The interior of Silas Thorne's truck smelled of stale coffee, cold leather, and the faint, ozone scent of high-end electronics. It was a stark contrast to the luxurious, cedar-scented interiors of Julian's fleet of black town cars. Here, there were no heated seats or champagne flutes; there was only a dashboard glowing with the light of three different mobile screens and a heavy, weighted silence that felt like a physical pressure.
As Silas pulled out of the prison lot, Elara didn't look at him. She watched the side mirror, her breath hitching as the black sedan lurched into motion behind them.
"He's following us," she whispered, her fingers digging into the fabric of her tote bag.
"He's trying," Silas corrected. He didn't look at the mirror. He drove with a calm, terrifying precision, his eyes fixed on the rain-blurred road ahead. "But he's driving a vehicle optimized for city surveillance, not a pursuit in a Catskill downpour. Give it two miles."
Elara watched as Silas suddenly veered off the main highway, taking a narrow, unlit dirt track that seemed to disappear into the woods. The truck jolted and bounced, the suspension groaning as they splashed through deep, muddy ruts. Two minutes later, Silas cut the headlights and killed the engine.
They sat in total darkness, the only sound the frantic drumming of rain on the roof. Seconds later, a pair of headlights swept past the opening of the dirt track, moving fast down the main road. The black sedan.
"He's gone," Silas said, his voice dropping an octave. "For now."
"You did that like you've done it a hundred times," Elara said, finally turning to look at him. The green glow from the dashboard illuminated the hard planes of his face, making the scar through his eyebrow look like a silver jagged line. "Who are you really, Silas? You don't talk like a Private Investigator. You talk like a soldier."
"I was a forensic accountant for the SEC before Julian Vane decided to buy my boss and frame me for the very money laundering I was investigating," Silas said, his jaw tightening. "In this city, the only difference between a soldier and an accountant is the size of the weapon they use. Julian uses spreadsheets. I started using everything else."
He restarted the engine, but he didn't head back to Brooklyn. Instead, he drove deeper into the industrial outskirts of Red Hook. They pulled up to a weathered warehouse that looked like it hadn't seen a tenant since the seventies. Silas led her through a heavy steel door and down a flight of concrete stairs into a basement that felt like the belly of a beast.
"Welcome to the War Room," Silas said, flicking a switch.
The lights buzzed to life, revealing a space that made Elara's heart stop. The walls were a chaotic mosaic of the Vane family's sins. Photographs of Julian, Sophia, and their high-ranking associates were pinned to corkboards, connected by a literal web of red yarn. But what made Elara's stomach turn was the center point of the entire display.
It was a photograph of her.
It wasn't a professional headshot. It was a candid photo of her standing in her gallery, laughing at something a customer had said. There were other photos, too—her walking to the subway, her buying groceries, her sitting on the park bench.
"You've been stalking me," she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
"I've been protecting the only asset I have left," Silas corrected, walking over to a wall of monitors. "Every time Sophia moves a dollar from the Singapore accounts, it pings a server I built. For the last three months, that money hasn't been going to luxury real estate or yachts. It's been going to a private security firm called The Hounds. They're a group of ex-intelligence officers who specialize in 'cleaning' difficult situations."
He tapped a key, and a grainy surveillance video from the prison began to play. Elara recognized the hallway Julian had been walked through earlier that day. In the video, a guard—the same one who had stood in their consultation room—handed Julian something small during a shift change.
"Julian isn't just sending you diamonds, Elara," Silas said, turning to face her. "He's coordinating. There's a rumor in the underground that the 'King of Cinder' is looking for a way out. Not through a legal appeal, but through a blackout. A total system failure at the penitentiary."
Elara gripped the edge of a desk, her knuckles turning white. "He's escaping? After only a year? That's impossible."
"He doesn't want to escape to be free," Silas said darkly. "He wants to escape because Sophia is liquidating everything he ever built. If he stays in there, he dies a pauper. If he gets out, he burns the whole city down to get his crown back. And he's going to use you as the match to light the fire."
Silas stepped closer, his shadow looming large against the map of Vane's empire. "He told you about Locker 402, didn't he? And the park bench?"
Elara nodded slowly. "He said the second earring was there. He said it was a gift."
"It's a hardware wallet," Silas said. "A physical key to the Vane Foundation's primary ledger. If you get it, you have the power to destroy Sophia and keep Julian in prison forever. But Julian thinks you're going to bring it to him. He thinks you're still the loyal 'Anchor' who will do anything to keep him from drowning."
Silas reached into a drawer and pulled out a tiny, transparent device, no larger than a grain of rice. "I need you to go back to that prison. I need you to give him this. It's a tracker disguised as a medicinal capsule. If he's planning a break, I want to be the one holding the leash when he hits the street."
Elara looked at the tiny device, then at the photos of herself on the wall. She realized then that Julian hadn't been the only one building blueprints. Silas was an architect, too.
"You're asking me to be a double agent," Elara said. "You're asking me to walk back into that room and lie to a man who can read my heartbeat through the glass."
"I'm asking you to stop being the Anchor," Silas said, his voice surprisingly gentle. "I'm asking you to be the storm. For once in your life, Elara, don't just survive the hill. Own it."
Elara looked at her reflection in the dark glass of the monitors. She looked tired. She looked haunted. But as she reached out and took the tracker from Silas's hand, she saw something else in her eyes.
She saw the fire.
"If I do this," she whispered, "I want one thing in return."
"Name it," Silas said.
"When this is over, I want you to burn this room. I want every photo, every file, and every red string turned to ash. I want the Vane name to be a ghost story that nobody remembers."
Silas looked at her for a long moment, then gave a curt nod. "Deal."