Sleep offered no solace.
Elias walked away from the courthouse feeling the chill of a deeper game.
Michael's feigned ignorance. The way his eyes had flickered.
It wasn't just about Anya's debt.
This was about control.
Returning to his penthouse, the city lights blurred outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
He bypassed his usual evening routine.
Instead, he settled into his private study, the one insulated from corporate prying eyes.
His secure laptop hummed to life.
Altair Investments. The name echoed in his mind, cold and sharp.
He typed it into a private search engine, cross-referencing against Thorne Corp's subsidiary records.
Nothing obvious emerged.
No direct link to his family's main holdings.
That was the point, of course.
Shell corporations were designed for opacity.
But Elias knew where the cracks in the concrete lay.
He began with the debt itself, the original loan documents that had ensnared Anya.
Who had brokered it? Which legal firm had handled the initial setup?
Poring over the scanned contracts, his gaze sharpened on the fine print.
The lender wasn't a bank. It was Altair Investments LLC.
Its registered address: a virtual office in Delaware.
Standard practice for shell companies.
But the legal counsel listed for Altair was less common.
"Sterling & Associates."
They were a boutique firm, known for complex corporate restructuring.
And known for discretion.
Elias leaned back, a grim line forming on his lips.
Sterling & Associates had handled Thorne Corp's hostile takeover of Valenti Holdings years ago.
A memory resurfaced. A bitter taste.
Valenti was the company his father had promised him to run.
It had been ripped away, a pawn in a larger power play.
He pushed that thought aside for now.
Focusing on Sterling & Associates, he dug deeper into their recent clientele.
He leveraged his network, discreetly pulling favors.
"I need to know everything about Altair Investments," he texted his most trusted, off-the-books contact.
The response was swift. "Give me an hour."
An hour felt like an eternity.
He paced the study, the silence oppressive.
This wasn't just some random corporate maneuver.
It felt personal.
When the encrypted message finally arrived, he pounced.
His contact had managed to pull the initial formation documents for Altair Investments.
The filing date was five years ago.
Five years. Roughly the same time frame as his own ostracization from core Thorne Corp operations.
The listed incorporator for Altair was a junior paralegal at Sterling & Associates.
A typical proxy.
But the *true* beneficial owner, the one funding the initial capital, was concealed behind layers of trusts.
Elias wouldn't be deterred.
He cross-referenced the trusts, looking for any recurring names or patterns linked to Thorne Corp.
He checked old employee directories, archived financial statements, even internal email logs he still had access to.
Hours bled into the early morning.
His eyes burned.
Then, a name appeared.
It wasn't a direct owner, but a signature on a dormant advisory board for one of the linked trusts.
A name he hadn't thought of in years.
Adrian Vance.
Vance had been a senior executive at Thorne Corp.
He'd been brilliant, ruthless, and loyal.
Until he wasn't.
Elias remembered the scandal vividly.
Vance had been disgraced, accused of insider trading, and fired summarily by Michael Thorne himself.
It had been a public, brutal corporate execution.
Michael had used Vance as an example.
But Elias also remembered the whispers.
Whispers that Vance had been set up.
That he'd known too much about certain off-the-books dealings.
Suddenly, the pieces clicked into place with sickening precision.
Vance's dismissal had happened shortly after Elias’s own public fall from grace.
After the incident with the forged documents that had nearly cost Thorne Corp a major deal.
Documents that had been traced back to Elias’s department.
Documents that he swore he knew nothing about.
His jaw tightened, a muscle twitching.
Vance had been close to his father, just like Elias.
Could this be it? The long game Michael had been playing?
Using Vance, or perhaps even protecting him, to create a clandestine entity.
An entity designed to manipulate.
To control.
Elias stared at Vance's name on the screen.
The man Michael had publicly ruined.
Now, seemingly, pulling strings from the shadows through Altair Investments.
He had found the connection.
But the true puppeteer remained hidden, perhaps watching him right now.
Elias felt a cold rage settle deep in his bones.
This wasn't just about business anymore.
This was about a betrayal that ran deeper than he ever imagined.
And Anya was caught right in the middle of it.
He stood, stretching muscles stiff from hours hunched over the keyboard.
Dawn was breaking, painting the sky in shades of bruised purple and orange.
He had a name. He had a link.
Now, he needed to find Vance.
And uncover who was truly pulling his strings.