pending. She was already there.
Zurich. The home of the clinic. The gilded cage.
Of course she had found it. The relentless Thorne tenacity. She was
there, right now, digging up the grave Arthur had sealed. She would be hearing
the same story, perhaps from the ghost herself.
A new, terrifying thought emerged. Elara now held not just the ledger,
not just Robert's crimes, but the primordial truth of his own existence. She
held the power to dismantle him at the molecular level, to reveal to the world
that the heir to the Cohen empire was a testament to adultery, betrayal, and a
stolen identity.
But alongside the terror came a bizarre, hollow thread of… relief. The
lies were almost done. The performance was nearing its final act. And for the
first time, the person who held the truth wasn't a liar like Arthur or a ghost
like Steven. It was Elara. His enemy. His cousin. The only person, perhaps, who
could understand what it was to have your legacy be a poisoned well.
He didn't know what he would do. Confront her? Beg her for silence? Race
her to the truth? All he knew was that the carefully scripted life of Julian
Cohen was over. Whatever emerged from the ashes of this revelation would be
something else entirely. Something born not of cold patronage, but of fire and
truth, however devastating.
He picked up the empty frame from his own desk and hurled it against the
wall. The glass exploded in a satisfying shower of shards. He stared at the
wreckage, breathing heavily.
The sculpture was breaking free of the sculptor's stand. And the world
it was going to fall into was utterly unprepared for the impact.