Novels by Clare

The culvert was empty.A frayed length of rope, neatly sliced, lay in the filthy trickle of water. The gag was discarded on the gravel. Marcus was gone. The only sign of his presence was a single, polished leather loafer, lying on its side as if kicked off in a frantic struggle—or removed deliberately.A cold, sick dread pooled in Anton’s stomach. They’d been too late, or too trusting of his fear.“He didn't escape,” Sabe said, kneeling to examine the cut rope. The edge was clean, surgical. “This was a professional cut. Not a saw or a fray. A blade.” He looked up, his eyes scanning the dark embankment. “They found him. Or he signaled them.”“The burner phone we left him,” Anton realized with a sinking heart. The cheap, untraceable phone they’d given him with a single number—a supposed lifeline. A tracker. A beacon.Before the weight of the failure could fully settle, the burner phone in Sabe’s pocket vibrated. Not Leora this time. The number was unknown, but the format was Swiss.Sabe

The air in the tiny apartment was thick with the unsaid, charged with the echo of Anton’s ultimatum. Sabe stood frozen, Anton’s hands still framing his face, the truth of his words a seismic shock to the foundations of his carefully constructed despair. The fear of future loss warred with the undeniable reality of the present love being offered, here, now, without conditions.He didn't kiss him. But he didn't pull away. He leaned his forehead against Anton’s, closing his eyes, a shudder running through him. It was a surrender of a different kind—not to passion, but to the terrifying possibility of hope.“I’m sorry,” Sabe breathed, the words a confession. “I’m so… damn… scared.”“I know,” Anton whispered, his thumbs stroking his temples. “So am I. We’ll be scared together. That’s the deal.”They stood like that for a long moment, drawing strength from the simple contact, the shared breath. The precipice was still there, but they were standing on it side-by-side.The fragile peace was s

The canal’s cold, dark embrace was behind them, replaced by the oppressive silence of a different safehouse—a tiny, airless studio apartment above a butcher’s shop, rented with the last of the cash from Sabe’s compromised cache. The smell of raw meat and disinfectant seeped through the floorboards, a vulgar counterpoint to the sterile scent of violence that still clung to their skin.The door closed, the bolt slid home with a definitive thunk. The world, with its sirens and hunters and world-ending stakes, was locked out. All that remained was the six feet of threadbare carpet between them and the ghost of the pipe.Anton’s hands had stopped shaking, but a profound, inner tremor remained—a vibration in the core of who he was. He stood in the center of the room, feeling too large for it, his body humming with a desperate, unspent energy. The aftermath had been tended to; Sabe had cleaned and re-bandaged the shallow knife wound on his ribs with clinical efficiency. Now, there was nothin

They didn't run. Running was for prey, and the line between predator and prey had just been irrevocably blurred. They walked, at a deliberate, steady pace through the backstreets of the industrial district, putting distance between themselves and the warehouse of groans and spilled blood. The city around them was lighting up for the evening, a world of oblivious diners and strolling couples, a galaxy away from the brutal calculus of the last ten minutes.Anton’s body moved on autopilot, guided by Sabe’s subtle touches—a hand on his elbow to steer him around a corner, a slight pressure to slow his pace. Inside, he was a shattered pane of glass, held together only by the film of shock. The world had a strange, hyper-real quality: the gritty texture of the brick wall he brushed against felt like braille, the smell of frying food from a vent was nauseatingly potent, the sound of his own breathing was a roar in his ears.And beneath it all, a constant, looping replay. The wet crunch. The f

The air in the underground server farm was cool and sterile, but the truth they’d uncovered was a live wire, buzzing with lethal voltage. The USB drive, now heavy with the damning audio files, was a burning coal in Sabe’s pocket. As they climbed the rusted ladder back into the derelict warehouse’s twilight gloom, the world outside felt different—sharper, more brittle. They had the monster’s voice in their grasp.They reached the main floor, the vast space now feeling less like a refuge and more like a trap. The shafts of late afternoon light were long and deep, painting bars of gold and shadow across the concrete. They moved towards the distant rectangle of the loading bay door, their footsteps the only sound in the dusty cathedral.Sabe’s hand went up, a sharp, silent halt. Anton froze instantly, his body thrumming with the new, raw awareness from the training. He saw it too—a fresh scuff mark in the dust near a toppled machine, not theirs. A glint of something metallic near a stack

The hours until the vault heist stretched, taut and thin. The makeshift training had left Anton’s body buzzing with a strange, painful awareness, but his mind churned in a holding pattern. They had a terrifying goal, a hostage brother, and a knife-edge of a plan. But the evidence they held—the termination invoice, the coerced memorandum—felt like arrows aimed at a ghost. They proved intent, but not the full scope. They needed the monster’s heartbeat, not just its shadow.Marcus, now gagged and secured in the reeds with a promise of water and a bleak future, was a source of sullen silence. Sabe was meticulously checking and rechecking the few tools they had: the knife, a slim lockpick set, the flashlight, the two USB drives—one for Leora’s broadcast, one empty, meant for the kill-code they didn't yet have.Anton sat on a mossy log, the encrypted burner phone in his hands. He was scrolling back through the messages from the number that was now forever silent: Rico Nadir. The terse, cyni

The night was a deep, velvet quiet over Manhattan, the sort of silence found only at the summit of the world. Davidson Ekon stood on the terrace of the Ekon-Brian Tower, a crystal glass of amber whiskey held loosely in his hand. The city sprawled beneath him, a galaxy of ambition and light he now commanded, yet for the first time in a decade, the view did not demand anything of him. It simply was. And he was simply in it. This was not the hush of absence but the profound hum of a legacy fulfilled.His thumb stirred involuntarily, caressing the heavy, platinum band on his finger. It was Joe's ring. For a year after his passing, it had felt cold, a relic of loss. Now, it was warm with the heat of his own skin, no longer a token of grief, but a seal of a partnership that had transcended the grave. It was a constant, quiet reminder that he was never truly governing alone.The quiet whisper of the automatic glass door cut through the stillness. He didn't need to turn to know who it was. Th

The last of the gala’s guests had departed, their laughter and the lingering notes of the orchestra swallowed by the consummate silence of New York at its apex. The penthouse below was a beautiful wreckage of crystal and wilting flowers, but Davidson needed distance from the echoes of adulation. He ascended the final, private staircase to the rooftop terrace, the city’s breath—a cool, ceaseless wind—greeting him like an old friend.Below and around him, the empire glittered. A constellation of light and ambition he now commanded. Brian Corp Tower, a spear of obsidian and light, was the heart of it, but the other buildings, the refineries, the data hubs, the distant, silent sites of the Arctic Venture—they were all part of the great, breathing organism he and Joe had built. We're still building.He moved to the railing, his hands resting on the cool, smooth steel. The city’s hum was a physical thing, a vibration that traveled up through the bones of the building and into his own. It wa

The Ekon-Brian Foundation’s Global Gala was the event of the decade, but the air humming through its soaring, glass-walled venue was not the brittle, predatory energy of old-money galas past. This was a celebration, vibrant and genuine. The guest list was a testament to the new empire: tech visionaries in sleek, minimalist suits stood beside environmental champions in ethically sourced silk; old-world industrial titans, who had once scoffed at Joe Brian’s “sentimental” protégé, now listened with grudging respect to young innovators. The very atmosphere was a declaration: the fortress walls were gone, replaced by bridges.And at the center of it all was Davidson Ekon.He moved through the crowd with an ease that was both regal and approachable. He was no longer the sharp-edged, hungry protégé, nor the embattled heir clutching his contested throne. The man who shook hands and shared laughs was a statesman, his authority woven into the fabric of his being, as natural as breath. The scand

The boardroom, once a chamber of polished obsidian and cold calculation, felt different. The air, usually thick with the tension of profit margins and defensive strategies, was now charged with a different energy—the crackling potential of the new. On the massive screen behind Davidson, the traditional Brian Corp logo, a stylized oil derrick, was shown next to a new, sleek design: a stylized sun cradled within the derrick’s embrace, above the words "Ekon-Brian Energy Consortium."The men and women around the table, the same ones who had weathered Victor Brandt’s coup and Davidson’s scandalous ascent, watched him with a mixture of trepidation and wary curiosity. They had accepted him as Joe’s heir, the man who had saved the empire. Now, he was asking them to follow him into uncharted territory.“For a century,” Davidson began, his voice calm yet resonating with a conviction that silenced the faint rustle of papers, “our identity was forged in the depths of the earth. We powered the wor

The weight of the day, a pleasant but persistent exhaustion from the Innovators Fair, had pulled Davidson into a deep, dreamless sleep. Then, the quality of the darkness changed. It was no longer an absence of light, but a substance, a velvet silence that parted seamlessly to form a room.He was in the old library of the Texas estate, the one Joe’s father had built. It smelled of aged leather, fine bourbon, and the faint, clean scent of the oil fields that lingered on Joe’s clothes long after he’d left the derricks behind. A fire crackled in the great stone hearth, though Davidson felt no heat from it.And there, in his favorite worn leather armchair, was Joe.He was as Davidson remembered him from the early days, not the frail shadow illness had claimed two years prior, but in his vibrant prime. His hair was thick and silvered at the temples, his hands—resting on the arms of the chair—were strong, the hands that had built an empire. He was looking at Davidson with a small, quiet smil

The proposal was brilliant. Arrogant, premature, and strategically reckless, but undeniably brilliant. Julian Thorne, twenty-four years old with a mind like a razor and an ambition that burned almost visibly in his intense gaze, had just presented a plan to spin off Brian Corp’s entire bio-tech research division into a separate, Julian-led entity.Davidson listened, his expression giving nothing away, from the head of the polished conference table. He watched Julian pace, his gestures sharp and expansive, his voice ringing with the unshakable confidence of youth that had never been truly, soul-crushingly tested. The boy was a prodigy, plucked from MIT and nurtured in the company’s most innovative labs. He was, Davidson saw with a painful, unwelcome jolt of recognition, a reflection. Not of the man Davidson was now, but of the man he had been: all hunger and horsepower, chafing at the bit, convinced he saw the future more clearly than those burdened by the past.“The current structure

Epilogue – The Horizon's Song(From Jonah's Perspective – Ten Years Later)The sea still smells the same — that wild, salty odor of freedom and memory. I come back here every year, to the same spot on Maine's coast where it began. The waves still remember us. They sing the same gentle tune that once washed over our terrors, whispering secrets only the wind and sea know.Clarkson sits within, reading again — age has silvered his hair, but not extinguished his fire. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of him smiling above the rim of his spectacles when he thinks I am not watching. He is still the same fellow who built his world with bare hands and a fierce, boundless love. The world has called him a legend, but to me, he is just the bloke who taught me how to ride through storms.The foundation thrived. The yacht became a vessel of hope — putt-putting from dock to dock, sheltering young idealists and heartbroken souls who think that the world will never accept them. We teach them what we learne

The sun rose as an artist, not a warrior. It had not forced itself upon the darkness with great, angry brushstrokes, but had let it thin out softly, washing the black canvas of sky to pale indigo and from that on to the pale, watery grey of a dove's wing. The stars, sharp and insistent, faded to invisibility, their final tremors like the final trills of a lost symphony. The atmosphere was ice-cold and crystalline, so still that the world appeared to hold its breath in expectation of permission to begin. And then, with a mildness that was incongruous with its immense force, the sun sliced across the horizon. It was no shattering burst, but a gentle, irrepressible overflowing, bathing the limitless, throbbing level of the sea in a fluid, peach-gold light which seemed to emanate from the water itself.On the Aether's deck, they were already on the move in this quiet, early morning world. Theirs was a silent, choreographed routine of preparing, a ritual of many a morning this one. There w

The last sparks of the sunset had burned out to cinder, leaving a sky of deep, rich indigo like a bruise, cut by the sharp, icy edge of a billion stars. The Aether was a world unto its own, a tiny island of heat and light suspended on an infinite, dark ocean. The only sound was the timeless, gentle sigh of the water against the hull and the soft, measured beat of their breathing.They leaned against the railing, wrapped in the same blanket, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, as if their bodies had forgotten how to be separate. The radiance of the sunset had been reduced to an intimacy so vast it had become its own type of universe. Words had been rare, unnecessary. Silence was a language they spoke.Then Clarkson shifted. He edged, going slowly and cautiously, and into his trousers' pocket he thrust his hand. The fabric whispered softly in the stillness. He pulled out the compass. The brass casing in the dim starlight was a dull glow, a caught piece of history. He set it flat on his p

The world had been simplified to fire and water. The Aether, her engines hushed, rode the gentle, breathing swells of the open water, a little, dark silhouette against a sky in the process of dying magnificently. No shore was visible, no other vessel. They'd been at sea for hours, a deliberate, silent passage out from it all—a distance from the city, the foundation, the book, the cheers.They had traveled until the horizon was a sharp, unbroken line, and they were utterly, blissfully alone. The sun was not dying. It was a blaze. The sun, a giant, bloated ball of orange, fell toward the water as if it was going to drown itself and pull the sky down with it. The clouds were not wisps, but vast, battered banners of violet and magenta, with streaks of blazing gold. The light did not illuminate; it burned, and the entire world glowed in its mad, beautiful colors.The sea was on fire, a sheet of flame running from the ends of the earth to the ends of the earth.They stood together at the st

The bookstore was a shrine of silent expectation. It was one of those mythic, independent bookshops in the West Village, with groaning wooden floors and shelves that swept toward a pressed-tin ceiling, heavy with the smell of old paper, new ink, and a hundred years' worth of precious stories. But this evening the usual academic hush was heavy with a sort of reverence unlike any other.Every seat was filled, and people stood shoulder-to-shoulder down the aisles, an expanse of faces gazing at a simple lectern, emitting warm, intense light. Hearts at the Helm: A True Story of Love and Revolution wasn't just on the giant screens; it was present. Its cover, a beautiful minimalist illustration of two silhouettes at the tiller of a ship, steering towards a not-a-line but a sweep of burning, breaking gold, was created by Jonah.A week on the shelves and it had already reached seismic status, riding bestseller lists not as a trashy tell-all novel, but as a cultural phenomenon.And now, the aut

The offer arrived on the letterhead of one of the world's greatest publishing companies. It was a thick, seven-figure advance to write a memoir. The title under which the editor had invited Jonah to write had been Hearts at the Helm: A Love That Rebuilt a Life.Jonah read the message twice, again, his coffee growing cold, abandoned, on the table of their lively Brooklyn kitchen. The letters in front of him swirled together. A memoir. His life. Their life. The possibility made a shiver of old fear creep into his system, a ghost of the horror he'd endured when the media madness had been most intense.He said nothing for weeks. He left unanswered in his inbox the publisher's persistent follow-up emails. He plunged into the foundation's work, into the reassuring specifics of community center blueprints, and moving parts of mentorship programs. It was safe. It was forward-looking. A memoir was the opposite; it was an excavation, a plowing up of earth that had only just begun to settle.Cla