The Thorne estate was everything Elara's penthouse was not. Where her world was glass and steel, this house was wood and history. Dust motes drifted in the shafts of light spilling through leaded-glass windows, carrying with them the scent of beeswax and old paper. The walls were heavy with portraits of long-dead Thornes, their stern eyes tracking Elara with ancestral disapproval.
Julian barely had time to step inside before his mother swept him into a hug. Mrs. Thorne was small and sweet-faced, her warmth a sharp contrast to the chill in the air. "Oh, my Julian, you're here! And you brought—oh, Elara! What a lovely surprise."
Elara inclined her head in a perfectly polite nod, though her eyes flicked upward to a cobweb in the corner, as if already calculating the inefficiency of leaving it there.
Dinner was a study in tension. The table groaned with silverware and polished crystal, but all Julian could feel was the weight of his brother's scowl from across the table. Ethan Thorne sat rigid, a storm barely contained behind his eyes.
The moment the main course was served, he struck.
"So, Elara," Ethan drawled, his tone sharp with condescension. "I assume by now you're intimately familiar with the Thorne family's finances? A rather… complex spreadsheet, wouldn't you say?"
Julian's jaw clenched. He recognized the tactic: humiliate him by exposing weakness, by reducing his legacy to numbers that didn't add up.
But Elara didn't flinch. She lifted her glass with deliberate calm, took a measured sip, and set it down with a soft click that echoed louder than Ethan's words. "The numbers are clear," she said coolly. "A competent manager studies a company's past. A great one prepares it for its future."
Ethan's smirk faltered. He hadn't expected her to parry—let alone with such precision. He regrouped, leaning forward. "And what, exactly, do you know of our company's future?"
Elara's eyes cut to him, cold and crystalline. "I know your brand can flourish—not as a relic of history, but as a fixture of tomorrow. The market craves redemption stories. Julian and I are already providing one."
The silence that followed was sharp enough to draw blood. A battle of wills passed between them, unspoken but unmistakable. In the end, Ethan looked away first, his jaw tight, his confidence cracked.
Mrs. Thorne, sensing the tension, hurriedly redirected the conversation to safer ground. But the damage had already been done.
Julian sat in stunned silence, watching Elara with something dangerously close to awe. She hadn't just defended herself; she had defended him, and his family, and everything he had been trying—failing—to hold together. She hadn't done it with clumsy charm or frantic words, but with a surgeon's precision and ice-cold logic.
And for the second time in as many days, Julian found himself thinking that maybe, just maybe, Elara Vance was far more than he had bargained for.