The peace from the long drive was a phantom. It evaporated the moment they returned to the penthouse, replaced by the sterile chill of the command center. Cassian had barely shrugged off his coat when Mr. Prescott approached, his face etched with a new kind of unease.
"Sir. You need to see this."
On the central monitor, a single file icon pulsed—a black box on a white field. No sender ID. No point of origin. It had bypassed seven layers of Thorne Global's cybersecurity like they were made of tissue paper, appearing directly on Cassian's private server.
"When?" Cassian's voice was flat.
"Three minutes ago. It's not attempting to upload or download anything else. It's just… sitting there."
"A digital letter bomb," Thomas murmured from the doorway, leaning against the frame, his arms crossed tight over his still-tender ribs.
"Isolate the terminal. Run it in the sandbox," Cassian ordered.
"Already done, sir. The file contains no executable code. Just two data packets. One is a high-resolution scan of a historical document. The other is a… a live video stream link."
Cassian exchanged a look with Elara, who had settled onto the sofa, her face pale. He gave a single, sharp nod to Prescott.
The document appeared first. It was old, the paper cream-colored with age, the ink a faded blue. The letterhead was ornate, official: The Valencia Accord. The signatures at the bottom were unmistakable: Alistair Thorne II—Cassian's grandfather—and a lawyer representing an entity listed only as The Beneficiary. The language was dry, legal, but the meaning was a punch to the gut. It was a one-time settlement, a massive transfer of wealth and shares in several European holdings, in exchange for the "full and permanent relinquishment of any and all claims, acknowledged or unacknowledged, to the name, title, and legacy of the House of Thorne."
It was the payoff. The receipt for a son.
"He's giving us the evidence of his own grievance," Elara whispered, her hand resting protectively on her stomach. "He's saying, 'Look what your family did to me.'"
"Play the stream," Cassian said, his jaw a hard line.
The screen split. The document remained on one side. The other flickered to life with the jerky, grainy quality of a cheap webcam. The audio hit first—the cacophony of a tropical city: motorbikes, distant horns, tinny pop music. The camera was positioned high in a corner of a grimy, cramped room. Peeling walls. A single, whirring fan stirring the humid air.
A figure stumbled into frame. He was shirtless, gaunt, his skin slick with sweat and something else—despair. His hair was long, greasy. But the face, despite the hollow cheeks and the scruffy beard, was unmistakable.
Aris.
He clutched a bottle of local whiskey, taking a long, desperate pull. He swayed, mumbling to himself, then his voice rose, slurred and venomous.
"...think you're so high and mighty! Sitting in your tower of glass and lies! You stole it! You stole what was mine! Cassian Thorne… you sanctimonious bastard… you and that… that architect…"
He continued to rave, a torrent of incoherent spite and self-pity, punctuated by swigs from the bottle. He was a ghost of the polished, arrogant man who had abandoned Elara at the altar. This was what remained: a hollowed-out shell, rotting in a Bangkok slum, kept alive on bitterness and cheap liquor.
The message was crystalline. J wasn't just showing them a document. He was showing them the fruit. This was the "legitimate" heir. This was the legacy Cassian was protecting. It was a masterpiece of psychological poison, designed to breed doubt, to question the very worth of the empire they were fighting for.
"Turn it off," Cassian said, his voice dangerously quiet.
The screen went dark, leaving only the ghost of the document.
"He's breaking you before he even attacks," Thomas said, pushing off the doorframe. "He wants you to wonder if any of this is worth the blood."
"It's not about worth," Cassian snapped, but the fire was forced. Elara saw the flicker in his eyes—not pity for Aris, but a horrific, reluctant understanding of the corrosive power of exile. "It's about survival. His and mine."
He stalked out of the room, needing to move, to outpace the haunting image.
Elara didn't follow. She asked Prescott to send the document to her secured tablet. Propped up on a mountain of pillows in bed, the specter of enforced rest now a bizarre blessing, she began to work. This was a puzzle she could solve. Line by line, clause by clause, she deconstructed the Valencia Accord.
Hours later, Serena brought her tea, finding her surrounded by digital annotations.
"He's in your head, lara," Serena said, placing the cup down.
"He's in the footnotes," Elara corrected, her eyes bright with a focused intensity that banished fatigue. "Look. The primary settlement was cash and shares. But there's an annex. A single, non-liquid asset. A property. A villa, on the outskirts of Valencia. 'To be held in perpetuity in a trust for the well-being of the beneficiary and his direct line.' It was never sold. Never transferred."
Serena leaned in, peering at the faded script. "A forgotten promise."
"More than that," Elara said, her finger tracing the screen. "It's a tether. The one piece of the Thorne world he was ever legally given. The one thing that officially, on paper, connects him to the name. He couldn't keep the name, but he could keep the house. I think… I think it's his heart. The symbolic center of his grievance. The physical proof he was owed something."
Serena was quiet for a moment. "My grandfather, he was a historian of minor European nobility. He used to say family curses aren't magical. They're just unhealed wounds, passed down like bad heirlooms. Someone has to be the one to stop the inheritance. To say 'this stops with me.'"
Elara looked at her mother, seeing the same steel she was trying to muster. "What if stopping it means going to the source of the wound?"
---
Later that day, Cassian stood on the terrace, the city lights blurring into a meaningless constellation. The image of Aris—broken, venomous, pathetic—would not leave him. It was followed by the colder, more terrifying image of the twins, vulnerable and small. The past and the future, both screaming for different kinds of vengeance.
He felt a presence beside him. Thomas, holding two glasses of amber scotch. He handed one to Cassian.
"To uninvited guests," Thomas said flatly, taking a sip.
Cassian took the glass but didn't drink. "He wants me to feel responsible. For Aris. For the whole damn bloodline."
"Are you?"
"For Aris? No. He made his choices. But for the system that created J? For the secret that festered?" Cassian shook his head. "That's a debt written before I was born."
"So what's the plan? We can't just sit here waiting for his next home movie."
Cassian turned, his eyes reflecting the city's cold fire. "We don't wait. We change the battlefield." He took a decisive swallow of the scotch, the burn grounding him. "That property in Valencia. Elara found it. It's the one thing he has left of us. I'm going to take it back."
Thomas nearly choked on his drink. "You're going to Spain? Now? With Marcus out there and Elara about to pop? That's not a strategy, Cass, that's a suicide run!"
"It's bait," Cassian said, his voice low and fierce. "High-value, personal bait. J has been pulling our strings from the shadows, attacking our periphery. I will walk onto his symbolic porch and dare him to show himself. I will draw every ounce of his focus, every resource, away from this building, away from her."
"And if he doesn't take the bait? If he sees it for what it is and hits here while you're gone?"
"The security here is now impregnable. You've seen it. And you'll be here. You, Daniel, Prescott, an army of the best. Elara will have a fortress. But if I stay…" He looked back towards the penthouse, his expression raw. "The attacks will continue. They'll get more creative, more cruel, until one gets through. I can't fight a ghost. But I can make the ghost come to me."
He walked back inside, Thomas following, protest dying on his lips as he saw the grim resolve on his cousin's face.
Cassian found Elara in the library, her tablet still glowing. He knelt before her, taking both her hands in his.
"I know what the villa is," she said softly, searching his eyes. "You don't have to explain."
"I'm going there, Elara."
Her breath hitched. She'd known it was coming, but hearing the words was a physical blow. "No. Cassian, no. It's exactly what he wants! He's trying to pull you apart from us, to get you onto ground he controls!"
"He controls the shadows here, too," Cassian argued, his grip tightening. "I can't fight shadows in our nursery. I need to stand in the light on his damn lawn and make him show his face."
"And what if his face is Marcus with a sniper rifle?!" she cried, tears spilling over. "What if it's a trap within a trap? You're walking into the one place on earth he has a claim to!"
"It's the only move he won't expect! He thinks I'm a defender, a fortress-keeper. He doesn't think I'll leave what I love most to attack the source of the hate."
"That's because it's insane!" She was sobbing now, fear and hormones and love twisting into a desperate plea. "Please. Don't go. We face this together, here. We wait. The babies… they need you here. I need you here."
He pulled her into his arms, holding her shaking body, feeling the firm swell of the twins between them. "I am doing this for you. For them. To end this before they're even born. To give them a first breath that isn't filled with this poison." He kissed her hair, her tears. "I have to, my love. It's the only way I know to protect you."
Their argument was a silent, painful thing after that, existing in the space between his determination and her terror.
As night fell, the penthouse settled into a watchful quiet. Cassian was in his study, making preparations with a cold efficiency. Thomas had retreated, his own worry a silent storm.
And on the wind-swept terrace of her family's townhouse, Sophie Prescott finally broke.
Thomas found her there. She wasn't wearing a coat. She was just standing, arms wrapped around herself, staring at the glittering skyline as if it were a hostile galaxy.
"Prescott. It's freezing. What are you doing out here?"
She didn't turn. "Counting lights. Trying to remember which one is theirs."
He stepped closer, shrugging off his own jacket to drape it over her shoulders. She didn't react. "Come inside. I brought Thai food. The spicy noodles you pretend you can't finish."
Her voice, when it came, was hollow, scraped raw. "He had a gun, Thomas. In the alley, before the van. I saw it in his waistband. I thought, 'This is it. I'm going to die in a puddle of garbage juice, and my last thought will be that I ruined my new shoes.'"
She finally turned. There were no dramatic tears. Her face was just… empty. Stripped of its vibrant, defiant light.
"And then, in that van with Marcus… he smelled like expensive cologne and blood. He looked at me like I was a bug. And all I could think was, 'Elara needs me. I can't be a bug. I have to be a lioness.'" A broken, wet sound escaped her. "But I'm not. I'm so tired of being brave."
Thomas felt his own carefully constructed sarcasm shatter. "You are a lioness. You're the bravest person I know."
"No!" The word was a sharp crack in the night. "Brave people aren't scared! I'm terrified! Every car backfire, every loud noise… I jump. I dream about the smell of that chloroform. I see Lena's face when she picked up that knife. I helped Elara disappear, I lied to my father, I smuggled prenatal vitamins like they were state secrets… and for what? The monster is still out there! And now he's sending… sending home movies of broken people to mess with Cassian's head? What's next? A bomb? A sniper?" Her breath hitched in a ragged sob. "What if he comes for me again? And this time… this time I am just a bug?"
He didn't try to hug her. He just stood there, an anchor in her hurricane. "Listen to me," he said, his voice low and fierce, stripped bare. "If he comes for you again, he will have to go through me. And my infuriating cousins. And your father, who I suspect is secretly a general in cardigans. You are not a bug. You are the center. You're the reason we all remember we're human. You brought Thai food to a siege, for God's sake."
A single tear tracked through the chill on her cheek. "I'm just so tired."
He closed the final distance. He didn't embrace her, but he took her ice-cold hand in both of his, his thumbs stroking her knuckles—a gesture so tender it was more intimate than any kiss. "Then rest. Just for a minute. I'll watch the lights." He pulled her gently to sit on a sheltered bench, keeping her hand securely in his. "I'll be the lion tonight."
She didn't lean on him, but she let her head bow, her forehead almost touching his shoulder, her exhausted silence a surrender. In that quiet, shared vigil against the vast, threatening dark, something profound settled between them. The spark was now a forge, their bond tempered in shared fear and a silent vow of protection.
Back in the penthouse, Cassian stood at the foot of the bed where Elara pretended to sleep. He watched the rise and fall of the blankets, the shape of his future.
"I have to go," he whispered, too softly for her to hear.
But she heard. A single, fresh tear escaped from beneath her closed eyelid, tracing a path to the pillow. The ghost in the machine had succeeded. It had divided them. And now, the warlord was marching out to meet it, leaving his heart behind in the fortress, praying it would be enough.