Just as The Hearth Project's first opening day dawned, a ghost from the deepest part of Marcus's past materialized. A corporate courier delivered a sealed, old-fashioned parchment envelope to his small office. The wax seal bore the stylized "T" of the Thorne Group. Inside was a single line of elegant script, in Alistair's unmistakable hand:
"A kingdom divided cannot stand. A word, in private. The old place. Midnight."
It was a summons, and a threat. Alistair knew the public battle was lost, but the shadow war—the one fought in the labyrinth of trusts, shell companies, and buried clauses—was still raging. Marcus knew ignoring it was dangerous; Alistair held too many dormant levers that could, even now, jeopardize everything he'd built, including the legally separate but reputationally vulnerable Hearth Project.
That night, he stood Chloe up for their planned celebratory dinner, leaving only a cryptic note: "An old fire to put out. Don't wait up." He took the service elevator up to the Thorne Tower penthouse for the first time in over a year. The space was dark, the furniture shrouded in sheets, a tomb to his former life.
Alistair stood by the window, a silhouette. "Sentiment," he said without turning. "It has cost you eighty percent of your net worth and now it consumes your nights. This... Hearth project. A charming diversion. But it is built on sand as long as I hold the deeds to the quarries."
"What do you want, Alistair?" Marcus's voice was tired.
"Recognition," Alistair said, turning. His face was drawn, his icy composure cracked by a desperate hunger. "You play the penitent, but you built this empire with my mind and your name. I want my share. Not of the crumbling old empire. Of the new one. The Foundation Foundry. The Hearth Project. A seat at that... hearth. Or I burn the blueprints."
The ultimatum was chilling. It wasn't about money; it was about poisoning the new at its source. Marcus felt the old, cold calculation rise, seeking a weakness, a pressure point. But this time, he saw Alistair not as a foe to be crushed, but as a mirror of his own past emptiness. A man who defined himself only by control and acquisition.
"I'm not playing penitent, Alistair," Marcus said quietly. "I'm building something alive. You can't have a seat at the hearth because you don't believe in warmth. You'd only ever see it as fuel." He walked to the hidden panel, opened the closet where the "Marcus Wright" clothes still hung. He took the worn leather jacket. "Burn what you want. The deeds, the trusts, the quarries. I'm not building with that stone anymore. I'm building with something else."
He left Alistair standing in the dark, a ghost haunting a tomb no one lived in anymore. The victory felt hollow, but it was clean.