Dc Rupert Thorne Novels & Stories

The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. "I believe," a deep, resonant voice vibrated through the hall, "there is a misunderstanding regarding my son’s parentage." The crowd parted like the Red Sea. Lucian Thorne, a man respected by the elites in broad day light and feard in the shadows. He didn't look at the press, or the elite, or the empty grave on the screen. His eyes were fixed solely on Darcy and the boy. Harry blanched, his bravado evaporating. "Thorne? What is this? This is a family matter. This is my son, Leo Williams—"

The conference room at Thorne’s Global downtown headquarters was dimly lit, a deliberate choice for the conversation ahead. Damon Thorne sat at the head of the long glass table, a figure of grit and exhaustion. Opposite him sat Roman Vale the CEO of ValeCorp, a man with a smile as sharp as his acquisitions.

I adjusted my cuffs and looked at my watch, and just as the second hand hit the twelve, the heavy oak doors opened and Julian walked in with an arrogant stride that made my stomach turn. "Mr. Thorne—or should I say, the elusive representative from Raven-Alpha?" Julian said as he reached out a hand, and he didn't even blink when he looked at my face because he was so focused on the prospect of the money that he didn't see the boy who used to sit at the end of the dinner table at the Thorne villa.

And before this night was over, Alaric intended to learn exactly why the man had tried to kidnap Rhea. The heavy steel door swung open with a muted hiss as Matt entered the access code. The corridor beyond was brightly lit and unnervingly clean. White walls stretched in both directions beneath recessed lighting, polished floors reflecting every step. Surveillance cameras blinked quietly from each corner. There were no damp walls or rusted chains, nothing like the dark warehouses people imagined in situations like this. Everything here was deliberately professional. Two security officers stationed outside a reinforced door straightened as Alaric approached. “Mr. Thorne.”

It was a live news feed from Wall Street Journal. BREAKING: THORNES IN TURMOIL. LEAKED DOCUMENTS REVEAL BILLIONAIRE DAMIAN THORNE’S MARRIAGE TO AARA VANCE IS A FRAUD. EMERGENCY BOARD MEETING CALLED FOR MONDAY. The secret was out. And the war for the Thorne empire had just officially begun.

"Update on last night’s assassination: One of the victim has been identified as Marcus Thorne, CEO of Thorne Tech." The room instantly went cold. Julian’s hand tightened on the remote without a word. but the air around him seemed to darken. Thalia looked from the TV to Julian. "Marcus Thorne," Thalia whispered. “Do you know him?” "Why?" he asked. "Because you look like you just saw a ghost." "He was a ghost," Julian said, his voice dropping to a dangerous low. "One I’ve been trying to bury for five years. That bastard should have been long dead."

The Edmund files Clara put on my desk at eight fifty seven were thorough in the way that only files compiled by an intelligence operation over forty years could be thorough. Edmund Thorne. Sixty eight years old. Founder of the Thorne Group. Educated at Oxford and Harvard. Married once. Divorced. One acknowledged son, Julian. One unacknowledged son who didn’t exist in any official record anywhere because Eleanor had made sure of that. Connections spanning six continents. A reputation in private financial circles as the man you called when the problem was too large and too sensitive for conventional solutions.

I walked into the house without knocking. The living room was occupied. Sterling's two sisters sat on opposing sofas, their mother in the armchair near the window, and Sterling himself standing near the far wall with his phone in his hand. And at the table in the corner, half-turned away from the room as though he existed slightly outside of it, was an old man I recognized from photographs more than from life. Mr. Thorne. The man the press had largely forgotten about. The man was so deliberately removed from the public eye that half of America had quietly assumed he was dead.

The location wasn't a gleaming lab in Manhattan or a fortress in Switzerland. It was a modest, weathered cottage on the coast of Maine, owned by Dr. Aris Thorne—a man who had been the Hawke family’s private physician before Eleanor’s "death" and the only man Ethan trusted with the truth of his pulse. The Atlantic hammered against the jagged rocks outside, a rhythmic, salt-sprayed thunder that felt more honest than the humming servers of Hawke Corp.