“There’s more,” Harlan said.
Audra looked up.
His expression darkened. “Your father suspected Thorne Corporation years ago. Before he died, he asked me to watch the accounts. He said if Sterling ever came for you, I was to stand beside you.”
For the first time since midnight, Audra nearly cried.
But she swallowed it.
“Then let’s stand.”
That night, Maeve brought in a private digital investigator named Ezra Vale, though everyone in the cybersecurity world called him Zero. He was thin, pale, and quiet, with the haunted eyes of a man who had spent too many years inside other people’s secrets.
Within hours, he found what Sterling had tried to hide.
Thorne Corporation was not merely struggling.
It was collapsing.
Debt. Lawsuits. Failed acquisitions. Frozen credit. The once-powerful Thorne name was a mansion with termites in the walls.
“Lumiere Legacy is their lifeboat,” Maeve said, studying the files.
Audra stood by the window, watching Chicago burn gold beneath the evening lights. “Then he never wanted to marry me.”
Maeve hesitated. “Audra…”
“He wanted access.”
Zero’s laptop chimed.
He leaned closer. “You’re going to want to hear this.”
He played an audio file recovered from a private Thorne boardroom recording.
Sterling’s voice filled the room.
“Audra will be in Milan. By the time she gets back, Delilah and I will be married, the public will see Audra as unstable, and Lumiere will be ready for acquisition.”
Another voice answered, older and colder.
Sterling’s father.
“Don’t underestimate Bennett blood. Her father refused us until the pressure killed him.”
Audra went still.
Sterling laughed.
“Then she’ll break the same way.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Audra gripped the back of a chair.
Her father had died after months of stress, chest pain, and sleepless nights. Doctors had called it overwork. Audra had blamed herself for not seeing how much he carried.
Now she understood.
They had cornered him.
They had hunted him.
And Sterling had walked into her grief pretending to be love.
Maeve’s voice softened. “We should take this to the police immediately.”
“No,” Audra said.
Maeve stared at her. “No?”
“Not yet.”
“Audra, this is evidence.”
“It’s not enough to stop Friday. Sterling will deny it. His father will bury it. The shareholders will still vote before the truth catches up.” Audra turned from the window. “We need something so strong it destroys the vote in the room.”
“What?”
Audra thought of her father’s old safe, hidden behind a false book spine in her study. After his funeral, his lawyer had given her a black USB drive with a note.
Only when you’re ready.
She had never opened it.
“I think my father left me a weapon.”
The drive was encrypted.
For two nights, Audra tried every password she could imagine. Her father’s birthday. Her mother’s name. The founding date of Lumiere Legacy. Nothing worked.
While she fought with the dead man’s final secret, Maeve worked on Delilah.
Not directly. That would have failed.
Delilah was too deep in Sterling’s glittering trap.
Instead, Maeve contacted Delilah’s best friend, Kelly. She showed her enough evidence to prove Sterling had opened offshore accounts in Delilah’s name.
“He’s setting her up,” Maeve said. “When this collapses, he’ll blame her.”
At first, Kelly refused to believe it.
Then she saw the bank statements.
Then she saw the forged signatures.
Then she heard the recording of Sterling talking about Audra’s father.
By Thursday evening, Delilah called Maeve from a hotel bathroom, whispering so softly Maeve could barely hear her.
“He told me to sign papers,” Delilah said. “He said they were tax documents. But my name was on accounts I’ve never seen. Maeve, what did I do?”
“You need to leave that house now,” Maeve said.